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Scholarships From FOSS Organizations?
Athaulf writes "I'm a high school kid with big dreams of prestigious technology schools like MIT or Cal-Tech. The problem is, my upper-middle class family had more down to Earth plans for me and my college choices (about $30,000/year more down to Earth, actually), so financial aid and college savings won't come anywhere near MIT's price tag. However, I've been programming in C for a while now, and might release a GPL'd Linux app soon. With this self-taught programming experience, academic merit, and plenty of extra curricular activities, are there any FOSS supporting organizations who might grant me a scholarship for my contributions? Do companies like Google or Red-Hat offer scholarships to big name schools in return for a few years of work after college?"
You could fiddle with some BSD and enjoy the cheaper things in life.
no
Do a trade instead. you'll make more money and have more free time, AND you'll get paid to learn. I wish i had of done an electrical tade out of high school. i'd be on 2x the money now, not only that it would have tied in well with computers and electronics anyway.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
They'll pay your tuition... then they'll send you someplace where people shoot at you.
Hmmmmm... maybe join the Canadian Army instead.
Well, programming skills aside, when your English skills are at a level such that you refer to organizations as "who", the answer is NO. You do not possess the appropriate skills to get into a top-notch University.
According to their website, MIT's tuition is 35K/yr + 10k in housing. If your parents will foot 30k, that's only 15k year you need to pay. I'd say that's a good deal for an education that'll keep paying you after you graduate.
If you think that's too much, go to a good community college for the first two years, transfer, and still get that MIT degree. The introductory classes are generally taught better at some of these places.
Or, most states schools have great programs, diverse people, and provide excellent education.
And no, counting cards will not pay your tuition.
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
Or you could, you know, get a *job* and pay your own way. Like everyone else.
The problem is, my upper-middle class family had more down to Earth plans for me and my college choices (about $30,000/year more down to Earth, actually), so financial aid and college savings won't come anywhere near MIT's price tag.
MIT's website says financial aid is guaranteed for admitted students.
http://web.mit.edu/sfs/financial_aid/mitgo_undergrad.html
I suppose I don't have an answer to the original question, but get their financial aid folks on the horn and see what they have in the way of work study, internships, etc. Whatever you got back on your FAFSA probably isn't the last word in the matter.
If you go to say, Sweden, there will be no tuition fees. You have two decent Unis there: The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and the Chalmers Institute of Technology in Gothenburg. You may also check out DTU in Denmark and the unis in Aachen and Dresden (Germany).
In a lot of European states you can get away with 0 in tuition fees or a very moderate fee of a 1000 per year. For $30k / year you can live a very comfortable life as a student in Europe.
Also, having studied abroad is something that would look very good on your CV.
MIT is outrageously expensive, but will have no effect in determining to an employer that your a better candidate than someone at any other 4-year accredited university. But you don't want to be just a guy with a degree. You want to be a guy with an MIT degree.
I'm not sure what CS guys get at MIT that they won't be eligible to find at any other college. But if you work your ass of at any other college, with the grades and extras to prove it, I don't see how it matters.
Unless of course you just want to get the "MIT" label for the brand name.
Unfortunately, with the current state of educational funding, finding an outside scholarship wouldn't help you at a school like this.
Why's that? Because they offset their grant/scholarship money to what you bring to the table. If you get a 10k/year scholarship, guess what? Your grant money drops by 10k/year.
It's done in the name of fairness, but it's not perfect. Your best bet is to get a merit-based scholarship. And to keep in mind that lots of brilliant people go to schools that aren't MIT, Harvard, or Caltech.
Get some (low interest) loans. If a degree from a prestigious university is worth that much to you and you didn't get the scholarships - then pay for it.
Or - how about you contact the actual FOSS organizations?
Now get off the lawn I would have had if my parents had the cash to pay for my schooling. Young whippersnappers.
... you'd already released some code. One of the really cool things about code versioning systems is that you can look back over how your project has developed, and see how old bits of code are. This gives you a useful-but-scary indication of how much your programming is improving, the more you do it ;-)
It's easy to get your Free software out there. It would probably look better if you had something you could show prospective sponsors, and this is where the versioning comes in. If you've got a horking great Subversion repository full of your code, with maybe a few checkins a day, then it shows the process by which you work. It's like showing your working on a maths problem - if you get the answer right but don't show your working, you won't get full marks. If you show your working and get the answer wrong, quite often you'll get fairly good marks anyway if the working is right but the mistake was a little arithmetical slip.
So in short, show them the code. And let us know if it gets you into college.
It is not the end of the world to finance your education through loans. I am currently in my last year at a $40,000/yr private school. My parents are not contributing financially to my education in any way. Anything I cannot pay for, or get scholarships for, I am paid for with loans. Yes, you will have to pay them back. But don't let your current finances limit your option. Go to the best school you can.
Do you really think that anyone who has to "Ask Slasdot" this question could get into MIT?
Be a problem-solver, dude. That's what they're looking for at MIT and every company where you'll ever seek a job, with or without a degree.
College is over-rated and degrees are mostly worthless these days. You've got the right idea - MIT is an exception. If I could get in there and afford to go, I might actually reconsider skipping college altogether. But I doubt I would qualify at MIT and I can't afford the time because I'm busy running two IT businesses and developing a third.
Incidentally, much of what is running my current businesses I learned, indirectly, from MIT. You do know that MIT education is available online for free, right? Are you looking for the paper or the knowledge?
Show some initiative and be a leader. If you're as confident as you're trying to make out, skip the classroom tripe. It'll mostly just slow you down.
Honestly, where you go to school doesn't matter. Your GPA doesn't matter. They may help you get an interview, but once you have an interview they're almost totally irrelevant; it's up to you to demonstrate that you know your stuff and are qualified for the position.
Even if there are programs such as this, I wouldn't go for them. Things can change a lot between starting school and finishing, and you never really know where you will wind up. If you are having trouble paying for the school that you are able to get into, then you should consider what it is you want to go to those schools for. If you are good enough, apply for a school as Early Decision, and many schools will find a way to make it possible for you to attend. If you aren't good enough to get the scholarships at the top schools on your list, perhaps consider a smaller school that would give you what you need to attend, or perhaps a state school, depending on where you live. Much of college is what you make of it, it isn't just the school. Just like other posters said, you might want to really re-consider why you want to go to those schools.
Wow, I'm somewhat appalled by the acerbic replies to this post. There's a post or two saying that education doesn't get you anything, and while I tend to agree because college didn't work for me, that's no reason to tell someone not to go. I spent 6 years in crappy jobs that I probably wouldn't have had to endure had I gone to Insert College Here instead of the school of hard knocks. Then there's the dedication factor. Many employers want to see a 4 year degree simply because it shows that 4 Year Degree kid had enough drive and dedication to see it through. As for MIT vs. another college... If I were a hiring manager and all other things were equal (skills, interview prowess, etc) I would almost definitely hire the person who had a degree from a well known, highly respected school over Generic University. NOTHING beats experience, but don't knock a kid for trying to "do it right."
"You get out of an education what you put into it; if there's something you really want to learn, you'll pick it up on your own, no matter if you're at MIT or at a state university."
Back when I was an undergraduate, my thesis adviser mentioned that to me when I said that I wanted to apply to MIT. At first, I thought that he, having finished his PhD at an Ivy League institution, was somewhat out-of-touch; but, it turned out that he was right. You can learn, and do, just as much, if not more, at the right institution versus some highly ranked university, like Stanford or MIT. While the allure of a big-name degree might be appealing, walking out knowing that you accomplished what you wanted to, had plenty of fun, and are debt-free, I think, is the best feeling.
After all, there are always MIT post-doc positions.
Every college has an entire office dedicated to helping you find money to go there, and the more prestigious a college is, the more money they have to throw at their students in financial aid. Get into a really good school and you'll be able to afford it.
And no, aside from the army nobody's going to give you money to go to college on the condition that you work for them when you get out. That's just silly.
Game... blouses.
Would be to work for a few years BEFORE college, save the money and THEN apply for an ivy league school. I guess these days it's hard to get a job without any degree at all unless you have a friend at a small company. However a programming degree can be easily obtained at a state university for very little money for state residents or even at a community college. Any job you get after that will likely pay way more than $30 per year.
While in college, remember to take a basic history class and understand how a pesky amendment to US constitution prohibits Google from forcing you to work for then in exchange for a scholarship.
and they exist for a reason. I'm at RPI(CS), tuition is ~35 a year and they give me about half in scholarship. I don't know how MIT does it, but it seems like here you either get full, half or nothing. The rest you have to make up in loans. If a top tech school education is what you desire, then you are going to be looking at loans. In reality you'll get more or less the same education anywhere you go, but if you want the name brand sticker then you're going to have to pay for it. Why would you go to MIT anyway? We have the "world's most powerful university-based supercomputing center", join us on the dark side. Seriously though, when I was younger and had no idea what I wanted to do for school I thought MIT at first too. I had never even heard of RPI, but it turned out to be a pretty good move. Do some research. Everyone thinks MIT and CalTech at first, but other schools with the same reputation do exist, they just don't get much attention.
I'm not going to make a big call about Universities in the US, but the OPs question seems idiotic to me.
Your Tag is spot on - every idiot can publish a GPLd App on Sourceforge and feel like he is the next big programming superstar. That doesn't entitle you to a boatload of money, and heck 30k is already a lot of money. But thats not enough for you?
