Slashdot Mirror
Top University Rankings for 2004 Released
jemecki writes "US News and World Report has posted their annual rankings for the top colleges and universities in America. Of particular interest to Slashdotters are the top Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering universities and the top overall engineering schools. For those that don't want to RTFA, Harvard and Princeton are the best in the country, and MIT, Stanford and Berkeley are the best in Engineering."
No Hollywood Upstairs Medical School??? That's unpossible!
I can only see 3 schools listed. Why post the article if we have to pay to see more than 3 schools in the list?
Am I missing something?
if(!cool) exit(-1);
according to the ads that I watch while collecting unemploymet and eating cheezits -- Devry Institue is the place to become an elite member of the exciting IT industry!!!111!!!
...top colleges and universities rank YOU!
Just want to remind everyone that a lot of the rankings are quite subjective: "The rankings are based solely on the judgments of deans and senior faculty who rated each program they are familiar with on a scale from 1 (marginal) to 5 (distinguished)."
Personally, I'm more interested in which universities have good industry and job opportunities surrounding them, since my first job after getting a degree will likely be close to wherever I graduate from.
The longer I've been the workforce, the more I realize that these rankings are irrelevant except for bragging rights and being able to charge higher tuition for "prestige." I know many people who went to these great instituitions (I went to one myself) and many of them are sitting around in a dead end job boring themselves to death. Other people who went to community colleges or lower ranked schools are many of the movers and shakers of the world. There's no hard and fast rule either way regarding success and these schools. The only benefit I can see to the higher ranked schools is the networking with the elite of America who will get cushy jobs due to nepotism and that networking may pay off for you later.
Why do I h8 apple?
MIT, Stanford, Berkeley...
MIT, Stanford, Berkeley...
MIT, Stanford, Berkeley...
What exactly is this an ad for anyway? Oh yeah, US News' 'Premium Online Edition'
Nothing to see here....
Chaos, panic, disorder...my work here is done.
My comment is from the prespective of a graduate student. Almost all the top schools are as good as each other. Or you could end up with a shitty advisor in which case, any school would be bad. It might be counterproductive to choose a college based only overall rankings. Your field of reasearch, advisor, how much money they pay you as assistantship, they all play a role. As long as a school is in the top 10-20, they're probably about as good as each other.. Some better than others depending on your specialization
No "Best Party School" crap. It's a crying shame that the title exists at all.
It says a great deal about a society that values irrational consumption of alcoholic beverages as a virtue to be sought after.
And for those of you thinking that this isn't important: how many hiring managers and HR blimps do you suppose see "Bachelor of Arts" and think "drunk every weekend?" How many of those people think a college degree matters?
So yeah, it's important.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
it's been this way for ages. the only question is, "how will they place in the top 3-5?"
I write code.
They have absolutely no validity. Ignore them. Please.
I am applying to college this fall, looking for a degree in computer engineering (or software, maybe. heh) so I can go join the rest of the madding crowd in the unemployment lines.
The portions of this report available free didn't really surprise me -- MIT and Berkeley were already on my "apply here!" list, and maybe Stanford just for fun. But I have a bunch of others in mind -- Carnegie-Mellon, Harvard, CWRU, maybe Ohio State (tuition would be cheap or free as I live in state).
This story should generate some more interesting suggestions as to what I should look into--particuarly because we have to pay money to see more than the top 3--and I'm very interested in input from the techie crowd, particularly those who have already gone through the college circus.
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
Harvard, Princeton, and MIT are some of the best schools in the country!? I never saw that coming!
./ stories before, but this really is a non-story. Maybe if I had a usnews *premium* account and could actually get more than a 1,2,3 list...
Seriously, I've never complained about
Northwestern outranked U of C. Now I can sleep better at night. Ha.
Come on, you've gotta respect any institution where the median score on the entrance exams is a perfect score (for math, anyway).
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Where did Polytechnic University (Brooklyn, NY) end up in the fields of EE and CS?
I'm sorry, but I've watched far too many RoadRunner cartoons to believe a Coyote could have done better anywhere else.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
University of Colorado, isn't it?
Sadly, Chico State isn't on the list anymore. =/
Which college has the most bandwidth? The best female to male ratio?
C'mon, tell us the *important* stuff.
It was a joke, actually i haven't even tried to look at the site.
Forget this survey. Is there really a surprise when schools that cost $30,000 per year rank at the top? What I'm interested in is a country -vs- country ranking. Here in Canada we have some amazing universities, and I'd love to see them up against the US's best.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
US News sells rankings, they do not investigate them. Don't let the hype fool you.
*see three listings, then pay.
*goes back to cleaning out his mailbox full of porno teasing spam*
"Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure." -- William Saroyan
Stanford ranks *higher* than Berkeley on the CS list? I don't think so.
No, I didn't attend either school, nor I do have any close friends or particular interest in promoting Berkeley. I just learned from experience in Silicon Valley that Berzerkeley programmers write lots of good, working code while the Stanford guys are still talking about which coffee to buy.
Flame on.
I mean they closed down the TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT!!! just so they could build a bigger building on campus
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Same story as usual. Expensive ivy league schools rated best in class!
Although this means nothing to me, I know most slashdot readers and editors will be looking at colleges in about 5 years or so.
Frankly, I've found that the real world puts much less esteem on who granted your degree than the schools themselves do.
Pretentious eggheads laugh at DeVry, employers dont. They usually care if you can do the job, and have appropriate hygeine.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Ok, now back to real life and things that are actually important (oh I'm at work, nevermind). The people who use these lists the wrong way really make me laugh sometimes. I mean the people who say, "Oh, Brown University isn't even in the top 15, I would never go there."
Princeton Review has their rankings out and there is no fee. Find out which schools are the party and non-party schools.
Did any one notice this distinction:
Best Undergraduate Engineering Programs
(At schools whose highest degree is a bachelor's or master's)
(5.0 = highest)
1. Rose-Hulman Inst. of Tech. (IN) 4.4
2. Harvey Mudd College (CA) 4.2
3. Cooper Union (NY) 4.0
Best Undergraduate Engineering Programs
(At schools whose highest degree is a doctorate)
1. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology 4.8
2. Stanford University (CA) 4.7
University of California-Berkeley * 4.7
Somehow the PhD program elevates the undergrad program?
