How Important is a Well-Known CS Degree?

syynnapse asks: "I've been interested in computer science since my mother taught me how to program in QBASIC when I was eleven, and I've wanted to be a developer ever since I learned C++ in AP Computer Science while in high-school. Now I'm in my sophomore year of college studying CS at a state university that isn't particularly known for its CS program, but I'm quite happy and personally think I'm learning plenty. My father thinks otherwise, and the deadline for transferring successfully is approaching quickly. What chance do I have in the real world with a not-so-prestigious degree? Am I likely to be learning what's important? Am I looking at a series of awful jobs if I don't transfer?"

Comments

Experience is key...

[danielrm26]

I honestly don't think it matters much. I imagine there are a few organizations that it does matter to, but I think those are few and far between.

The most important thing in the market today is experience. Go look on Monster or any of the other sites right now, and you'll see one phrase quite a bit - ...or equivalent experience.

In other words, a degree is a bonus now rather than a prerequisite if you have talent and experience. If you have no experience and no big certifications, then a degree is something (and perhaps the degree from a bigger school could help a little), but the jobs available to you in this boat are not all that appealing for the most part anyway.

The great jobs go to those with solid experience, and for those people (and the people hiring them), the degree they have is considered decoration rather than the meat of the resume.

Perhaps this is different in the development field, but I doubt it; I'm coming from the infosec side of things and I imagine things are much the same for programmers.

In short, degrees and certifications are "get you in the door"-oriented credentials; the big jobs rarely go this breed of applicant.

Re:Experience is key...

[wass]

If the application money and time is not too much of a problem, then I would suggest applying for transfer, just to see what happens. If you get in, then you can consider your options further. If you don't get in, well at least you won't wonder about it for the rest of your life.

Once accepted, then consider the choices. The school will play some minor effect, for example having MIT on your resume will get your future employers/grad school's attention slightly more. However no worthwhile company or graduate school would put too much emphasis on the school alone. Employers and admissions groups are well aware that the best schools can easily graduate idiots, and smaller schools can easily graduate geniuses.

Really it depends on how well you do in your environment. If you work reasonably hard at a smaller school, you will stand out like a big fish in a little pond. And, if you do research work for some professors or groups (which I highly recommend), then at your chances are much higher that you can impress them enough for very personal letters of recommendation. From what I hear the letters of recommendation are typically the most important factor for future applicants to either companies or grad schools.

If you transfer to a big school, say MIT, then it's a different ballgame. You will certainly have a wider array of course offerings and research projects, and will have peers who will challenge you more. However you will also find it much more difficult to rise above the radar. The general body of student talent will be greater, and it's easier to fall under the noise floor, so to speak.

Beyond this it's hard to decide what to do without carefully looking at the details. I've seen situations that favor both sides. For example, I knew a guy that had a very good GPA in EE at a small school, and had the opportunity to transfer to a different place. His EE classes weren't very intensive, so his theory knowledge won't be as good. I was hoping he would transfer, because he had a good opportunity to do so. However, if his research went well enough, it might not matter too much.

On the flip side I've seen a few undergrads from schools with small physics departments do amazingly well. They would do research with a professor, do it really well, and then get into a top-tier school. Usually a professor at a small school will know many colleagues at the top-tier schools, and can easily pass a personal reference directly to them.

For companies instead of school, I know less of the hiring practice. School will probably play some factor, but they're more interested in knowing that you can get the job done than which school you went to. If you have good letters of recommendation to this end, you'll be fine.

Re:Experience is key...

[severoon]

It's not that you'll get a better or worse education. It's that you'll get a better or worse personal network. That's all it is.

I graduated from a prestigious university (not necessarily known for CS, in the spirit of full disclosure, but in the top 10 most presigious US News & World Report) with a CS degree, and I can tell you that most people I went to school with do no better or worse than anyone else simply by relying on the prestige of their degree. The people who do well are those who regularly play a role in alumni activities and contribute to the alumni social network. And, for whatever reason, the more prestigious the institution the more active the alumni are about helping each other out.

