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The Best Colleges for Network Engineering?
viperstyx asks: "Ive come to that time in my life where I have to choose what colleges im going to apply to for my undergraduate degree. I'm very interested in Computer Science but I'm not sure if I want to major in Comp Sci, but I do have a high interest in networks. I hope to work on things like Internet2, or in a large business environment after college. I was hoping to find a college with a major, along the lines of Network Engineering, but I have yet to find one." What colleges have the best programs to prepare prospective networking engineers for the future?
If you are going into networking, you'd be better suited to the RIT IT/ANSA program. http://www.it.rit.edu.
I'm just about finished Communications Engineering at Carleton University. If it's really a professional engineering design degree that you're after, and not somethign with more of a technological slant, it's definitely the way to go. It was the first Comm Eng program in Canada (I'm in the third batch to graduate this year), and there's a strong batch of professors in the field. It also helps that Ottawa is 'Silicon Valley North'. Nortel headquarters is here, and various Alcatel and JDS plants, etc. Not to mention all the local start-ups.
We cover everything from distributed network programming, to coding techniques, to circuit design, to protocol implementation, to allocating resources for quality of service. It's great, once you get past all the math and science at the beginning. Introduction to Communications Software was my favourite course ever.
I agree with this statement. Undergraduate education in the United States is really geared towards a much more general (and balanced) degree than most people seem to realize. They require you to take things such as Social Sciences, Hard Sciences, and the like, in addition to the stuff that you are going to major in. If you are going to a University for the sole purpose of getting a well paying job, you're probably going to be surprised. Universities don't train you to be good workers, they are supposed to teach you to think and be relatively well balanced intellectually. Most of the other posts in this thread seem to agree with this by suggesting you get certifications and experience if you actually want to do work in Computer Networking.
That said, you can specialize in a specific field while still in the University requirement. As the parent to this post has said, you do this in graduate school. However, graduate school doesn't give you specialization that may be good for the job market. On the contrary, it may make you overspecialized, such that you've gone so far into theory that you no longer have any idea how stuff actually works in the real world. Going the full academic route is really on a good idea if you really care more for the field than you care for money.
Notice: I am am currently working on my PhD, but not in the field of Computer Science, or anything really computer related (I'm actually somewhere between a social science and philosophy). While I do not have first hand experience with graduate studies in Computer Science, I do have experience with graduate school in general, and while the concepts learned are different, the culture and process seems to be similar across all subjects. Your experiences may vary.
I would have to agree with some of the other posts... Get an undergrad degree in CS or perhaps IT (I'd recommend CS) and then specialize in graduate school.
::thinking to self::...Maybe I should have gone to MIT...
Depending upon how good your existing skills in CS are (I'm talking about mostly programming and general computer knowledge), I can recommend NJIT as a recent (2 weeks ago) BS in CS graduate. If you happen to live somewhere near the NYC metro area, it's not a bad education if you go in with a good background and don't mind teaching yourself when you can't understand the profs (that happens at most tech schools from what I hear). I thought it was rather easy but then again I started really programming in 2nd grade - most of my classmates wouldn't have agreed with me on the ease of the program though.
Price is reasonable and if you have high enough GPA/SAT scores you could apply for the Albert Dorman Honors College - they paid for almost my entire undergraduate tuition, but I must warn you it is a lot of work.
One bad thing I must say though is the quality of campus life - it fucking sucks. ~85% men here and as for the 10-15% left of women... well, you get the idea. However we are about 10 miles due west of the financial district of NYC, about a 30 minute train ride right to Penn Station and there's *plenty* to do in the city, so it' really up to you.
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Well with physics/mathematics degrees, you certainly need to sell yourself. There aren't job openings for 'Physicist' or 'Mathematician' outside of Academia/National Labs, however when people are hiring for research/analysis jobs, while not explicitly saying it, they certainly will consider qualified physicists, especially if you give them a good reason why to.
If you can get past the resumes into the interview phase, you normally can blow most everyone else out of the water using your analytical skills.
And i know this from experience, having a degree in physics, while spending several years in networks/system adminstration. My current job? I'm in grad school... in economics. Solely because of my analytical background. A Physics/Math type major certainly gives you the most versitility of any college degree. You just need to sell yourself.