You can see it here. Same colleges different order. ;)
Reminds me of a sig I once saw here on Slashdot.
;)
Going to the Univeristy can make you knowledgeable, but it cannot make you wise.
No Crazy Go Nuts University?!?
I love Homsar.
"Joan of Arc, up top!" - Ghandi, Clone High
However, Stanford's Engineering department was not. The reason being is that most of the classes were taught by TA's, aka graduate students.
Stanford didn't meet the minimum requirement of actual Professors with Graduate and Post Graduate degrees teaching lectures.
With that understanding, how is it possible for Stanford to even be a top school in engineering?
The only reason I can find is that though the department may not be accredited, and that the instruction may not be from seasoned professionals, the classes taught are still of the quality you would hope from a university that used to allow students to drop classes the day before the final. (sarcastic, but also thoughtfully meaning that the instruction has improved greatly)
I know there's gotta be some other JHU alumni reading this. For years, Johns Hopkins has been ranked around #15, which always prompted Hopkins to brush the rankings aside as subjective. Surely the rankings are bullshit, they would say, since anyone worth their salt knew that JHU was the premiere research institution in the world.
:)
So my freshman year, 1999, rolls along and Hopkins finds itself ranked #7 by US News. Oh how they did celebrate. We heard about it nonstop for the first few weeks of school, especially during orientation. Major prestige thing. Huge boost to the administration's collective ego. And those rankings? Not so subjective anymore, were they? Finally those US News guys saw the light, and ranked Hopkins near the top!
Man, what a bunch of hypocrites. Long live JHU
Intercarve Networks, LLC
a popularity contest than anything useful
Top rated university for a degree in Life Studies.
Worse than just being irrelevant and stupid, the results are fixed to put Harvard/Priceton/Yale at the top of the list.
Slate ran some articles on this a few years ago.
"Cooking the School Books"
http://slate.msn.com/id/34027/
and better yet
"Cooking the School Books (Yet Again)"
http://slate.msn.com/id/89623/
Tech is Hell
Big day for University of Wisconsin.
/. articles today. Now, if only there was an article on the top party schools... IIRC, UW is 2nd place this year.
If you dig deep enough, it's ranked 2 for Nuclear Engineering. That makes 3
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
Just a little bit of reminiscing here.
I feel as if my family placed too much value on name recognition on rankings like these and just in general. I still remember throwing out so many letters and envelopes from colleges just because my parents and I didn't recognize them from the tops of these lists.
In the end, who knows? I may have wasted time writing essays to apply to schools that wouldn't have made sense for me to attend, just because of their position on rankings, even those not relevant to my area of study.
Harvey Mudd's letter to me went into the recycle bin because my parents hadn't heard of it, but I certainly remembered it when my friend was talking about visiting for Nova Scholarship stuff. I do wonder about what might have been (maybe if I had spent more time thinking about my MIT application or something), but I suppose I have luck to thank that my parents recognize UC Berkeley's name :-)
#1 Cal State San Diego #2 Cal State Chico #3 ....... Buy me a drink to find out ;-)
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
but the "University" I went to had to be the bottom of the barrel.
I still recall the quote from the dean of Chemistry when we walked into the 1st day of Physical Chemistry:
"None of you will pass this class the first time around, I will make certain of it."
And he did too. Had two exams, midterm and final. The midterm was on the day *after* the last day to drop the class, so in other words you had no idea how well you were doing in the class until it was too late.
Motherfucker had tenure as well, so we couldn't get his butt fired for this. And sure enough, we all failed (even the straight A students, of which I was not one)
In any case, long story short (too late!) everything I learned in life I *damn sure* didn't get at college. I got it in real life, so I have to wonder just how accurate those ratings (and how useful) really are.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Do Carnegie Mellon. Expensive and you'll bust your ass just to make a "B", but wow is it worth it. No coasting through classes here. And it actually does have a little pull out in the real world (even though right now everyone is probably saying "Mellon? Like in 'Back to School'?"). But...the thing I got most out of it, you'll make some damn good friends as you're all staying up late trying to survive.
And then you got Pitt and a couple other nearby schools to go to/recruit chicks when you have ten minutes for a social life.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
A good Professor can make a boring class interesting, inspire you to achieve your full potential, and boil down the most complex ideas into a simple analogy or diagram. A bad Professor, on the other hand, can bore you to tears, complicate concepts needlessly, or just show so little effort that you feel inclined to show little in return. The quality of my education has always been effected far more drastically by picking good Professors then by picking well rated schools.
One could argue that a good school will have more good Professors (or even that this is the definition of a 'good school'). and they'd be right, but I don't think that there's as much of a difference as people like to believe. I've had plenty of awesome teachers at ASU and my share of horrible ones at Drew. Of course, the bad teachers at well reputed Universities are bad for different reasons; i.e. they're busy doing research and have their graduate students teach/grade for the class.
There are plenty of resources to help you find good teachers at the school you choose to attend. Besides, obviously, word of mouth, there are new sites such as PickAProf where students rate the teachers they've had (has anyone used this site? Does it work well?)
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WARNING:Slashdot karma not redeemable in the afterlife.
I think alot of these lists are really to subjective to be useful, since most of the top schools are pretty much the same. I remember when I while I was attending college one year my school was not in the top 50. The next year it was in the top 10 in the same publication. The thing that is strange about this is that the university was exactly the same as it was the year before, but somehow it was vaulted into being one of the top schools. The only thing that changed was the listmakers criteria which is totally subjective. Clearly the list was faulty and this really made me loose any faith in these type lists.
Why haven't the complete listings and data table been posted in a comment here yet. We constantly have NYT articles posted in comments (in case of /.ing, right) despite it being offered free of monetary charge (I understand that there is the "cost" of supplying personal info).
At the very least I hope enough people will complain about posting articles from a site that actually has real monetary charges to access their content.
If you want bang for the buck in the midwest, look at the University of Illinois (disclaimer: I went there), or Purdue (Michigan to a lesser extent, they are really expensive). They both have very good (top 20) engineering programs, affordable out of state tuition, and low cost of living in the surrounding areas.
Don't go to Ohio State for engineering unless you want to do aero...
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
Although an undergraduate degree may not get you the farthest as far as your career is concerned, the instruction you get while earning one could potentially make or break your chances at having an illustrious career. Also getting your education at an accredited school can boost your chances of getting into a good graduate program. Sure the community college can save you a ton of money, but depending on the worth of their instruction you could wind up regretting it later.