I grew up in a working class family. We weren't rich, but we weren't poor either - i learned that in order to get what you want, you have to do something for it. After 9 years of obligatory school i decided to start an apprenticeship instead of studying - in order to make my own money. That was 8 years ago, and i'm 24 now.
I now have a decent job (with it's up and downs) and most of the people who decided to study instead aren't done yet. I know several people that studied, but they don't have a better paid or more fulfilling job than i, they lack 8 years of experience that i have, etc.
I'm not saying that Studying is a stupid idea, but if one can't afford it, there are plenty of alternatives that will work just as well. Maybe one could get a job while studying (e.G. in the evenings) and make enough money that way to study at whatever place one wants to?
Other people that really wanted to study but couldn't decided to do an apprenticeship with a "Berufsmatur", which is sort of a combination. After that, work for one or two years and live cheap - that way you can get money on the side. After that, quit your job and study.
I've found that people that choose the last path (I'm not one of them, i just did an apprenticeship) usually have both the practical experience and the theoretical knowledge - while people like me with just an apprenticeship are much more heavily focused on practical experiences and people who just studied are absorbed into their nice little theory world.
The trick to universities is getting into them. Don't worry so much about Tuition and other costs until you know you will actually be applying those concerns. With schools like MIT, it seems, they are more willing to help prospective students financially due to the effort it takes to get accepted by them in the first place. Keep looking around for scholarships, and if nothing else, you can take out federal loans that you wont have to pay until after you graduated.
You on the other hand are a spoiled little bollix who has yet to learn that life isn't fair and you just have to make the best of your current situation.
Welcome to reality you pampered tart.
It actually kind of annoys me that people expect their parents to pay for college. Yeah, it'd be nice, but you expect all of the freedom of being an adult without any of the responsibility...
I went to Cornell and managed to pay the entire bill myself. I've got a quite a bit of student debt, but I've also got a really good job that's allowing for me to pay off my bills very quickly. Go to a good school, you get good opportunities afterwards (contrary to popular belief, name recognition goes a long way). Fill out your FAFSA, use the power of Google to find scholarships and fight for 'em, and whatever the government and really nice people don't give you, pull out in private loans (Sallie Mae, etc...). Heck, interest rates are basically at rock bottom right now, so you won't get hosed. Having a loans also helps motivate you, trust me. You're less likely to goof off (still have fun, but not blow off work), plus you get fiscally responsible pretty quickly (a lot faster than most of your classmates).
Anyway, stepping off of my soapbox of "pay for yourself," as it looks like thats you're trying to do, I don't think many (if any) company will pay for your education right now this moment. After you're in college for a year or two, however, some of these opportunities crop up, but I've seen them more in the financial sector than in tech. Get an internship or two and it'll help you immensely financially and get a job after college. If you're as good as you say you are, you should be able to find one freshman year- go to the career fair with a good resume AFTER meeting with your career services center to get it brushed up, and practice some interview skills (some say it doesn't matter, and it may not, but it will most definitely help you stand out from the crowd). There is ONE program that I know of that is what you're looking for, but it ain't FOSS-- look up the "Stokes Educational Scholarship Program" for the NSA. They will pay tuition and books, and give you summer internships in return for 1.5x your stay in college (4 years undergrad, 6 years NSA).
Might? By the time I finished high school, I had released at least 3 GPL'd programs that were entirely my own work, a 3-clause BSDL'd one, a couple of scripts dedicated to the public domain, and a several patches to existing free software. Nobody sent me to an ivy-league school.
You're going to have to do better than "I might release a GPL'd app someday" if you want to convince the people here that you're the unique snowflake you claim to be. And remember: even if you're brilliant, why should anyone put you through school? What's the payoff for them?
http://outcampaign.org/
MIT to be tuition-free for families earning less than $75,000 a year: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/tuition-0307.html
The only professions I'd say you really need to worry about undergraduate loans is medicine and law (especially medicine). Why? Because it's going to take forever to get a decent paycheck to payoff all of those loans. Other than that, stick it out, you'll make it through.
1. My parents are NOT contributing $30K/year to my education, they've saved $10K/year for a public school. The $30,000 comes from the fact that MIT is about $40K-$45K ($40K-$10K=$30K) 2. My brother could never find financial aid, and scholarships only go so far. 3. My cousin was accepted to MIT but couldn't find enough money. 4. I'm not saying that I haven't considered public schools; I simply much prefer a school that I'm not in the top 1% of math SAT scores. If that sounds arrogant I apologize, but I'm just tired of going to schools like my high school that don't have a *single* person (student or otherwise) who knows C. 5. I want to go to MIT because I think that I can learn something about programming from other students and teachers (the computer programming class is taught with JavaScript and teachers certified by a one day course) for the first time in my life. 6. Yes, Mr. Troll, I'd say McDonalds could be called work. 7. Yes, I was about to call the MIT admissions office, but my mother brought up the argument "don't even try, we won't have the money for that", hence this ask slashdot article. 8. I want to find scholarships from FOSS organizations because I want to support the community and working for a FOSS company would be a dream come true. I love Linux and free software, and would be proud to put some time into the cause. 9. I hate to respond to my own article, but I felt like I needed to clear up a few things.
This was exactly what I thought when I first read the question. Anyone can GPL code they've written regardless of the usefulness or amount of effort put into it; it's a license, not a qualifier in any sort. I've written dozens of applications and scripts in my free time, as many of us here have, and it doesn't really entitle us to anything.
We don't write code to get things in return (unless you're working for a company), such as scholarships; we write code to get things done and fill a niche (especially if you're working for a company).
College is expensive, yes. But only if you don't know how it works. First of all there is the FAFSA plan which basically is a federal program where colleges automatically adjust your tuition and aid based on your ability to pay. Then you have loans, grants, aid and etc that can greatly reduce the amount of money required to attend. The only reason not to go to college is that you are stupid. The government/some charity will pay for you to go if you are at least half-way competent. You may be in debt, but hey if you have a degree from MIT you should be able to make that up. If you are actually as smart as your post makes you seem, you should be looking at a large portion of your tuition that is paid for (I wasn't 'smart' but I was able to get my entire state school undergrad tuition paid for - that left me able to go to law school on the 'rents dime. Very nice.) Basically what happens with major schools is as long as you are willing to fill out the proper paperwork you pay less or you go completely on the gov't's dime. I am about to graduate with a degree in Software development (not cs) from a top 10 school, and a law degree from a t1 law school and my total amount out of pocket spent (by the 'rents) will be under 100k for 7+ years. Play the system, work the angles you can do it. Do NOT let the sticker shock detour you form going to the best school possible. Don't go to community college. If you must, take Pell grants and other federal loans to go to a 4-year true college. In the end you will have a better education (at least to employers) that is more marketable and serves you better in the long run. In this day in age there is no reason not to go to a full 4-year college in any discipline (save culinary). Your student-loans can be paid off in full much quicker than you think as long as you don't take 50k a year to live like a fat cat.
All of the top U.S. schools offer fantastic financial assistance. First of all, they all practice need-blind admissions - meaning that they don't care how much money you have when deciding if you should be admitted. Once you're admitted, they'll send you a financial package, based on the information they got from your FAFSA and other forms. Unless your parents make a million dollars a year, you're almost certainly going to get a small grant (i.e. free money) and some loans.
If the total remaining amount you and your parents are supposed to pay is still to high, no problem - that's just their initial offer. They will negotiate - the job of the financial aid office is to make it so that you can attend. Let them know how much your parents are willing to spend, and see what they can do for you. If you're lucky, they will find some grants and scholarships to cover more of the difference, and they will definitely offer more loans. Not crappy loans like a car loan or credit card - college loans often have no interest while you're in school, and very low interest rates after that.
And trust me, if you're going into software engineering, some loans are no big deal. You'll get a nice salary and pay them off in a few years, and it will all be worth it.
One thing, though - the financial offer you'll get will vary dramatically from school to school. Virtually all good schools have great financial aid programs that can negotiate with you - but they all value different things and have different rules. Your best bet is to apply and get accepted to a lot of great schools - MIT, Caltech, CMU, Harvard, Yale, UTexas, UIUC, Stanford, Berkeley, Harvey Mudd - and then pick one of the ones with the best financial offer for you.
FOSSing is excellent, and so is finding out something about the host of non-coding skills and challenges that go with it. Often this goes well with in-depth and practical knowledge of some entirely different field; so whatever you do do not focus on coding - I should say that at your age you should have at least two other strings to your bow and give them equal opportunity to flourish.
Sadly there is a lack of opportunity for autodidacts to get the nourishment they need and network that brings mutual success. Some of us are working on solutions to bring learning (and ownership of learning) to the ordinary man on the back of the emerging FOSS revolution.
Do companies like Google or Red-Hat offer scholarships to big name schools in return for a few years of work after college?
You might see this from places that don't get tons of resumes on a daily basis. Google does have some scholarships (I know of at least the Anita Borg scholarship, but that only applies to women I believe), but I doubt highly that any of them come with job offers attached. For something like that you might need to look at government agencies, which I know sometimes have scholarships that pay for school but require work after graduation.