If you can get past the resumes into the interview phase, you normally can blow most everyone else out of the water using your analytical skills.
Well that's the tough part. And few interviewers will actually test your analytical skills in any meaningful way.
I think it's a common mistake to equate "these skills will allow me to skillfully perform the job" with "these skills will get me the job in the first place."
You are only partially correct, but partially wrong as well. Going to an unknown school and building a network of morons is not nearly as good as going to a good school and building a network of brilliant hard-working people.
Hmmm... yes. How could I disagree? I have only one caveat. It's often hard to tell the morons from the guys who will one day be running Internet22 in first year. It gets a little clearer in upper year but even then your classmates are only part of the picture.
Go to conferences. Take jobs at great companies for possibly lousy pay. Then again, never take a joe job - always take intern positions that will push you & challenge you. Keep in touch with your bosses. Actually try to get to know those "old people" you work with.
My networking has improved a lot over the years (mostly due to how bad it was in the first place). I missed a lot of opportunities as a student mostly because I had no idea what I wanted to do. If you know you want to work on computer networks, then start meeting the right people today.
And yes, if you get into a top-tier school, that never hurt either. All the top schools are equally good. Apply to Waterloo up here in Canada!
CMU is a good school, but you have to be ready for...well, you may not expect everything there.
(Note that I picked up a bachelor's in CS there and liked it quite a bit.)
I found that the school tends to be a bit racially cliquish. There are a phenomenal number of students from wealthy families overseas that attend, and a (surprisingly, to me at least) number of recent immigrants. I never really ran into any bad spirits (with the possible exception of a Saudi student who seemed quite put-upon immediately after September 11th), but Indians tended to hang out with other Indians, Chinese with other Chinese, etc. It *is* a neat way to pick up other culture -- I'm not a huge fan of travel or picking up other cultures other than my monthly National Geographic, but I really enjoyed some of what I learned about folks there.
CMU has a few *extremely* highly-rated schools. For example, their computer science program and their drama programs are both extremely good. This may *sound* really nice. However, it also has drawbacks. When you are going to university with these people, they are really, really, really good. They not infrequently have done decent work in their major. You can't just decide to pick up a drama double major if you're a typical computer science major, because (a) you would probably never be accepted, and (b) if you did get in, you would be decidedly out of your depth unless you had serious prior experience. CMU is a pretty awful place to be if you don't know, for Pretty Darn Certain what you want to do. Changing majors is generally a pain in the ass. (Note that drama is a particularly nasty case -- there are a very few classes for out of majors that generally have a waiting list many times the size of the class). All this *does* mean that you can generally get a very good education in the field you choose, but it is difficult to seriously explore other things.
CMU is not what you would call a party school. It is next to U Pitt, and, in any event, you can find friends on any campus, but I'd call it socially toned down.
CMU (at least CS and ECE) has a decidedly non-Windows bias, which is quite refreshing if you like working on UNIX systems. This takes root in a number of issues (Microsoft hiring a number of professors away, political issues, etc).
CMU is notable for a lot of different research. I'd say that their computer vision stuff is extremely prominent, as is their robotics works. There are some good language people there. Speech synthesis and recognition is big. The philosophy department has a strong AI/symbolic logic slant, which can be very good if you're into that, and bad if you like classical philosophy. They have networking work, but I don't see the network folks being as prominent as at some other universities. There (at least a while ago) was a significant project working on ad-hoc wireless networking. This is a pretty incomplete list. If you take CS up at CMU, be *sure* to take Professor Steven Rudich's Great Ideas In Computer Science class. It is, without compare, the finest class I've ever taken. It gives your brain a *throrough* workout, is a huge amount of fun, and is inspiring as all hell. Prof. Rudich also gives great assignments -- basically, he gives all the information required to figure some past significant idea in computer science out, then gives you the problem as an assignment. It feels *great* when you do it. I wish to God that more profs gave assignments like this. I and other people have even gone back to sit in on lectures he's given for classes we've already taken.
CMU has awful parking. A car will cause you a good deal of grief. Even in university terms, CMU has bad parking.
CMU is in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh's average age is extremely high (expecially given the number of universities in the thing). There are a *lot* of old people there. This means that the city shuts down quite early. 24 hour grocery stores and similar are not common. On the other hand, Pittsburgh also has phenomenal
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