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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?
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.
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
May we never see th