~Mike Rizzo
It is better to keep quiet and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
Mike Rizzo
it's hell of a lot cheaper and if you do it right can get you into your field faster.
sign up with the Local CC.
get all your crap classes out of the way there... why the hell do you think you need to pay $$$$$ for the basics that are the same everywhere...
come on remedial English is the same at your local CC as it is at Stanford..... There's just less Football players at the community College classes.
People often complain that these rankings are subjective. Yes, they are subjective, but so is an interviewer offering a job. I'd have to think that having clout in your own area (i.e. enrolled in a program that is rated highly by it's peer programs) would lead to clout in the job market too.
That said, I hope no one uses the list to find where they are going to apply to college. Further disclaimer: I attend Berkeley. I find it outstanding and I love it. Can't beat the crazy hippies as well as the proximity to silicon valley. (Where else can you get a top quality enginnering degree, as well as intern at Apple, among other companies, in the summer, without moving)
Lastly, Berkeley is now tied with the Farm! Moving on up. w00t!
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
C'mon up to Canada for your education. The tuition is about half (or less) of what it is in the states, if you're gay you can get married, and we're about to decriminalize marijuana.
Better yet, you don't have to pay to see our rankings:
1 Toronto
2 Queen's
*3 McGill
*3 Western
5 UBC
6 Montreal
7 Alberta
8 Sherbrooke
9 Ottawa
10 McMaster
11 Dalhousie
12 Saskatchewan
13 Laval
14 Calgary
15 Manitoba
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Recently, I served on a committee for our college that did some strategic planning. You know... the whole "strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats" deal.
Anyway, one of the ideas that someone brought up was the notion of trying to influence our ranking in the U.S. News annual report. So we looked into how the rankings are done.
As I recall, it turned out that the main factor in the rankings of universities as a whole was the peer assessment (other deans of universities and colleges). To this end, all of the institutions who put a priority on being near the top of the list make sure to send out promo material to everyone that U.S. News queries... ideally a few weeks before U.S. News sends out the queries, so that the promo material is still fresh in the mind of the voters.
For either the overall rankings or the rankings of the individual programs (like engineering, business, etc), there were some other very interesting quantitative measures that came into play. One of them was something like the percentage of classes with fewer than, say, 21 students (which increase a school's score) and another was the percentage of classes with more than about 35 students (which lower a school's score).
One insteresting suggestion someone on the committee made was, if we had any classes with a maximum class size of 21 or 22, lower it to 20. Only one or two students have to wait until next quarter for the class, and the college gets a discreet jump in its score. Same goes for lowering classes with a max of 35 or 36 to 34. Every little bit helps.
Anyway, the long and short of the story is that... there are a lot of clever people who make it their business to juice the scores that their school gets. If a school isn't very high on the list, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's a bad school. It might just mean that they haven't found out how the ranking game is really played. (Kinda like an athlete who doesn't realize that everyone else is using steroids yet).
500,000 readers, and nobody pays the Premium Subscription rate to be able to post the whole list.
People who disagree with you are not automatically evil, greedy, or stupid.
I go to RIT. I wonder why it went down.
I'd sing my school song, but we don't have one that anyone knows about.
I'd root for my football team, but we don't have one.
I'd enjoy the social life, but there is none.
I'd take a walk to the town, but there is no town in walking distance.
I'd join student government, but they're powerless.
I'd buy a soda, but they cost $1.25.
I am currently a freshman at UW Madison and while I cannot talk much about the engineering curriculum (I start Sept. 2 and have only taken a Calculus course over the summer, which btw went great) I can definatly say you might want to at least give the college a once over. What I find especially interesting is the AMEP program http://www.math.wisc.edu/~milewski/amep.htm, I might possibly enroll in this myself to give me a stronger base for graduate school. At any rate good luck. Remember an undergraduate education is made mostly by your choices, not so much the actual college.
No CMU Comp Eng student has ever gone to Pitt or other nearby schools to recruit chicks and also managed to graduate. Do not be deceived. CMU is a great experience but there are no "chicks". Do not buy the myth.
I'm in ChemE at Northwestern, and the department is very good, so I would recommend it. In terms of computers, I know a good amount of CS majors and not many like the department that much, and from what I have seen it is not that wonderful. The ECE department is good though, I know many ECE majors and some grads and they enjoy it and get a lot out of it.
And about the co-op program, I would have to say I approve; guess where I'm writing this from ;) The program here has undergone some bumps over the past years with a new director, but I would still recommend it for almost anyone in engineering.
A computer is a valuable tool, so use it and stop whining.
As far as the Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering rankings go, they've been available for a while. Note the comment on the bottom of the pages: *This ranking was computed in January of the year cited, based on data from a survey sent out in the fall of the previous year.
-- How many sigs are as useless as this one?