Have I personally gotten jobs through people I know/knew through university? Yes. Have others I know? Yes. If I didn't lift a finger to keep in contact with that network, would it help me at all to have my degree simply on my resume? Marginally, it might help me get my foot in the door, but the interview is the proving ground. Don't pass that, and it won't matter if you have letters from Caltech, MIT, and Carnegie-Mellon.

I have hired hundreds of people....

[ChiGodOfKarma]

I have staffed up quite a few R & D departments in my years and I can honestly say that a degree only means something on the 1st job you get when you have no experience. After the 1st job its all the relevant experience sections on the resume that gets them an interview. I am usually more interested in the actual interview and the answers to the technical questions than I am with the resume itself. In fact the best programmers I have met either didn't graduate, or didn't take software engineering is school at all. I am a Human Machine Interface and Design major I have been programming, designing UI's, and managing programmers of over 10 years now. I taught myself to program on my C64 as a kid in the 80's, and read an Amiga book on C in 1985. I have been programming daily ever since, and will usually hire a motivated self taught guy like myself over a 4 year degree if the interview shows him to be more knowledgeable.

Re:I doesn't matter in 99% of the cases.

[Keebler71]

Excellent points. Adding to what you said, I would say that a reputable program will help you get into graduate school if your plan is to transition directly from undergrad to graduate. However if you plan on getting an undergrad, entering the workforce for a few years and heading back to graduate school, I would say that the your real-world experience would matter much more than where you earned your undergrad -particularly if you really made a name for yourself in your job. I don't recommend taking too much time off from school however, as it is very difficult to walk away from a certain standard of living and go back to being a student.

Re:Oft heard, but bullshit: Experience is key...

[badmammajamma]

I disagree completely. I have yet to be involved with an interview where the degree was a deciding factor for anyone and I've been in this business for 16 years. It ALWAYS comes down to experience and how well you do on the technical interview. People underestimate technical interviews. Here's how the decision is typically made in my experience:

60% Experience (this is what gets you in the door)
39% Interview (this is what gets you hired)
1% Piece of paper

Nobody puts weight on the paper because everyone knows that schools do not prepare programmers for the real world.

About the only exception I could see to the 1% rule is if you come from a particularly prestigious institution like MIT, CalTech, etc. That said, people who come from institutions like that usually do very well in the interview because they are ultra-geeks. In any event, since the percentage of the population coming from those places is extremely small, it's not really a factor.

Re:Two words for ya...

[eln]

Hi,

Your resume is ugly and difficult to read. Please, choose a different font, and format it better. Also, check the language flow, and ditch the scale of 1-10 stuff.

Also, you have tense problems. Some things use past tense, others use present. For ease of reading, it's best to use past tense in all job descriptions, including your current job.

Also, you have typos (empahses in last segment, possibly others). PLEASE proofread your resume. Nothing kills your chances faster than careless mistakes.

It's also not immediately clear if you have been working as an independent contractor all this time. Without that little tidbit of information, you look like a serial job-hopper.

Your opening paragraph reads like a recommendation letter from someone else. Show, don't tell. Don't tell me you're a great team leader, give me examples of when and how you were a great team leader. Don't tell me you can make tough decisions, give me an example of when you did so, and why your decision was the best one.

Hope this helps!

M.I.T.

[peter303]

It seems like most of my classmates I've kept in touch with are software engineers, yet none of us majored in computer science. We have a philosopher, linguist, biologist and geologist among us. The dot.com boom, bust, and outsourcing fad seemed to pass us by.

I took some "trendy" courses in the business school (Course XV) and core theory courses (Course VI-1). The former long became obsolete, while the latter are still useful.

I have an Ivy League degree

[mrklin]

I can confirm that having a degree from a prestigious school can definitely open doors for you. This comes from the brand recognition and the networking system i.e. graduate from one Ivy League school and you will be lumped in with alumni the other six Ivy League schools and their equivalents like Stanford, MIT, CalTech, etc.

However, once that door is opened, the rest is up to you. That is, 1) your work experience, 2) the rate you adapt and learn, and 3) your attitude and personality.

I am in a Fortune 500 internet company (market cap = US$50B) and everything I learned about technology (SQL, OLAP, datawarehousing) I learned on the job.