This is a highly polarized topic. I must say, I'm a little surprised that anyone here is downplaying the importance of MIT vs. a less prestigious school (or even no college at all). I'll give you my two cents. I'm 15+ years in the industry (INFOSEC mostly), deep into 6 figures now, was making $80k at 26 years of age. I dropped out of school after a year and a half. I'm slowly finishing my degree, but on my terms and someone else's dime. If someone wants to see the 'piece of paper', they'll foot the bill. Period. My year and a half in school (a prestigious private institution) was a farce. I didn't leave due to too much partying or lack of funds. On the contrary, I had a decent job outside of school that allowed me to pay the exorbitant tuition. I left because the cost/benefit analysis said to. Sorry, but in the end it really is just a piece of paper. The meat of what you'll do for a living is going to be learned in the classroom of experience. Would I be regarded more highly if I had a degree from MIT? Of course! I'm not going to kid you; MIT would have never accepted me. On the flip side, would I be making any more than I am now if I had graduated from MIT, Yale, etc? No way. I work with folks who did in fact graduate from such institutions and where there is a difference in salary, they have some catching up to do. You will be happy if you make a living doing what you love. If you're intelligent and good (very good) at what you love and that 'thing' you do is valuable in the marketplace...then you'll make a very good living; MIT diploma or no. Save your money. If you're really as good as you think you are (so good that a company like Google should want to invest six figures into you for the promise that your awesomeness will come work for them (uhhhhh...yeah)) then you'll have no problems. Get the quickest degree you can from an accredited institution then get to the real learning. The exception to all this would be if your goal is to go into research...in which case you can ignore all of my advice. Just my two cents...many others will disagree whole heartedly.
Believe it or not, most of the really good scholarships come from the school itself. This is in general -- I don't know for sure about MIT or CalTech in particular -- but as a rule if the school decides they want you to attend their school, they will find a way to make it possible for you.
Of course, getting a high-profile school like MIT to decide they want you bad enough to offer you scholarships could take some doing.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Education is NOTHING. Start thinking about what you want to do and start doing it. No-one needs a degree from anywhere. Universities in US seem to be overpriced daycare centers for spoiled kids anyway.
Education is everything, it's the very fabric of our species. From living in caves to sending a probe outside of our solar system, education is what makes us who we are. I will agree that kids tend to go to university for the wrong reasons, whether it's for money, because they're expected to, or they do it to delay real life. Then again I'm a senior at university and I've come to understand what university really is. It's not a place which teaches you some skill set, it's a place which teaches you how to teach yourself. It focuses your interests and allows you to pursue them yourself. If you go to university and do the homework, finish the projects, pass classes, and that's it then you've missed the point. You'll learn a lot from your classes don't get me wrong, but you'll spend a lot of time learning on your own.
To the GP, if you're passionate about programming then you may enjoy university. I myself am a double major, math and computer science. I will admit my true passion is in math though. I tend to buy many books in mathematics to learn on my own time in much the same way that many of my computer science peers write programs for fun in their own time. You already program in your free time, so perhaps you've already got what it takes. But you don't have to go to MIT or CalTech for this, in fact I'd advise against it for an undergraduate degree. Many of your basic classes can be fulfilled by AP credit or in community college. After you're done with that go to a good state university to complete your degree. If you decide to go on for a masters or PhD then you can start looking at the schools like MIT and CalTech depending on your specific interests. I hope that helps.
Oh my god give me a fucking break. The kid wants to find out of there are options to help him go to the college he wants to go to, and you are jumping down his throat because you don't think he's going to be earning his chops like you did? Sounds like 'sour grapes' to me. M.I.T. is a very good computer science institution, maybe the kid will end up being one of the great researchers of the 21st century and contribute to the field.
Why don't you just answer his question instead of spouting off about how much better your way of doing things is? What, you don't have an answer to his question because instead of going to a good school you fucked around with a "Berufsmatur" instead? Well then shut the fuck up.
Most of the prestigious schools are need-blind, and admit regardless of what you can afford. This may seem like a ticket to a mortgage in loans, but it's actually not. Where I went to school, most of the financial aid came in the form of grants from the college endowment, which students were eligible for simply by virtue of being admitted. One of my classmates' mothers was a teacher, and her dad was unemployed. Her parents paid for her room and board, and that was it. The school covered the other $30,000 each year. For me, it was no small amount, either. My parents were convinced that their income level wouldn't qualify me for financial aid until finally, in my senior year, my dad sucked it up and filled out the forms. The result was $11,000 for the year in grants (and some wounded yuppie pride). It's part of the joy of having an endowment well in excess of $1 billion- if you can get in, a lot of the good schools really will help foot the bill. Yes, you might have loans (I came out with all of $4,000 of student loans), but not in an amount comparable to a house. To be fair, $30,000 is a lot, and should cover most of your costs. Unless your last name is Gates and you live in Washington, you're probably eligible for more grant-based financial aid than your middle-class parents might like to think. The only other advice I would have is to also apply to schools that don't have the same general name recognition, but do have excellent departments in the field you'd like to study. If you don't get into the big name schools, you'll probably be offered a full ride or close to it at one of the others. If the department is genuinely that good, people hiring in that field will know of it, and that counts for heck of a lot when you first experience the joys of rent and utilities.
It ain't the degree, it's what you can do with it.
What you can do and are willing to do.
But the advice to go ahead and try for admission to MIT (or insert college of choice) is good. If you really want to go to such a college. Big name schools also help getting good pay out of college, but if you can't make it worth it to your employer, well, every ride has an end.
And, as far as I'm concerned, critical thinking has killed itself. The one thing they don't teach you at college is to think critically about critical thinking.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
education is everything, but uni doesn't have a patent or any other kind of monopoly on it.
Lots of kinds of education you simply can't get at uni.
But, yeah, if he's motivated to go to school now, best to do it now and get it over with. And, as someone else said, he shouldn't worry about the money when he applies. If he's good enough to get the admission, he should go talk to the profs, counselors, and the financial aid department. Paths may open up, especially if his project is any good. MIT is definitely one place that will recognize open source projects, if they're good.
But if it doesn't work out, he should be willing to be glad he tried and move on. Go to a school he can afford, or go to the school of hard knocks.
Work is its own reward.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
I wish I had mod points to mod you up, exactly what I was going to say.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
Scholarships are often from people who want a monopoly on your time.
FOSS is not yet that kind of place.
In fact, much of the FOSS world recognizes product more than certificates and diplomas, anyway.
But, go to the big name companies involved and ask. High school counsellors should be able to tell you how to approach companies about scholarships.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
MIT and Caltech are two insanely hard places to get into. Not because their admissions standards are stringent (they are, but I am assuming you're capable), but they are also arbitrary. I know extremely brilliant kids who've been rejected and positively mediocre ones being accepted. No admissions process is perfect and assuming you've got what it takes, you still have about a 1 in 3 chance of being rejected both places.
More importantly, some other programs that I'd recommend for a CS major would be
- CMU (great reputation - probably the best rep for CS)
- Harvard, Berkeley, Princeton (good math program = good CS program)
- Georgia Tech (allows specialization in your undergrad)
- Stanford, Berkeley (California = cool internships)
My undergrad degree is from Georgia Tech and no college in the top 10 beats it for sheer value for money (this was important to me since I didn't qualify for financial aid at most places). It's easy to get into, but hard to get out of unscathed because most of the weeding out takes place in college not during the admissions process. If you do well in your undergrad here, you have an excellent shot at getting into the schools you mentioned for grad school since kids you play the violin with their left nut can't get into good grad programs while they definitely trump you during the undergrad admissions process.
If you are good enough, you are bound to go to one of the top 10 universities in your field. And you will not regret doing so even if it doesn't carry the brand value of MIT. Once you are in these universities, it becomes easy to get into your top choice school for grad school which is what really counts if you want a good education.
If, on the other hand, all you want is to make bucketloads of money and brag to your family and friends, you won't make it far at any of these top institutions.
HTH
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
Meanwhile in several countries across Europe (specially such as Germany, and Switzerland) the tuition are dead cheap and the access to universities isn't limited.
In Switzerland, for example, tuition is around 1k/yr (unless you also work somewhat in the university, in which case the tuition is even lower), in most place swiss student only have to apply to start a bachelor, and foreign students can apply as long as they pass exams to prove that they have obtain the necessary equivalent knowledge in their own countries.
Given that the poster still has quite good budget (coming from a middle-upper class family), I would strong recommend to have a look at an european university. (To give gain a Swiss example EPFL and ETHZ are renown place which have careers in the field that the poster is looking at).
And once the poster gets a bachelor or a master degree there, it could be easier to move back to the USA for a master, resp. a PhD degree.
The difference with the "community college+transfer" that the parent propose is the opportunity to travel a bit and discover some part of the European cultures. (And also, they have good beers in Germany !)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
In Europe, some of the institutions that are easily on par with MIT are free (or as good as) ! I don't have to list them, you can just look them up in the various results lists.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Like you, I was of humble means. I went to graduate school at a respectable state university rather than in the Ivy League. When I graduated with my degree (in economics), however, I secured a position at an elite consulting group populated almost exclusively with University of Chicago graduates, the 2nd ranked economics department in the world, an unprecedented opportunity.
So although I can only offer my own experience, I worked in an office full of graduates from a top-ranked university and my perspective on the relative merits of a public vs. Ivy League education comes from firsthand experience.
From a practical perspective, my impression is that although the average level of capability of a University of Chicago graduate student would certainly be above that of someone from a lower-ranked school, the capabilities of the top students are relatively comparable. When I first started with the firm, I was somewhat intimidated by the fact that I did not come with a pedigree, but by the time I left, I was a top-billing consultant. So I don't think your education or ability level will suffer if you don't go to MIT or some other prestigious school.