1(tie). Harvard University (MA)
1(tie). Princeton University (NJ)
3. Yale University (CT)
4. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology
5. California Institute of Technology
Duke University (NC)
Stanford University (CA)
University of Pennsylvania
9. Dartmouth College (NH)
Washington University in St. Louis
11. Columbia University (NY)
Northwestern University (IL)
13. University of Chicago
14. Cornell University (NY)
Johns Hopkins University (MD)
16. Rice University (TX)
17. Brown University (RI)
18. Emory University (GA)
19. University of Notre Dame (IN)
Vanderbilt University (TN)
21. University of California - Berkeley *
University of Virginia *
23. Carnegie Mellon University (PA)
Georgetown University (DC)
25. University of Michigan - Ann Arbor *
26. Univ. of California - Los Angeles *
27. Tufts University (MA)
28. Wake Forest University (NC)
29. U. of North Carolina - Chapel Hill *
30. Univ. of Southern California
31. College of William and Mary (VA)*
32. Brandeis University (MA)
Univ. of California - San Diego *
Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison *
35. New York University
University of Rochester (NY)
37. Case Western Reserve Univ. (OH)
Georgia Institute of Technology *
Lehigh University (PA)
40. Boston College
U. of Illinois - Urbana - Champaign *
Yeshiva University (NY)
43. University of California - Davis *
44. Tulane University (LA)
45. University of California - Irvine *
Univ. of California - Santa Barbara *
University of Washington *
48. Pennsylvania State U. - University Park *
Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst. (NY)
University of Florida *
51. George Washington University (DC)
Pepperdine University (CA)
53. Univ. of Maryland - College Park *
University of Texas - Austin *
55. Syracuse University (NY)
Worcester Polytechnic Inst. (MA)
57. University of Iowa *
58. Purdue Univ. - West Lafayette (IN)*
University of Georgia *
60. Ohio State University - Columbus *
Rutgers - New Brunswick (NJ)*
University of Miami (FL)
Univ. of Minnesota - Twin Cities *
64. Boston University
Miami University - Oxford (OH)*
University of Connecticut *
67. Brigham Young Univ. - Provo (UT)
Indiana University - Bloomington *
Texas A&M Univ. - College Station *
Univ. of California - Santa Cruz *
University of Delaware *
University of Pittsburgh *
73. Clark University (MA)
Michigan State University *
Southern Methodist University (TX)
Univ. of Missouri - Columbia *
Virginia Tech *
78. Baylor University (TX)
Clemson University (SC)*
St. Louis University
SUNY - Binghamton *
SUNY Coll. Environ. Sci. and Forestry *
University of Colorado - Boulder *
84. Fordham University (NY)
North Carolina State U. - Raleigh *
Univ. of California - Riverside *
87. Illinois Institute of Technology
Iowa State University *
Stevens Institute of Technology (NJ)
University of Denver
91. Marquette University (WI)
Univ. of Massachusetts - Amherst *
University of Tulsa (OK)
University of Vermont *
95. Auburn University (AL)*
University of Kansas *
University of New Hampshire *
University of Tennessee *
99. American University (DC)
Loyola University Chicago
Michigan Technological University *
Texas Christian University
University of Alabama *
University of Arizona *
University of San Diego
Washington State University *
107. Ohio University *
University of Dayton (OH)
University of Kentucky *
Univ. of Nebraska - Lincoln *
University of the Pacific (CA)
112. Catholic University of America (DC)
Colorado State University *
Florida State University *
University of Missouri - Rolla *
Univ. of
The best public liberal arts college is a military institute?!?
Awesome! I feel important now, like a civil rights leader who's just had his first assassination attempt.
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WARNING:Slashdot karma not redeemable in the afterlife.
It is like finding the square root of million,no one will ever know
There are no TAs, and all the profs have regular office hours where you can go in and get help or dicuss the lecture or whatever. The head CS prof was pretty regularly online at about 2 am the night before a big project was due in the introductory CS class, and would answer any questions on the mailing list from people working on it at the last minute. Which was usually just about everyone of course :)
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
My wife used to work at a University in the Statistics/Retention/etc... or soemthing like that dept. I used to call it the Department of Imaginary Numbers. For example, when she turned the graduation report in to the Dean/board about graduation rates the #1 degree was nursing. Well, they didn't want to be known as a nursing school so they told her to break the nursing graduates down into specialties. She then asked if she should do that for the engineering/math/chemistry departments as well. The told her no, only nursing.
So much for accurate statistics! She left that job after few more reports had to be modified. For fun we called back to admissions to our old school to get the graduation rates. Scary that the same thing was going on there.
It would be interesting to see the colleges lumped together to see where the school focuses for REAL.
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
Spot on!
Another point is that the majority of community college faculty are actually interested in teaching students. Most university faculty, particularly those at the "prestigious" institutions, have absolutely no interest in teaching. They want to do research. Odds are that the undergrad classes at those top universities are being taught by graduate assistants anyway.
I've worked as an institutional research administrator for a couple of community colleges, and I've found that when community college students transfer to universities, they perform as well as or better than students who started as freshmen at the universities.
On the tuition side of things, attending a community college translates into savings sufficient to pay for the junior year at a public university.
The end result is that unless you're one of those rare /.ers that could actually get admitted to Harvard, Stanford, Princeton or MIT, you're going to attend a state university, and most state universities already have "articulation agreements" with their local community colleges to expedite transfer of credit, etc.
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
Of course MIT is the best engineering school - they have the best understanding of engineers!
MIT Traditonal, The Engineer's Drinking Song, as sung by engineers worldwide.
Search for it on Kazaa, you'll find the Chorallaries excellent version.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I am probably hugely biased since I went to Stanford (as did my wife) but we LOVED it and can only think of a few of our classmates that didn't love it as well. The weather is near-perfect, you have a choice of great techie and great fuzzy classes and majors, and the people aren't a bunch of preppy snobs. 98% of the undergrads live on campus so there is a sense of community and there are always lots of things happening on campus. You will be amazed by what you learn from your classmates.
Find as many people as you can from each school that you are considering and ask them about the whole package: academics, weather (I swear this is important after living in Boston), dorm life, athletics (if you are interesting in that), religious life (if applicable), etc. Ask them what their complaints were about each of those aspects.
My only complaint about Stanford is the cost, and the student loans are bearable. Especially if you are going into a tech field.
fyi, I majored in CS and minored in Portuguese and really enjoyed both programs.
Lasers Controlled Games!
http://www.princetonreview.com/college/research/ra nkings/rankings.asp
And give 351 best and has feedback from students as well as schools.
That's gotta fit into your schema somewhere
You've got that right. Fortunately, my loans were only $40k (for one year at grad school). Thank you corporate america.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
Princeton Review - ranks on such important catagories as "most weed" and "most hard liquor"
I have blog like everyone else
I went to a community college for four years. Why? I wasn't sure what I wanted to major in. Its a lot cheaper and easier to modify a career path at a community college than at a university. I spent two years as a Business major before switching to Computer Science. I was pretty satisfied with the education I had a two year college, although moreso now at the four year university I ultimately transferred into.
Financial aid helps those who can't normally afford to go to these schools, sometimes covering up to the entire amount of tuition.
Although living in these areas (Berkeley, Palo Alto/Stanford), is hard enough when rent prices are generally higher than other places (I can't speak for Boston).
It says a great deal about a society that values irrational consumption of alcoholic beverages as a virtue to be sought after.
Oooh, you'll get yours! Crusty old dean!
Anybody want to help me fill this guy's swimming pool with Pop Rocks?
"I don't live in America, you insensitive clod".
Oh, wait...