Caveat: I am not a programmer and my degree is a BS in chemisty and Asian Studies.

Re:Oft heard, but bullshit: Experience is key...

[ph1ll]

I'm hiring right now. My education check-list is (roughly in order):

1. A CS degree from a good University
2. A CS degree
3. A science degree from a good University
4. A science degree
5. A good semi-technical degree from a good University

(Liberal arts grads can go blow).

These are not hard and fast rules but the reason I'm being so stringent is that there are still lots of monkeys out there who think they can code (you would not believe the number of "Java programmers" I've interviewed who can't write an equals method). I don't have time to interview everybody. So, a good CS degree at least suggests the candidate has some formal training in analytical thinking and weeds out those who jumped on the dot-com gravy train in the late nineties.

[BTW, I don't have a CS degree but a good physics degree from a good University. Despite being in the industry for nearly 10 years, I sometimes wish I had that CS degree...]

It depends...

[gillbates]

On what you want to do.

• If you're content to make a career out maintaining legacy code (COBOL, etc...), then just about any university will do, but:
• If you'd like to do anything interesting - applications, operating systems, etc - you definitely need to pay attention to the school, because:
• Your first job is determined largely by where you went to school. Some firms only recruit from one school, and if you aren't an alumni, you can forget being hired by them straight out of school.
• Your first job also determines, to a large degree, your career path.
• Regardless of how smart you actually are, you will acquire the reputation of your parent school - for instance, if it has a reputation for producing good COBOL programmers, you'll have companies that use COBOL beating a path to your door while the ones doing software development won't even bother looking at your resume.

Just a little side note: I went to a university known for having a good business and data processing curriculum. I took my first job writing in an obscure language for outdated mainframes. After about 2 years, I thought I'd look for a job doing what I really wanted to do, and the conversations with recruiters usually went like this:

Me: I'd like to start working as a game developer/engineer/etc...

Recruiter: Well, I see you've got many skills listed on your resume. But, what experience do you have as a developer/engineer/etc...?

Me: (sheepishly) Well, none - but it's something I'd really like to do. I've done some work on my own and read up on the subject quite a bit.

Recruiter: Well, that's nice and all, but my clients are going to want someone with solid experience... Would you be willing to take a job writing in COBOL instead?

You see, my mistake was twofold:

1. I didn't go to the right school, which meant that I had to:
2. Take a job doing something I really wasn't crazy about doing. Which led to people thinking of me as a "COBOL programmer" instead of a "Games Developer".

The perception problem is very real. If you stay at a lackluster school, you will neither get a good education, nor have a good career - at least not without a great deal of effort. Having a few years in an given technology tends to pigeon-hole your career prospects, and you might find yourself unable to find a position doing what you want to do if you don't get in with a good company right after graduation.

Re:Oft heard, but bullshit: Experience is key...

[RoundTop-VJAS]

The general rule of thumb is this:

The school you go to....

• undergraduate - doesn't matter .
• graduate - matters, especially for an MBA
• PhD - is everything

Hope that matters.

Experience vs. Education in the dot-bomb era

[irritating environme]

What have we learned from the real world but that the truth between two options is the grey compromise?

Experience will trump education on a job-by-job interview, but consider what happened in the post-dot com boom, you NEEDED a CS degree. They wouldn't even consider you otherwise, unless you had a direct inside connection.

In times of plenty and demand for workers, education pales to the immediate need for experience, because they can always hire someone else if you don't fully pan out.

In times of lean, when companies need good people to fill their positions, they can be pickier, and you'll be interviewing against people with equivalent experience, and they will be more thorough with the evaluation. That's when education comes into play.

As a CS major (bachelor's only, not an ivory-tower PhD) who has dealt with many a non-CS IT worker, the difference in ability between those who took Computer Architecture, Algoritms, and Operating Systems versus those who just learned C or C++ on the job or in a night class is huge. Unfortunately, it's difficult to communicate on a resume, but on an actual ability standpoint, it will resonate, and that will build you a local network of people that respect you, and that will get you future jobs.