However, the opportunities available to those who attend a school with a pedigree far exceed the opportunities available to the commoners. The networking opportunities are tremendous, and when you come from a top institution, people just assume you must be brilliant. When you come from a public school, you have to prove that you're brilliant. Moreover, there is a self-perpetuating cycle. More prestigious positions are filled by people from top-ranked universities, and when it is time for them to do the hiring, they likewise restrict their attention only to the top-ranked universities. The difference in terms of starting salaries due to factors that are wholly independent of your actual ability level make a huge difference to your marketability just after you graduate, and will probably have a large impact on your lifetime earnings.
So my advice to you, having seen what it's like on both sides of the tracks, would be to spend the extra money, incur debt, etc., and attend the more prestigious institution. You probably won't come away with better skills, but purely from the perspective of a lifetime earnings guesstimate, I would guesstimate the extra spending would be well worth it.
Hope this helps.
-- My choice of computing platform is a symbol of my individuality and belief in personal freedom.
I second your thought on Job Interview Skills. It is not as easy as it may seem. Alot of the difficulty, even when dealing with bigger companies, is with the interviewer. The best thing you can do is research the company you are applying for a job with. Know what they do. At least understand their vision and mission statements to a point you can demonstrate you read them. This gives you a better chance of having what Speech Classes refer to as "knowing your audience". It also lends credit to the idea you are actually interested in working for them. Employers are not just looking for the best, good interviewers have been trained to llok for the "best fit". In other words they are going to ask targeted questions that answer their biggest question, "Are you the right person for our company?". I actually only had a few interviews before finding my job on the way out of the Air Force, but i applied what I was taught the Transition Assistance Program (TAP). Also, part of knowing your audience would be to ask the person scheduling your interview what they would recommend to wear. Sometimes you can in fact over-dress. One reason I got my job is because I walked in wearing a suit that fit me properly. I did everything I could, i even carried a little leather portfolio with a copy of my resume in it, because they often like to see what you produced. It does not always turn out the same when submitted by using the company web-site. There is alot more I could talk about on here, but it would take a while to cover everything and alot of it really is common sense when you just stop, breath, and think about it a piece at a time.
Harvard, Yale and MIT have all come out with very strong financial incentives this year. Essentially free for families making $75,000 and large financial aid for others. I expect to hear more from other schools (think Stanford and Duke are now in the act, but I don't know their details) The big name schools end up actually cheaper than schools without such a large endowment, and in some cases cheaper than state schools. Even if you don't make these cuts, if there is one thing in life not to skimp on, it's your undergraduate education, since a huge fraction of your earning power is driven by this, especially in the first decade or so out of college. Student loans are essentially free of interest (interest rates at or less than inflation, and you can take the interest directly off your tax bill), and there are a ton of little grants around that you can gather to make things work. And your lifelong contacts/friends will be made in college.
Well, maybe instead of doing retarded, primitive generalizations and assumptions about the OP, trying to make the wisest man on the Earth out of yourself and being a rude asshole in the end (yes, I'm referring to #22827572 too), try communicating your thoughts in a more civilized and useful way? I'd expect someone so down-to-earth, wise and mature to know better how to argue in a polite manner. Using ad hominem "arguments" from the first sentence onwards could be a sign of everything but maturity and credibility. Oh, and if I were you, I'd be wary of not sounding like a "unique snowflake" myself, as you do. What makes you so exceptional and authoritative to issue one bold blanket statement after another about education, universities, young people and doing a living? All I see are some insults. Or am I wrong?
Oh, and I don't see how he expects everything on a platter - did he say somewhere "no, I'm not going to work at all" or "I want them to pay for everythin and be happy they did some good and expect nothing back" or something like that? Not that I see. I'd even go as far as saying, that asking questions is an absolute opposite of expecting everything on a platter. So where's the problem?
This is Slashdot. Common sense is futile. You will be modded down.
This kid has an interest in contributing to the OSS community, a dream of gaining higher education at a prestigious university, and the wherewithal to consider how to fund that education early on. What does he get? A bunch of comments about how he shouldn't go to MIT, how he isn't special, and how writing only one GPL'd application doesn't make him special. Way to foster interest in the OSS movement people. We're not exactly competing with Microsoft's scholarship opportunities (http://www.microsoft.com/college/ss_overview.mspx) with these sorts of comments.
Dude, I'm getting all hot thinking of you sitting in front of your pc and insulting kids online. You're such a hard and handsome down-to-earth guy...
Don't use his words anymore. Maybe if you spent a little less time ripping on education you might've found some words of your own to use.
Here is one significant quote from it:
Cultivate your ability to run fast while holding a ball. The US education system values this far more than academic ability, and prefers to educate people with such abilities rather than people who will spend all their time studying. If you can do anything along those lines, they'll teach you how to count for free.
I don't get it either. But then, I've never understood how the US education system works. I'm not all that convinced that it does.
The Swiss/Austrian way over apprenticeship and Berufsmatur is great, but - to my knowledge - pretty much only available around there.
[Quick info for outsiders about the western european education system: Nine year mandatory school (this is roughly equivalent to everything up to an U.S. high school). Then either Matura/Abitur (three years; leads up to university for another some three years to a bachelor's degree) or an apprenticeship. In the latter, you'll spend three to four years working for a company and earning some money. Also, you'll be going to school for one or two days a week (the CS path is four years with two days of school). During this time, the second day of school can be replaced (or added, if it'd only be one otherwise) by the Berufsmaturitaetsschule, leading up to the Berufsmatura. The apprenticeship will get you qualification papers for a real-world job, the voluntary Berufsmatura gets you into college after the apprenticeship.]
Working through your evenings is an option, but making $30k p.a. while studying full-time seems near impossible. At four hours each and every day including weekends that'd be an $20/hr job, a lot more than what a typical U.S. student job pays.
Back to you, OP: It's a tough decision. I'd recommend to try and contact the institutions you want to go to first. Then, look further for some grant money. Local/federal scholarships, that kind of stuff. If that won't lead to a result, ask some companies you know you might like. Propose a realistic, drawn out plan of what you intend to do, how it applies to them and how long you'd work for them after completing your studies.
If that won't help out, you could go with a student loan. Keep in mind though that $120k (30k/yr, 4 years for a bachelor's) is a metric fucking shitload of debt. I, for one, wouldn't want to be there after finishing college. I also wouldn't want to be tied to some company for x years, but that's up to you.
If all else fails, make an extensive list of all colleges you can find, ordered by how much you'd like to go there. Contact at leastthe top 20, ask for financing possibilities and so on. Keep in mind switching between different colleges is possible. Save some money in the three years leading up to graduation and study real hard, then switch to MIT and graduate there. You may lose some credits and time and you'll probably have to study really fucking hard to make the switch work, but it could very well be worth it.
As a last suggestion, to get this buried as -1 Troll: Sell software. Build that app you're talking about, build a few more and sell them. Sell support for your apps, support for apps you understand. Sell your time to build what other people need. Work on Wine, earn pledges. Short and sweet: make money (to pay for your tuition yourself).
DO NOT let lack of money dissuade you from what you want to do. That breads resentment and bitterness. Do it, do it well, and the money will come.
I went to MIT. I hate it when people assume that you have to be rich to go there, or make comments like "my parents couldn't afford that." That isn't a reason to not even try. I'm not sure about the original poster's financial status (upper middle class can be a big range), but MIT recently announced it will be tuition free for those families making $75000 or less.
And the name does make a difference. I got my first job due to it (poor match in the end, but that is another story). Many employers see it as a short cut to the type of person you are. You *will* get a good job if you went to another school, especially if you are good (goodness will always override name in the end), but as other posters have mentioned the fact that you are surrounded by smart and clever people kicks your own performance up a notch. Being able to see exactly what you are capable of and find and notice your limits is an amazing experience. I wouldn't trade my time at MIT for the world, despite 4 years of complaining about the workload, the pressure and the frosh.
This was a quote of Kurt Vonnegut that didn't fit.
Also, as far as anyone has ever told me and I've ever seen, grad school for engineering and ESPECIALLY for CS is completely worthless for getting a job, and is done almost only by those who wish to go into academia. Sure, 2 years of Business school might be required after 5 or so years in the work force in order to get a managerial position that really pays bank, but that's far in the future. Places like MS and Google and Yahoo! are hiring kids out of my school at 75k or more a year for software engineering jobs (there is obviously a variance, and some jobs get a lower salary)
You are completely wrong on this one. A C/S degree is the thing that gets you out programming and into technical lead roles. Companies value C/S degrees enormously. Most of the time people without degrees are completely oblivious to the doors that are not opened for them. Degrees open doors, C/S Degrees, open C/S doors. Get one.
This is my sig.
Does doing your whole degree in MIT really matter that much in the long run? If you're brilliant, you'll go and set up the next Google. But if not, then you'll end up just like a lot of other IT workers, making only 5-6 figure salaries. IT changes quickly. In 10-20 years, tech will look nothing like what it does today. By then, an outdated degree would help, but it's skills that you'd pick up on the job that employers would want. "Get me a CA degree, Honour roll, MIT..."
I am with Bjarne on this one.