I went to the University of California, Davis and paid the ~$4000 tuition and ~$1500 with loans. Help me get back at them by slashdotting the site!
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
Avoid schools primarily geared towards engineering. Well, if you want to learn how to interact with real people anyway.
There are a few good reasons to go to a big state school, esp. if you have one that's decent at your intended major in your state.
1) It's cheaper. You will be very hard pressed to make enough money after school to make up for the extra $100,000 in debt you'll be from MIT or Stanford.
2) You will run into many, many more people during the rest of your life who went to your school. This is good.
3) Real people will not instantly label you as a snob.
4) You have a much broader range of educational opportunity, and employers value this. Employers want engineers who took a few humanities classes. You will enjoy the opportunity to take a few humanities classes. You will have the opportunity to apply your major to fields that are just not available at engineering oriented school.
5) If you decide you hate engineering - and I know many people who do - you can easily move into something else.
6) Social Fraternities. I'm not saying you should join one, but you should have a good friend who does.
7) Women. Who bathe. Some who have probably not heard about the tech bubble bursting and who will date you because of your perceived post-graduation paycheck.
8) You'll still have access to everything you would have had at an engineering-only school.
I know way too many people who went to Engineering schools who have a very difficult time functioning outside of an Engineering environment. One of the *MOST IMPORTANT* things I got out of college was taking classes with, and doing extra-curricular activies with, people who were smart *AND* not engineers.
paintball
These things are such a scam. Everyone should read this article.
This was a joke about our own local community college. ... What do you need to get into Catonsville Community College???
A #2 pencil!!
(to fill out the application).
HAHAHA. Actually, I took a few course at some community colleges, they can be a cheap way to fill out electives on a BA (You transfer them in). In many cases the teachers were just as good AND they graded easier. Don't knock the community colleges, man.
Going to college is more than just getting courses out of the way so that you can a job. You become smarter by surrounding yourself with smart people. A large part of community college students are just trying it out to see if they can handle anything harder than high school. If you are bright, then you should go to a place with bright people.
Granted, a lot of people who shouldn't be working in IT see those commercials and flock to DeVry with high hopes, but I worked with people my senior year in college had obviously not coded in their first three years there. There are a lot of stupid people in IT.
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
number of students per class (as in, student faculty ratio), research opportunities (here the PhD programs help), and lots of advisors.
and weather. i can't deal with trudging to school through wet slush or knee high piles of snow.
Actually... Caltech is about as underpriced as you can get. More financial aid, "work"-study, grossly paid summer research fellowships, upperclassman (full-rides) merit scholarships... etc.
Take #5 off your list.
A friend spent a semester at Stanford and was disenchanted by the size of classes, so he came back home and did two years there, _making sure_ everything would transfer into Stanford. Then returned to Stanford for the final two years to get the BSCS degree.
It's important to research with your targeted University where they will accept transfers from and in which studies, etc. I've known people to get 2 years at Delta College (in Michigan, a CC), transfer into U of Mich for the B then go on to Harvard, Stanford, Berkley, etc. for masters all with no problems.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Wait! There's less! In France you receive a salary when you make it to the top engineering school.
Well, I sure as fuck won't purchase it at USNews.com, cuz I sure as hell am not going to buy it from Slashdot!
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
And why are the top two tiers compared together? Thanks.
That you're stuck with for the next 10 to 15 years.
It's a joke. And many of these schools are horribly mismanaged, which further drives up your costs.
Pick any state school in the state you live in. Go there. Take a variety of classes (not just in your major). Go to class. Do some/most of the homework.
Then you'll have a balanced, good education. Hopefully you'll be able to think and learn on your own by the time you graduate.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
My old alma mater, What'sa Matta U.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
...GO!...
(respond appropriately)
The ranking criteria used by USNWR are really sketchy, but in their defense they do put Cal as the best engineering school value in the country
( a little off topic but)
I would have been more impressed by this article if it hadn't come from a university that was dissatisfied with its ranking.
It's all about the money Slashdot gets paid for running this article/advertisement....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
In CS we started as Freshmen writing code and more code and even more code as you got higher up in the classes ie, 1000 level vs 2000 vs 3000. The mis folks in the college of business did't write hardly ANY code till they were Jr or Sr's. I always thought this was a bad idea since half of them ended up working as programers.
I actually knew a manager that claimed he perferred MIS grads over CS grads because they produced better 'documentation'. Which is probably true, but he got his butt canned because evey project he managed went over on time and budget by a significant margin and were usually buggy as hell, but his projects were all well documented and thats what counts right????
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
Propaganda fed to the students persuades them to take out huge loans.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
if you are interestted in a small inexpensive program with high quality faculty interaction I've heard great things from people about the UC Santa Barbara college of creative studies, it's kind of a little honors program. But as a berkeley graduate, I gotta say if you want a great good value education you can't beat Cal -GO BEARS!!! (besides, we've got something stanford doesn't have, we've got the axe)
The above post listed the rankings for Canadian medical doctorial universities instead of the rankings for universities in the comprehensive category.
ian
philcrissman.com.
As an example, consider just management skills: You try and get five 21/22 year-old guys to work together sometime, especially when there are a large number of time sensetive, mission critical tasks (keg aquisition, music selection, advertising, etc) and without any sort of heirarchy (everyone pays the same rent, nobody gets paid until the end of the party). Two years of house parties taught me to deal with people's individual quirks and work to reconcile disagreements. Moreover, I picked up skills in event planning and coordination, dealing with the legal system, accounting, first aid, security and advertising.
It may sound like I'm being sarcastic, but these skills translate over to the Real World extremely well.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Guess what: higher ed is expensive. I work at a very expensive private college. Assuming that you were to pay full freight for everything (few do), you would pay $11k/year less than it actually cost us to provide you the classes, services, room+board, etc.
So how do we do it? Volume! No, really we make it up by grants, donations and endowment income. The latter has been in the tank over the past few years, the former has been a lot tighter as well as all those insta-zillionaires watched their stock profits vaporize.
Cuts? Sure. My department's budget is down 25%, we're running 20% low on staff. We're under hiring freeze, we're putting off needed renovations (Library+leaky roof = bad news) we've stopped replacing computers in labs, we have cut adjunct profs and reduced the courses taught, etc, etc. And guess what: the budget still doesn't balance. We're eating our endowment to stay alive until the good times return. (And that's with the amazingly lower salaries in higher ed: you think you can get a PhD with 20 years of experience for $80k/year in industry? Our president makes a whopping $165k: a CEO of a similar sized corporation would clear a million easy.)
We're one of the lucky ones. We've got enough endowment to survive for quite a bit longer without layoffs. We even got a small raise this year.
But overpriced? No way: it just costs a hell of a lot to run a college.
Canadian Chicks are also extremely hot!
Patent: from Latin patere, to be open
CMU was worth it. Life is a piece o' cake. I don't remember so much as being challenged in the work place since then, it's always easier than school was.
I read a statistic somewhere which stated that where the student goes to school or gets accepted doesn't really predict future success. A better gauge of success is how much ambition a student has. Ambitious students will shoot for the top tier schools.
I have to admit that I have always admired the "Stanfurd" attacks. The ability to blot out one small part of a letter and make the word into something so stupid sounding was initially at least, a work of genius. Even now when you repeat it for the millionth time it has a certian flair.
Lasers Controlled Games!
It cost me about 100K to attend four years of medical school (my parents were kind enough to pick up my undergraduate costs... all in-state tuition, of course), and I got off light... depending on where you go to school, you could pay far more.
My wife is about 120K in the hole, but she also got cheap (relatively) in-state med school tuition...
Want to attend medical school at Univ. of Miami (the Hurricaines)? Try school expenses of 28K per year (that does NOT include living expenses... and that's in-state rates)
Like Duke University Medical School? Got the academic credentials to get in? Try tuition plus living expenses of 51K/yr (and even that's a lowball figure... they only allocate about 400$ dollars a month for rent. You can get a cheaper place than that, but the savings will get eaten up paying for medical expenses after you get mugged/shot by your neighbors).
What's even better is paying back that 100-200K while living on a resident's salary of about 36k per year. My student loan payments as a resident were more than my mortgage on my first house...
Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful that I was able to afford my education, and I actually make money now, but I'm STILL paying off those student loans.
As much as a hardship as it was for me, imagine paying that much cash to get a degree in Art History or a similar discipline, where about all you can do is teach. NOW imagine how long it would take you to pay off that debt on a teacher's salary... Yikes.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
While I come from a family that was able to easily afford this kind of tuition 4 kids at top flight universities, I must say that this system is not even remotely fair and it is a real burden on more middle class families (including some of my friends and peers). Sure, if your parents are working near minimum wage jobs AND you meet their academic criteria (a rare group), then the system will normally cover all your expenses. However, if you are unfortunate enough to have more successful parents who spent and saved wisely, then you WILL be penalized. It is a perverse system because it penalizes thrift and rewards spending. For instance, one of my friend's parent bought a house about 30 years ago now in Seattle, while they otherwise lived very modestly, their relatively modest house appreciated in value to roughly 700K (from the 100K or so it cost before). The schools only needed to see the house to decline any substantial financial aid. The parents couldn't realistically sell short of moving to a very different part of town (not to mention leaving their friends, house, job, etc). My friend couldn't ask her parents to sell. The end result was that she was forced to attend a state school. This is perverse because her parents worked harder than most people, were more educated, etc. Meanwhile other (less capable) peers of mine, whose parents certainly earned more money than the friend I just described, but saved little, were able to enjoy substantial financial aid without their parents having to alter their lifestyle substantially.
I am sorry, but I tend to believe that we should reward hard work in this country. The system really damages that. The truth is these schools are WASTING a lot of money, some of the top schools are even charging more than they need to (but keep it high to keep their prestige and admissions in check), and then justifying it by saying that the financial aid system makes all right. Well, it doesn't. The system sucks for a lot of people. If you're rich, it's not too bad. If you're poor and you're fortunate enough to be admitted, then you're set (but also quite rare). I don't even consider myself much of a social crusader, but I truly consider it regressive, even if the pretense is "progressive". Those 2nd and 3rd generation families, whose families otherwise moved quickly up the social ranks hit an unnecessarily steep wall when it comes to entering the elite schools.
Take a look at a school like Princeton some time (if that's where you're going). Almost all the students are white and upper middle class or higher and most frankly aren't that impressive academically or otherwise. Sure, most students will have a modicum of intelligence, but more importantly they know how to work the system. If you truly leveled the playing fields economically, you'd still see a large percentage coming from more affluent families (because they are most likely to have benefited from superior educations and may even be a little smarter on average), but I assure you that you'd see a lot more kids from blue collar and clerical backgrounds. This is really not a system the delivers "fairness" OR the most capable students (because it cuts out a large percentage of students, those somewhere between rich and poor).
Real socio-economic advancement is happening, by and large, by bypassing these elite institutions entirely, by attending lesser schools (or at least less recognized ones), but nonetheless succeeding in fields that reward true hard work, skill, intelligence, and risk taking behavior (e.g., business, engineering, etc). It doesn't have to be that way and it has gotten dramatically worse over the past decade or two as tuition has climbed...
Signed,
A person who has little direct cause for complaint.
What's this telling us? I'm not in the US. Well, sure, alright... a ranking doesn't make things worse, but... why not rank the international CS-universities? h
I don't know how it is in EE, but in medicine, NOBODY CARES where you went to medical school.
Unless you are in academics (I was for a time), where you received your medical degree is almost meaningless. Residency location matters a little more, since that's where you actually learn your trade. However, I've met people trained at Ivy-League med schools and residencies who were absolute fools; no exaggeration.
I was state-school all the way, and my USMLE and board scores were top 15% across the board... you get out of your education EXACTLY what you put into it. If you slack at an Ivy-League school, no amount of flashing around that fancy sheepskin is going to cover up the fact that you're a dolt. Also, you can be a brilliant doctor, and be as terrible as you are brilliant if you don't learn to deal with people. Nobody likes an asshole, no matter how good a doctor he's supposed to be, since medicine is far more than the mechanics (this may not be true for some surgeons. Given the choice between a prick/skilled surgeon and a nice/mediocre one, I'll take the first guy, since most of my interaction with him is while I'm unconscious. I want him for his hands, not his personality, and if he were enough of an ass, I'd tell him exactly that!)
We had guys in my medical school class who were bottom 20% in the class, and they ended up becoming GREAT doctors... the ones I would personally go to if I had a problem. One guy who went into psychiatry was dead last in the class, and went on to become an academic superstar, and professor at a large medical school.