Bjarne Stroustrup, creator of the C++ programming language, claims that C++ is experiencing a revival and
that there is a backlash against newer programming languages such as Java and C#. "C++ is bigger than ever.
There are more than three million C++ programmers. Everywhere I look there has been an uprising
- more and more projects are using C++. A lot of teaching was going to Java, but more are teaching C++ again.
There has been a backlash.", said Stroustrup.
You may want to look into MIT again. They just announced a couple of weeks ago that students from families that earn less than $75k/yr. will not have to pay tuition. They've also changed the factors they look at to determine financial aid for other income levels:
Fin. Aid Boosted; No Tuition For Families Earning Under $75K
MIT has also always had a policy of basically, "You get in, and we'll help you figure out how to afford it."
A couple more things:
Disclaimer: I graduated from MIT, and would not trade that experience for anything.
MIT's undergrad tuition is free for families making http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/03/08/mit_announces_need_based_financial_aid_plan/ This is increasingly true of all of the bigger schools, as the article points out. Also, very few grad students at MIT pay tuition. In CS, for example, tuition is guaranteed for the first year of grad school, and by then almost everyone has found a funded project to work on -- if not, you just work as a TA.
It might be better for him to research the teachers as in your example and pick the university that way instead. Choose the subject (down to a more fine detail level) that is really interesting and seems to have the most potential, then see who are the leading researchers in that subject, go to their school.
I went to purdue for 2 years, then transfered to Caltech on a 75% scholarship. You may want to investigate something along the same lines if your grades aren't quite good enough to get a scholarship to a top10 school. (Also, purdue was awesome for the first 2 years, however...caltech is a bit more...academically rigorous :( )
Cheers, Jared
http://phoenix-network.org
Writing Free and Open Source Software is cool, especially if you attend high school now, but Computer Science/Engineering schools are not (just) about coding. How good are you in math? Other languages than C?
Did you see the courses MIT offers? Are those really the ones you would like to learn?
I don't know, I was thinking about the army in 2002/early 2003 because the job market was terrible and I had just graduated college. I took some standard skills test and they said I could pick any specialty I wanted. There was only one real computer job there and it seemed like it involved mostly typing. I forget the specialty designation now. This was before Iraq when the army was just in Afghanistan.
I also got lots of things in the mail about becoming an officer because I had a college degree too, but it just seemed to be becoming an officer with no specialty.
Maybe you have to know someone or go in the back door to get a cool computer job? The officer who was interviewing me said most of their programs were made by private companies and stuff. I don't know how accurate that is. But it seemed like there were no possibilities in the computer field in the army. Now, with some of the Slashdot articles I have seen, it seems like in the air force there may be a path for people into computer security. But the army itself seems like a dead end.
I'm not fully versed of the way the system works in America, but is there nothing like the student loan available in the UK to UK students?
The idea is that most students cant afford to pay the tuition fees, but will get jobs after university, so you can get a student loan from your local education authority which will allow you to go wherever you want and you don't have to worry about costs. The university you can go to is decided by your results and your work, not by how much money you have.
The student loan is a lot more friendly than bank loans in the fact that you don't have to worry about paying it back like a normal loan - just 9% of the your salary over £15,000 goes to pay it back after you start working automatically, and there's no schedule for paying it back. If you do not earn more than £15,000 or are not working, nothing happens, and after 25 years, any remaining debt is cancelled anyway. You don't have to worry about interest, other than inflation, and you don't even need to think about it until after your course and you start working and earning more than £15,000.
This seems to make a lot of sense to me, so surely there is something similar in America, although I haven't been able to find something similar? Either rather unfriendly bank loans that lead to a debt you really dont want to carry around with you, or by being limited to how much you want to pay as to where you can go, which seems a bit painful.
...on what YOU want to accomplish. I started working as a tech-support rep at a call center and then worked through the ranks in a network admin type position and before I left that company after 10 years I was managing teams of tech's all across the country. During my tenure at that company I earned an A.A. degree in Business through night courses at the local accredited 4 year university, and can say with confidence that it meant nearly NOTHING to my old employer aside from showing my ability to "earn a degree."
However, I left that job last year to take a new position AT a university (also local) and can say in the research and education field, degrees are the deciding factor to how far you can go. My A.A. degree isn't looked on with disdain, rather it's looked at as a starting point and my employer has encouraged (and provided a cheap way to earn) more degrees in any subject I choose. While I still do computer work, the research and education field is literally the polar opposite of the corporate business world. The take home pay is substantially less, but the fringe benefits are better in the long run and the opportunity to earn multiple degrees in subjects I'm actually interested in (and not those I have no choice but to learn in order to get advancement) is WONDERFUL.
My advice would be to try and look at what you'd like to be doing in 10 years. If you're really spectacular at coding and just want a degree to back it up for your job search--a BS/MS from any accredited university who has specialized programs for CS should do the trick. On the other hand if you want to go in to research, a degree from a university like MIT which does ONLY those kind of technical programs might give you the upper hand. Regardless of where your degrees come from (or lack thereof) it will be your performance which will ultimately get you the big $$$. The degrees will get you the interviews, but your mettle will get you the job and your determination will get you the paychecks.
I know what you're thinking. Did I forward 65,535 packets or 65,536 packets?
It's not EXACTLY what you asked for, but another alternative is Federal Cyber Service: Scholarship for Service (SFS). Their goal is to "increase the number of qualified students entering the fields of information assurance and computer security...". Their "scholarship track" provides "funding to colleges and universities to award scholarships to students in the information assurance and computer security fields. Scholarship recipients shall pursue academic programs in information assurance for the final two years of undergraduate study, or for two years of master's-level study, or for the final two years of Ph.D.-level study. These students will participate as a cohort during their two years of study and activities, including a summer internship in the Federal Government. A limited number of students may be placed in National Laboratories and Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs)."
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
I'm sorry if my reply sounded like i want "to jump down his throat".
He wants to go to a big expensive school - fine. His parents can't pay for it, so he has to find another way. I showed a few possible ways, but apparently thats "not cool". Sometimes, you have to find a solution which can work out, even though it's not exactly what you wanted in the first place.
Clearly s/he's paid some dues. AC status acknowledged. S/He makes a good point, and sets a good example for others to understand.
Depends on the country.
- On one hand, the UK is well known for having a similar situation : UK students and students coming from EU pay much less (but still a big wad of cash) than foreign students outside EU (which pay even more crazy tuitions).
- On the other hand Germany and Switzerland apply the exact same (dead-cheap) tuition wherever the student come from. Otherwise it would be assimilated as "discrimination based on country of origin" which is a big no-no in those countries.
That why Germany and Switzerland have always been the most popular foreign universities to do studies for students from (poorer) eastern Europe.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
and all the other "top" institutions as well. They're too expensive, and having a piece of paper from one of them helps you not at all in getting a job or once in the workplace.
Having that $120K piece of paper gets you a blank stare from the person who got an associate's degree from a community college who is actually the one screening resumes at the HR dept. of the company you're applying to; he or she works from a list of keywords like "C++" or "Java" and I guarantee you "MIT/Harvard/Yale/Princeton" ain't on that list.
If the person looking at your $120K piece of paper also went to a "top" institution, all your time/money/debt/effort will earn you exactly one *shrug*. "So what if the kid went to M.I.T?" the manager says to himself, "I went to CalTech. M.I.T.? Big whoop."
As for the classmates you'd have at a "top" institution, you wouldn't have time to waste socializing. Would they raise the in-class discussion $120K's worth? No. Especially not if you're in a lecture-class. In a seminar, they'd be competing with you and not so likely to share ideas with you. After all, they all think they're going to be the next Bill Gates too. Lastly, the "top" institutions disproportionally attract the maladjusted, neurotic, and just plain nuts.
Having no degree does hold you back, though, so go to a decent affordable school, bang it out in four years if you're taking it easy, less if you're not. Write them a check for $10K and call it a day. The FOSS work you've done is far more material and important to a potential employer.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
The greatest gift your parents can give you is NOT PAYING FOR YOUR COLLEGE.
Go to MIT. Get loans. They'll have low interest rates. Pay them off as SLOWLY as you can. Having a degree from MIT on your resume will pay for your investment in 10 years or so. You'll get aid, you'll get loans, you'll get a JOB and you'll afford it just fine
Remember that high housing costs mean high labor costs -- which means the hourly you get for labor in Boston will be higher than you expect. Get skilled labor jobs. Avoid working on campus unless the job helps you academically (meaning in the lab of a person you're learning from). Never work for a faculty member who starts off pointing out that working for him or her will get you a great recommendation which will open doors for you. Such people are weasels, and will screw you.
Stop looking to your parents. Stop trying to figure out how some third party will pay for it. Go directly to the school and deal with them. They'll help a lot. The rest you'll either pay for immediately from your wages or loans, and it'll be FINE.
First, congratulations on graduating High School, and don't get me wrong, I wish you well, but here's my dose of reality for you.
What you're asking is not going to happen. One day, these organizations MAY give out scholarships, but it's unlikely. There are many reasons why, but here are some things to consider:
A fairly significant number of University students change their major during their course of study - this means that by 'investing' in High School graduates, these organizations would be taking a risk, that after 1-4 years, their scholarship student will be doing something different.
What they would much rather do is wait for you to graduate with a major in a field of their interest, and judge you then. It's much less risk for them, as well as allowing them to rely on the tried and tested methods of Universities for creating employable people.