Where you get your degree is far less important than who you are, including your personal work ethic, experience, and general motivation.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Not Devry, it is the Army where you can be all that you can be!
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
But it gets worse than that. My father was department chair for an unquestionably top-3 department in the field of Health Administration. This is the intersection of business administration and medicine -- an MHA qualifies you to run a hospital, drug company, medical supply firm, etc. Some Health Administration departments are part of medical schools (including my dad's). Others, including generally the lower ranked ones, are attached to business schools.
One year US News came out with their rankings and ta-da! My dad's department had dropped from #3 to out of the rankings entirely (15 schools or so). So had several other top-ranked departments. It turns out that the business schools had heavily lobbied US News to only consider MHA programs attached to business schools.
This survey is a joke.
Wow, it's weird to see Stanford and Berkely in those high spots for Engineering. Usually the top three for engineering are some combination of MIT, Carneige-Mellon, Caltech, Harvey Mudd, and Rose Hullman. (MIT being almost always #1).
The local papers here in Denver have all been complaining because the Princeton Review claims that the University of Colorado is the #1 party school. Here's a link to an article carried by "The Guardian" or another in the Rocky Mountain News. One thing nice about partying at a mile above sea level is there's already less oxygen so you can achieve the same buz on less total consumption for those of you on a budget.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
We have all spent years being quantified by percentages that translate into A, B, C, D, and F and further go into a meaningless 4 point scale GPA. Does GPA measure our intelligence, our ability to perform in the "real" world, or our worth as a member of society? None of these, it simply tells how successful we will be at taking school tests in the future. Now universities are being quantified by meaningless measurements and they expect us to feel sorry for them?
Starting this year, many 'top' colleges will no longer look at how much your parents' house is worth when calculating financial aid. Before, they would include your house value, as if you were supposed to move somewhere cheaper and spend the money on tuition. Finally, they realized that many people live in areas around cities like Boston, where the most affordable housing could be above 100K. These people cannot just sell their house to pay for tution (as the formulas previous considered), since the people already were living in the cheapest places they could get!!! Are all colleges doing it? No. But I got this information from a newspaper article and it said "many [or most] top colleges" are now doing this.
Cover your eyes and click this link!
What's the average GPA at Harvard now? A 3.9? Public universities tend to have much less grade inflation.
I dare you to say that VaTech is the most beautiful campus in the middle of a January snow storm when you live in West AJ and have to walk up and down iced over flights of stairs to the campus' other side at 8:30 in the morning.
Not to start a flame war, but I've always found UVA or Wm & Mary more beautiful. And I say that as someone who has spent time on all three campuses.
If you really want a beautiful school, try Mary Baldwin college. Located on a hill it's historic white halls have a view of a lovely small town and the mountains bordering the Shenandoah Valley. Plus the hill keeps many of the all female student body in shape - *very* beautiful school.
It's spelled "larnin'"
Real socio-economic advancement is happening, by . . . nonetheless succeeding in fields that reward true hard work, skill, intelligence, and risk taking behavior (e.g., business . . .
The business world rewards intelligence and risk-taking behavior? My Introduction to Management textbook said, "the people who get promoted often are not the best workers, but the best politicians." In my experience, it's quite often the people who exhibit "intelligence and risk taking behaviors" are the ones who are labeled "management issues" or "not a team player" or "not a Company man" and are let go. Why? They represent a threat. No, there is tremendous pressure to get along by going along at the expense of these very attributes. All too often, this meets with disastarous results.
How heavily your GPA is weighed depends entirely on the university, as it should. I attend the University of Chicago (I guess I should have said that in my first post), and the thing they weigh the most in admitting a student are their essays. I know people who had a low 3.something GPA and got admitted to the U of C, one of the most academically challenging schools in the US.
Also, before the SAT was being created there were basically two school of thought: one, from Harvard, said that we should try to measure aptitude and the other, from Chicago, said that we should try to measure performance. The former won over, but there has been a push lately again toward the latter.
I also take issue that the every university's "job" should be the same (which the article addresses). Some schools should be there to prepare people for the "real world" or one's worth as a member of society. Every single one certainly should not. Schools like MIT, CalTech, and Chicago are very good at certain things which people value in an education. As the article said, to claim that there is some Platonic ideal of University is to want to create a homogeneous educational environment.
In case anyone has forgotten, this biased US News list was at the heart of a firestorm of criticism just a couple of years ago (let your Google fingers do the walking and you'll find plenty of citations). Some of the accusations included skewed data purposely weighted to maintain certain institutions rankings as well as the always popular bribe for ranking. Here is one I quickly found: http://aemes.mae.ufl.edu/~vql/misc/NYTimes_20Aug01 .html
"Undergraduate degrees are meaningless now-a-days, so you might as well spend as little as possible getting one. Going to a community college for the first 2 years to get the basics out of the way is a good start."
Spot on!
Another point is that the majority of community college faculty are actually interested in teaching students. Most university faculty, particularly those at the "prestigious" institutions, have absolutely no interest in teaching. They want to do research. Odds are that the undergrad classes at those top universities are being taught by graduate assistants anyway.
There's a lot of truth in this, and for many people, a community college may be the best experience.
The major problem with community colleges isn't usually the teachers - most of them are good - it's your classmates. Face it - if you go to a community college, a lot of the people there won't be as interested in learning. Some people just want the degree, others just go because their parents are paying.
I'm not saying there aren't people like that at any school. But if you go to a highly-ranked four-year school, you'll be surrounded by far more students who are highly motivated and really excited about lots of subjects, and about learning in general. This excitement is infectious, and you are likely to find yourself more motivated as a result.
Well, ok, I was in CS, not Comp Eng, but I can vouch that I recruited chicks and graduated.
Yes, it's expensive for some, but it doesn't have to be expensive for the student as much as for the state. My education, had I not been on scholarship, would have been $3000 for year. From this, I am now in a top 5 graduate school. I graduated from undergrad in the black.
So what I learned is this: the best value is either one of the best schools in the country, or a good public school in your state. On the other hand, $25,000 for a fourth-tier private school isn't a good idea, financially.