Also, you'd do really, really well to get hired by Google. Really well. In fact, if Google came to you today and said they'd hire you after you completed your University degree, but only if you shelled out for MIT, I would very strongly suggest shelling out. You may also suggest they'd like your first-born child/kidney. Getting money isn't hard, there are LOTS of scholarships, bursaries, and low-interest loans you can get if you think you're worth it. Getting and internship and getting hired is harder. In todays world, it is entirely possible to be bright, very hire-able, and not get any offers at all.
There are lots of part time work opportunities out there: Security guard, bus driver, waiter...
My son thinks he'll finish university with a positive bank balance.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
The army's idea of tuition is a state school. It's a drop in the bucket compared to what MIT wants. Financially, you'll do much better in a skilled labor job.
Will the army send you to Iraq? Will they give you good training? Will they put you on an interesting tech (unlikely)?
It's all a crapshoot, and when it all comes down to it, you have NO RIGHTS once you join the army. Not even the right to leave when they said you could without being screwed around with.
Joining any armed service is the worst decision anyone could make, if they're thinking of going to MIT. Loans will cover the cost of MIT. Get loans and pay for them in the private sector. You wanna help the military? Go to MIT on loans, get a degree, then go work for a defense contractor and do something interesting. Don't like what you're working on? LEAVE. Go work for another one. Or work for a company that's not a defense contractor, build up their tech, then watch them get a contract. Get rich.
And what they're doing in labs at MIT is definitely more interesting than most of what the amry would put you on.
excelently put. In the feild of my study there is know way I could reach the highest levels of understanding without a degree as the information is very hard to aquire otherwise.
Even though I am above that cutoff mark, so what? Believe it or not, I am still struggling to make ends meet, yet I would like for my kids to go to MIT or some other top school that will give them an edge in this ever-increasingly global marketplace.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
"No tuition" deals are some of the worst in education. See, these schools can't run without money... so what they take out of the column called "Tuition" they put into the column called "Fees". Here in MA, UMass offers a tuition-free scholarship to nearly every student who makes the top classes in their high school. However, compare the bottom line of the deal to the private schools in the state, and it all washes out.
- Firstly, in this field of Computer Science/Information Technology/Whatever you want to call it this month, most shops are looking to see if you can actually do the work they are looking to fulfil. They typically are not impressed by letters after your name from some prestigious institution, because many who *do* have all the fancy degrees can't do the job.
- Secondly, having said that, there are some places who are sticklers for degrees, but these tend to be jobs in finance or government-related contracts or other degree-snoots, but I don't consider those types pleasant to work for.
- Thirdly, if you do quite a few popular FOSS projects, that exposure will be far more valuable to you than any degree from MIT. It will gain you world-wide recognition among the OpenSource Cognoscenti, and will open many doors for you that you otherwise would not know about. You won't have to go to them; they will come to you. And you won't be stuck paying off an educational debt for the next 10 years after you graduate.
So my advice to you -- take it with a grain of salt if you wish -- work on some killer FOSS apps and get them out there. Pick an area of need and create a solution for it that many will want and be greatful to you for. Or create something wicked cool that we in the OpenSource/Linux community can use and make our jobs easier or will be lots of fun.After having done one or two successful OpenSource projects, you may find that you'll do just fine without a snooty degree from MIT. Or you can still pursue that, but then may have the means to do so. Many possibilities lie in front of you.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
I went to Cornell and managed to pay the entire bill myself. I've got a quite a bit of student debt
These two statements are mutually exclusive.
MIT and similar caliber schools WILL give you financial aid packages that are tailored to your financial situation. I'm graduating from MIT this year, I only have about $3,000 in loans. Guess what I paid for tuition this year? Nothing. Due to financial aid, MIT was actually cheaper than UC Berkeley for me, despite being an in-state California resident and a Regents scholarship recipient. The basic point is, the hard part is getting into the school--once you have that, the university will make it as easy as possible for you attend. Those massive endowments are thankfully occasionally used for something good. If you've got the brains, don't let money be an impediment to your education. Check out a recent Tech article from MIT--if your parents make less than $75k/year, tuition is free: http://www-tech.mit.edu/V128/N11/endowment.html
Two points:
1. MIT is not all that there is. Hit all the big name schools: Stanford, Berkeley, CMU, Ann Arbor, Georgia Tech, Urbana-Champaign all come to mind. Some are significantly cheaper, and others may give you a scholarship.
2. When trying to get funding, don't limit yourself to FOSS organizations (why would you do that?). Apply to any and all scholarships where your profile matches what they want.
Extra Bonus point: Whether you go to MIT or elsewhere, always keep your own standards on what you should be learning, and don't simply yield to those of the schools. Getting straight A's doesn't mean you're learning much. And talk a lot with intelligent peers - they'll dictate your standards far more than the professors or the institutions (I learned that a bit late).
Beetle B.
Actually interest rates for student loans suck right now because Stafford Loans are based on the 52 week T-bill--I'm looking at 8% interest which is bad for a student loan...maybe you'll be lucky and the T-bill will be lower when you consolidate your loans
Why not look across the northern border? It's not as great a deal as it used to be given the decline of the USD, but it's still worth consideration, especially if you won't be getting financial support.
Canada has many excellent institutions and without any support whatsoever, you'll be paying perhaps $25k a year for tuition and housing as an international student. You can beat that with some state schools - a friend of mine went to UNC and paid ridiculously little - but then few state schools are top 10 or 20 in CS.
I would suggest giving at least some consideration to the University of Waterloo and the University of Toronto. The former is considered to have the best undergraduate programs in CS and engineering, the latter typically features the best graduate programs in Canada (and many are among the best in North America). Programs at Waterloo and `Engineering Science' at Toronto is probably the closest you'll get to an MIT experience in Canada. It is an extremely comprehensive program and very competitive to get into.
I'd like to reiterate what several others have said: you should check out the financial aid packages of various institutions. I know that Stanford will cover your tuition if your parents make under $100k/year. That's a hell of a deal, and I'd be surprised if MIT, CMU, Harvard, etc. did not do something similar, should that be the position you're in.
I second that. A few years back I was unhappy with my situation in life and getting kinda desperate to change something. I looked into joining the USN (family history of Navy, my grandfather flew old fighters, aunts and uncles were in, and my father was with the seabees and a mustang - went in enlisted and retired from medical as LtCd, my mother was a navy nurse). All the folks that I talked to basically said that they couldn't see it doing me anything other than good. I'm an Eagle Scout, so I'd have already started out one hop up on the pay scale, but c'mon... even with room and board ~$14K/yr isn't too great. I was interested in going as a way to pay for college, like my folks did. Well... the catch with that is that sure... they pay for classes while on duty, but it's for some community college in Arizona or something, and none of the 'real' colleges accepted the courses for full credit.
... they were lining them up so that the moment they were 18, they could ship out. Being that my father was a mechanical engineer for the navy, I thought that hey, it probably isn't that bad and it's not like I'm gonna get shot on a ship. Reality hit when I said that to my dad and he corrected me. There were plenty of navy personnel giving support to the other crews closer to combat, and that combined with the somewhat recent attack on the USS Cole also had an impact on my thoughts. Luckily I scored high enough to give it serious second thoughts, and went to college by other means.
So even knowing that so far, I went ahead and took a weekend with my recruiter to go down to Maryland to take the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery - the test you take to see what 'jobs' you qualify for) and I was amazed at what I saw. There were a handful of older folks down there, but the place was crawling with 17yr olds... 17!
Later on, I realized that although the USN would have made my getting out of my situation quite a bit easier, it would have meant that I would still need to go to school four (or more... they can extend your contract indefinitely without prior notice - read the fine print) years later, I'd be that much farther behind my peers in the search for employment.
The funny thing is that now I realize that if I want to have any kind of technological impact on the tools our military forces use to kill other people, I'd need to be part of a civilian contractor. If I remember the quote correctly, the Army Corp of Engineers is one of the largest civvy contractors around. Then if you factor in the clientèle for the big guys like GE, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon, etc. that's not only where the money is made, it's where the tech changes are made.
Furthermore, you will only be able to move up to officer after you get your degree.
I thought I'd add a few words in regards to state schools vs. MIT and BS vs. higher degrees. I'm a Ph.D. student at a top-4 CS school who went to a state school for my BS and MS degrees and has taught a few undergrad CS classes at MIT.
If you're good enough to get accepted to MIT/UC Berkeley/Stanford/CMU in CS, you're good enough to get a full-ride scholarship at the best state school in your state. If you happen to know you're going to grad school (esp. if you're going for a PhD), then it doesn't matter as much where you go for your BS. Be stellar (but *not* stuck up) wherever you are, do research as an undergrad, and make friends with the best research profs. If you're going to stop after a BS or MS, then where you go now matters more.
As others have mentioned, the ratio of mentally-engaged people vs. people just trying to get a piece of paper gets higher faster at more prestigious institutions, in general. There certainly are people who are just along for the ride at top schools, but not too many in my experience. At less-prestigious places, the density of highly-motivated people is lower, at least in the first year or two's worth of classes. Honors classes are different--take them if you can handle them. Also, you can take more classes than others your first year or so. This'll keep you on track for graduating in 4 or fewer years, keeps you from getting bored early-on, and gets you to the really fun upper-level classes sooner. Don't forget to have fun and socialize outside of class though.
Also as previously mentioned, MIT and many other top schools admit on merit, then they decide the financial aid.
A few other quick notes:
1) a BS gets you a decent job
2) an MS gets you an instant promotion at a decent job and/or gets you in the door at a better job
3) an MS degree usually only takes 1 extra year and you get a nice pay boost
4) some people go and work after a BS and then plan to go back and get an MS and/or PhD later. I know a *small* number of people for whom this has actually worked (other than those who get an MS at night school). It's *much* easier to just do it all at once, before you get used to making real money. Do internships to get work experience.
5) depending on the company, an MS degree sets you up for management and/or "important" technical positions faster
6) a number of "top" companies only actively recruit at top schools. You'll have to do more work to get a job at one of these from a non-top school.
7) a PhD is required if you want to be a professor at a university. This is probably the best reason to get a PhD.
8) to some companies, a PhD is often thought of as being similar to an MBA. You might not have all of the business skills of an MBA, but most companies figure you're smart enough to figure out what you don't know. If you really want to go into management though, an MBA is much more efficient (it takes 2-3 years, not 4-8 years like a PhD). Note that business school is expensive (expect to add $100k in debt for an MBA at a top school), but they pay for themselves very quickly.
8) getting a PhD puts you in a _different_ job market. It's a smaller market than the one for BS/MS grads, and one where the work generally has a different character. Companies that recruit PhDs generally are looking for someone to work on more open-ended problems or ones that really require a deep understanding of something technical. For example, a good school will make you take some probability and statistics classes, but even at a top school, a BS grad will generally not have a deep understanding of the idiosyncrasies of various machine learning techniques nor will the grad have a good feel for how to invent a new fundamental technique that's better than the state-of-the-art. A PhD is basically and apprenticeship for that kind of work. If you're a company, then you need a few people to figure out those fundamental problems and lots of people to actually build your applications and make you money now. It's really a matter of taste as to which type of work you want to do (researchy-stuff vs. actually making real things that work).
I would recommend that you check out this book, It's published by the MIT press, and i have seen that sugested reading on many of the courses at MIT. It details the experiences of an engineering student at MIT. But to some up, if you thrive in hyper competitive environment, if you can give up your social life for hard work, if you can stay ahead of the curve and get a lot of A's, if you got the 'forwardness' to network and put yourself in front of people... You will find the funding from a company.
First of all, it's Stanford, not "Standford."
Second of all, do some basic research before talking out your ass. While both Brin and Page went to Stanford for graduate school, for undergrad, Brin went to the University of Maryland, and Page went to the University of Michigan.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
I would suggest looking into Olin College of Engineering. It's a small, project-oriented engineering school in Massachusetts. They pay the tuition of each student so the cost only runs around $17.000 a year instead of $50,000 a year.
School Website: http://olin.edu/
Article in IEEE Spectrum on Olin: http://spectrum.ieee.org/may06/3432
Try getting a paid internship with a company. Go to your local college, check their internship listings and contact the company directly. Or, if you've been accepted to an university, check about their internships and contact those companies. You'll probably get college credit out of it.
Back in '96 I interened for a Fortune 500 company. I was one of 6 students hired at the equivelant of a $35,000 annual salary for a 33.5 hour work week. They expected 7.5hr days, including lunch, with summer hours, which meant everyone went home at lunchtime on Friday.
I was lucky and was hired by the Data Warehouse team, which was the bleeding edge of the organization and I had a great manager that taught me a lot and allowed interns to grow as much as they wanted to. At the end he was even surprised at how much ground I covered in those months. One example is that when I first started he gave me a bunch of exercises so I could learn Oracle and SQL because he was in a training class that week. I was done by the time he came back during lunch to check his email.
Anyways, check the internships. They may be meant for college students, but it sounds like you might have the ability to pull it off.
First, the way you have phrased the question makes it sound like you expect FOSS organizations have lower standards for awarding scholarships (just becasue you can write some C code and might, someday, release a program under the GPL) than other scholarship awarding organizations. This is not a very impressive start. If you have the chops to get admitted to MIT (or other top tier schools) you should be able to effectively compete for scholarships by traditional means.
All that said, with a little bit of expertise in programming, you should easily be able to get a part time job that will suplement whatever tuition your parents are willing to fork out (a part-time junior programming job should easily net you $10,000-$20,000 per year, which is enough for full tuition, room and board at a good state school). In fact, if you can land a job based on your current programming skills, you might be able to get your employer to help out with (or pay for, outright) your college tuition.
All the folks that are saying that an MIT degree isn't worth any more than a state university degree are leading you astray, but not too far. Even a degree for a third rate state university will make a huge difference when you go to get a job. Lots of jobs won't even consider you without some degree. The difference that the MIT degree will make will be when (and if) you are competing for the best positions with the best companies. In fact, if you graduate from some place like MIT, you probably won't need to even interview for your first job after graduation: companies will be scouting for you. Still, you'll do quite well if you get a degree from one of the big state schools, and will cost you a hell of a lot less than MIT.
just a ghost in the machine.
As someone else said before, the difference between a top school and a good school is your classmates. It is a huge difference: people who motivate you to work harder and learn more and who knock you off your high horse when you think you're as smart as it gets. (We're talking people curing cancer during freshman year, having published a book on mathematics, etc.)
In the US it can cost a lot to get an education like this. Next door, Canada offers some universities that give you these benefits for a fraction of the price tag, AND offer merit (as opposed to need based) scholarships.
It actually kind of annoys me that parents do not expect to pay for their kids' college.
In today's knowledge economy, college is almost a prereq to getting the kind of job this guy wants. It used to be that HS was the expected stopping point and could guarantee a decent job. No longer. With more and more folks getting a good post-HS education, and the increasing connectivity in the world, there are more and more well-educated people competing for jobs. If you want to succeed right now, esp in a high-tech field, a college degree is vital. If you, as a parent, want your child to succeed, plan for college.
Do I respect people that pay for themselves to go to college? Absolutely. However, I am planning to pay for my child to go to college. I will sacrifice for them to go to a good school. I want my child to succeed and I think this is one of the best investments I can make for that to happen.
Here someone asks an honest question, and I give him an honest answer, yet I am modded down as "flamebait". What a sad state of affairs.
I think the moderators should practice more moderation in their moderation.
MIT is a well advertised product.
The reason MIT has tuition prices as high as it does is because
MIT has convinced the public that those prices are warranted in
some way. Whether that message is true or not is subject to debate
like any other chewing gum, car, or salable item.
Let's be honest, if it were *ALL ABOUT EDUCATION* then
the advertising flyer could be a photocopy on recycled
news print instead of glossy color on high grade bond.
As long as people came out knowing how to engineer, do
science, etc., 'who the heck cares what the flyer looks like?'.
The reality is that the 'BIG NEWS' stories that come out of
MIT are a small proportion of the overall student population.
In fact, if one were to do a statistical analysis of the student
population at MIT showing what percentages of the students were
the cream of the crop, what students are really only just average,
and and which students should not have bothered to go to college
at all, you would find that the distribution of those groups
is relatively the same as any other major educational institution.
If you are already able to teach yourself a subject that you are
interested in, and simply wish to be mentored, you are *SMARTER*
to use your money and resources wisely. Wise use of your resources
is the first skill of any successful person.
If you do an analysis of where you can be, financially speaking,
by getting your degree at a more reasonably priced facility, rather
than getting into huge debt, you will find that your life will
accelerate faster by concentrating on the content of your education
rather than the location.
Suppose for a moment that you took 1/4 of the monies allocated
by your parents and placed it with a reputable investment firm.
Base your institutional targets on the money you have left, resisting
loans and the 'theory' of excess, (perhaps do a co-op term or two)
and then, once finished, take the money you have saved and start a
business of your own. You will be younger, faster, more agile, and
superior to Google, MS, or any other company out there. Why? Because
by that time, they will all be old fuddies who no longer 'Get It'
(Some already are), and you will be the young gun in town.
I suggest that you should put more stock in your own ability to learn
and less in the public perception/delusion of an institution with nice
glossy flyers. If they spent less on the flyers the tuition could be lower.
Any kid can afford any college in the country. As a child, you can't be any more poor than $0, and that's what I had when I went to a top-cost college in this decade. After four years of paying for tuition with only forgiveness and loans, I graduated with about 6-months-salary worth of debt. (Forgiveness is where the school just kind of reduces tuition for you.)
MIT, like all top-tier schools, including every school in the Ivy League, and many many more-accessible schools, offer need-blind admissions, which means they will find a way for you to be able to afford college, one way or another.
So, my suggestion is to go do what every other kid in America is doing, even those who aren't so lucky to be in an upper-middle-class family: get a job, borrow money, get thru school, then get another job and pay back the money. In fact, that makes me realize that taxpayers are the ones funding the low-cost government student loans, so we all already are giving you the scholarship that you are requesting.
So I was at a local gas station the other day and I heard the three ladies behind the counter whining about how our country was in shambles and how *you know who* ruined our economy and there aren't anymore jobs anymore. The dumbest of them all had the best quote, "There are no jobs anymore. If you ain't got one of them higher educations and like 7 years of experience you can't get a job." Hence - you're working at your local gas station at age 30. Just my 2 cents. :)
Step 1) Find a good state school with a good math or ee program. Get a B.S. degree in one of these fields or take most of your courses in one of these fields. If you have skillz already you will find a CS degree unchallenging.