I don't know where you're at, so that's not meant pointedly
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I attend UTD which has been called the MIT of the south. Started in 1969 by the founders of Texas Instruments, it originally started as a PhD school only, and then moved to graduate only, and now is an undergrad and postgrad school too. It was just given 300 million dollars to play around with (the most any public university has ever been given, I believe), and has an incredible business and engineering school. I wouldn't be surprised if you see UTD a lot higher up on that list 10 years from now.
-Vic
I got my CS degree from Rice U about ten years ago - I loved the school, the students, and the "college" dorm system (much better than frats).
I thought they had a great CS program, and they have a lot of other good schools as well (like architecture and music) in case you find your interestes wandering elsewhere, or you just want to explore other fields.
Only downside - it's in Houston. But, they have great restaurants there which helps make up for it, and the campus itself is really nice and fairly isolated (or as isolated as you can get being right in the middle of a big city).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's a good analogy. Many of the same problems attach themselves to both issues.
Welcome Coach Drew!!!
Coach Morriss, looking forward to some real football!!!
*sigh* I got karma to burn...
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
So this means that the best universities in America are in the United States?
Ah! You forget America is a continent and not a country.
Well, I guess it does sound ugly to call people from the United States, "Unitedstaters", but calling them "Americans" is worse.
Yes, they're Americans, because the United States is part of the continent called America, but so is Canada, Mexico, El Salvador, Venezuela, Argentina, etc. They are Americans too.
So when you call people from the United States, Americans, you aren't saying they're from the United States, you're only saying that they're from some country in the continent called America.
It's like calling people from France, Europeans. You're not saying they're from France, just from some country in Europe.
So how should we call people from the United States? In Spanish (the dominant language in America), they are called "estadounidenses", which is roughly the equivalent to "Unitedstaters".
Regardless of this, the best universities in America are probably still within the United States.
</rant>
Stanfurd sux!
We're #117!!!
.... (this continues for a while) .... oku
Boomer sooner, boomer sooner,
I'll be sooner born, and sooner bred
and soon I'll be a sooner dead
rock'ahoma rock'ahoma rock'ahoma, oku
(or something like that! lol this may qualify for www.kissthisguy.com)
Umm.. EE is good, but ECE was not good, IMHO. I had a few good classes in the department but some of them were truly horrendous, including ECE 202 (Intro to EE) with Pappas, and ECE 205 (x86 Assembler). Almost impossible to survive just on class notes and suggested reading material for 202, had to go to the TA each week to get a more thorough explanation since the prof didn't really cover anything in enough detail that most of the class could understand everything. 205 was a purely PowerPoint class and we only had 2 or 3 assignments which were pretty basic and did not really exercise most of the material we'd been covering.
I'm Mat Sci now (well as of spring quarter this year) which absolutely rocks at NU. I didn't do the coop program but I'm hoping to work with a prof during the school year or during next summer. I'm also thinking about trying the 5 year masters program but I haven't nailed down all the details yet.
DISCLAIMER: I felt that I would really like ECE when I came in, and decided I didn't like circuit design or coding as much as I thought I would, so I'm somewhat biased. I'm sure one or two people in these classes loved them, though I can't understand how.
CMU Classic Quotes:
"Sex kills. Come to CMU and live forever."
"Work, sleep, food, friends - pick any three."
Also note that a significant percentage of the CMU population, at least undergrad, is comprised of MIT rejects. Then again, CMU is good enough that those who still want MIT/Stanford/Berkeley can often go for grad school.
e+ ---> <--- e-
Fatal Attraction
FYI, Here is Princeton Review's list of "Best College Experience for Undergraduates":
1 Yale University
2 Princeton University
3 Duke University
4 Amherst College
5 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
6 United States Air Force Academy
7 United States Coast Guard Academy
8 United States Naval Academy
9 United States Military Academy
10 Reed College
11 Wellesley College
12 Bates College
13 Williams College
14 Carleton College
15 Swarthmore College
16 Harvey Mudd College
17 Northwestern University
18 Columbia University, Columbia College
19 Haverford College
20 Dartmouth College
Given the international makeup of /. readership, a more appropriate and informative headline would indicate that the story deals with US universities.
/. suggesting that there are no 'top' universities elsewhere?
Or is
Couldn't get in, huh? And this from someone who has admitted that Cal was a mistake, "I regret coming to the US and paying so much money for an inferior education." Right?
Lasers Controlled Games!
Consumers reward risk taking and intelligent behavior, but businesses do not. Any sane investment of capital carries with it a risk factor and that risk factor is weighed very heavily by people with lots of money to invest. So, they by and large will stick with larger players that can use governmental rules, market inertia, and legal means to increase their investment, and not necessarily new products or better services. For the most part, businesses exist to not have to change, and they avoid risk whenever possible. The guy that gets to be CEO is the guy that pushes a merger, advocates layoffs, lies the most to the board and to the shareholders, and in general does nothing with the company he or she runs.
Look at how well the vaunted American success stories of the 1990s are doing. Enron / Worldcom down the tubes. Ford in trouble. GE with no new products. Pharm companies with few new drugs. The energy sector in chaos. The tech sector with no growth. Boeing can't introduce a new aircraft...
This is my sig.
Go to CMU's CS Program iff you are passionate about computers. The education they offer is second to none; however, if you are not willing to eat/breath/be a computer for four years.. it may be a very long four years. (it was a very long 4.5 years for me)
If you are passionate, I'd recommend CMU. All my peers who were super-techno-dweebs (I say this in a very affectionate way) CMU was a place where they could really come into their own.
If you still waivering or on the seesaw about what you want to major in, I'd think twice about CMU. There is very little time to take non-computer-related courses. Don't overlook universities with substantial core curriculums.. you may think they are dumb (as I did when I got out of highschool) but in retrospect, I truely wished I was forced to broaden my "horizons". You want to major in something that excites you.. not just amuses you.
This is all in my personal perspective. Choose wisely!
Education. Everything else can be lost, stolen, taken by the government, etc.
What do you mean by the claim that education cannot be, in effect, taken by the government? It's common for a government to make a person's trade illegal, or at least prohibitively expensive. Look at the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and see software analysis educations taken away by the United States Congress.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Right now, I'm in a serious funk trying to decide between hitting the industry or getting back into grad school. Your post was enlightening and pretty much what I need at this moment.
More than mere navel gazing.
Damn you, and I just emptied my clip of mod points on trolls. This should have gone up to +5.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.