Step 2) Do well. Go to graduate school at one of the schools you like and they will pay you to be there. If you just want a B.S. degree, it doesn't matter. You're just another stooge and 1 year after college it won't matter where you came from. It does, however; look inbred if you get all your degrees from one school (even MIT). Lol, I speak this from experience.
Other advice: Ignore all clowns suggesting the military. If you want leet military research, you are still better off remaining a civilian. If you want the good schools bad enough, then just take the loans. The loans won't kill you, heh except maybe with a CS degree. Seriously, get a degree in a better field at a school with the flexibility to be intimate with the CS dept.
Also, undergrad CalTech is for clowns.
I was a top student in high school. Took a bunch of AP classes, got 4 or 5s on the exams, SATs in the 1500s etc. Got accepted at MIT, Georgia Tech, Union, and at RPI. In March of my senior year, my only parent was killed in a car crash. I ended up not going away from school because I had to support my younger brother. I worked full time as a technician at the local division of a defense contractor , went to a community college and then a state school. It took me almost 8 years but I graduated with a 4.0 from each. I passed the professional engineering test and, when I applied for a job at the same place that I had been working at for 8 years, I had no trouble getting it. Now they are paying for my masters. The moral of the story: you don't have to go to a big name university to get a decent job. While everyone might not be able to do what I did, getting an job or an internship at a future employer is not a bad idea. I already knew the ropes of what was going on, I knew most of the employees in my field (electrical engineering), and I came in with a security clearance (a plus for many jobs). I think it is awesome that you want to go to a big name school, but looking at smaller schools that have good internship opportunities or co-ops could be an option as well.
Do companies like Google or Red-Hat offer scholarships to big name schools in return for a few years of work after college?
No, but tons of companies do. They are called "banks", their scholarships are called "loans", and the best part of the deal is that you don't even have to work for them to return the money - you can choose your future employer to your own taste, and just return the money on a pre-determined schedule.
I can't imagine any company paying somebody's 4-year college tuition in exchange for "a few years of work" - how do they know they'll be hiring, and hiring your specific skillset in 4 years from now, or what's their guarantee that you're not, to put it mildly, a "C" student?
If you've been reading slashdot you should have learned a popular consensus that a college certificate does not really mean anything to many of the tech savvy community. There are way too many certificate carrying bozos out there to make a particular certificate mean that much.
Now producing popular GPL projects probably will get you a LONG way in the experience field in employment. So regardless of what college you can afford, do put some notoriety on your resume.
Also in regards to projects and tuition grants, you HAVING produced some real code before asking for scholarship assistance would merit a lot more interests than saying "i might release some..."
Then as noted, the difference would be $10K to $15K Sounds like a good part time JOB of burgeoning technical skills to me would cover the difference and also be a bonus to your resume after graduation.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Recruiting officers have a long and well earned reputation for lying to those they are trying to enlist. They are MUCH less trustworthy than used car salesmen. If a used car salesman lies to you, you may be able to force him to refund your money. If a recruiting officer lies to you, you are stuck and he is rewarded.
..."
There's an old song called "Stung Right" that summarizes it nicely. It starts off:
"I joined the Navy......to see the world,
What did I see.........I saw the sea.
There are many others with the same theme. Do NOT trust the recruiting officer. He is not required to be honest...but rather to get recruits. He also never finds out what happens to them after he fills out their request for a specialty. (And it's a request, not a promise, no matter what he tells you.)
Many people join the military and are fortunate. They attribute this to their good planning. You never hear from the dead or the quadriplegics. So if you hear from someone who survived, the fact that you are even hearing from them is due to their being a part of a statistically biased sample.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The best place to find financial aid is the financial aid office of your favorite university. (Their website is a good place to start, but they are usually nice about answering individual questions, too.) The university themselves will cover a great deal of the cost (usually with easy-to-pay-back low-interest loans that you have 30 years on, the rest with grants).
If there is a gap between what the university says your parents can pay and what your parents say they can pay (and there usually is), the office can direct you to a list of private scholarships based on merit. If that list doesn't include anything you can earn, visit the website of your favorite company and search for college scholarships, many large companies do have them, even for liberal arts majors.
Earning free money is a very difficult, time-consuming task that requires a lot of good essay-writing, but, if it gets you into a good school, it is definitely worth it. I just graduated with a Bachelor's in CS from University of Michigan. I got a good job (after a lot of interview help from my school's career center -- it should be easier for you because you already have experience), moved across the country, and am living off my own dime. I'm poised to pay off my student loans by the end of next year. As for grad school, I think it is a good idea. The people I started with who have Master's degrees are earning $15 to $20K more than I am.
As others have pointed out, once you get admitted to a hotshot school, there often turns out to be a way to pay for it. However, if your family's clearly able and unwilling to pay for it, that might rule out financial aid.
In which case, one possibility is switching your order. Rather than trying to get someone to pay for your school now in return for work later, work first for a couple years. Then you'll be independent of your parents (make sure you really are independent so it's not a scam), and you can make these decisions based on your own priorities and income.
If you're well-motivated (as it sounds like you are) you should be able to do a lot in a couple years which will only enhance your attractiveness to places like MIT. Plus you can experiment with your lifestyle (where to live, who to befriend, how much to party) in ways you can't as much once you've committed to a school.
Chasing prestige is among the worst reasons to pick a school.
The stock CS undergraduate curriculum is standardized by the ACM. Whatever school you end up picking will have a mix of good professors and not-so-good professors, and the ratio between the two is not caused by the name of university: you will likely learn who is who after a term or two. It's not as if universities other than "prestigious technology schools like MIT or Cal-Tec" pick their tenure-track processors and other teaching staff off of turnip trucks.
Find a place where there are professors that are doing thing that you find interesting and try to do undergraduate research. Specialists are in a given field, by definition, are not going to be evenly distributed among schools: there are some "lesser" schools that have areas that are not as represented at better-ranked institutions.
Add Sweden to the list as well, all university education in Sweden is completely free of cost. The main issue with Germany and Switzerland might be that many BS programs start off in German. In Sweden many start in Swedish. Language just might be a small barrier here...
I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
If so, Stanford has recently changed their financial aid program and will not charge you any tuition! See here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/20/MNABV5LHM.DTL&tsp=1
"there are more and more well-educated people competing for jobs" Too bad going to college and graduating does not guarantee you will be well-educated. I do not automatically respect someone more for going to college. Nor do I jump to the conclusion that they went to college if I am talking with them and they seem genuinely smart, not just intelligent. I know it's not what they dicitionary would say but I view smart as the ability to think and make use of information and intelligent as simply being good at remembering data. Most of the people I have met, and having first been a dependant and then in the military myself that is a lot of people, that went to college tend to be more intelligent than smart. They have alot more rattling around upstairs, but usually know alot less about what to do with it. Most of the people I have met that only went to high school tend to be better at using what they have and picking up more as they go and understanding how to use it. I have honestly seen more people simply handed things because they have been to college where as those who don't usually have to work harder to prove themselves. For an example when joining the Air Force I was informed that if I had gone to college for two years I could have signed up for four years and had two stripes on my arm straight out of basic. Instead I had to sign up for six years and had my two stripes after technical school. The folks who went to college before joining actually tended to do only as well or a little worse than the other folks in my class. I may have only been a 88% student, but I also did only as much studying as I felt a need to and I still came out better than the guys in my class who went to college first.
Only if you already know people who work for Google and/or RedHat (and who have the ability to request or transfer the money in the first place). This is pretty much true of any organization. If there's one thing I've learned from school, college, and jobs - for the most part, everyone is completely paranoid of new ideas, new people, new standards, and just about anything novel. Also, people care about the bottom line, no matter what the subject is - the bottom line is ultimately something tangible/observable, public, and measurable. My advice is to get documentation on all of the community service that you're doing. Go the extra length to get credit for the programs you are creating. Explain in one very simple sentence what your program does. Make things easy for other people - make it easy for them to comment on your work, limit your resume to a page, and find ways of collecting data on your programs for yourself, to prove that your program gets specific results consistently. Whatever propaganda is being fed to you at high school, that college is a place where people share ideas, where people generally work together, and so forth... The reality is that colleges are oppressive places, where the only rule is work as hard as possible for as long as possible, and then use this inertia to carry you through uncertain and challenging situations. This is just my experience, but college is a place where there is rampant classism, racial discrimination, and sexual discrimination. In addition, faculty members are one of the most petty and vile people you'll ever meet, who are completely bereft of common sense. The most important thing though, is to make sure that you never, ever, under any circumstance, reveal this reality to the faculty, supervisor, or whatever totalitarian figure you come across. Figure out what they like, and then go through the motions and make them feel good, and make it seem like they are the reason you are "learning" and "changing". This is generally a good tactic to use; only answer a question if you're sure of yourself, but also allow people to correct you even if you know that you're right. Use these comments when necessary: "I totally understand", "OK", "Sounds good". Figure out what unfounded and preconceived notions they have about professionalism; emulate this, even if your superiors hypocritically say repeatedly "I can't teach people to be professional". I could probably keep going with this, but the bottom line is to keep things as simple and accessible for others as possible, and to also find ways of getting reliable information (data must be measurable and observable) reliably, in a consistent way.
Don't know of FOSS company's offering scholarships....
However, I applied and got into to Stanford, MIT, and Princeton and Berkeley. What I discovered: Top schools are amazing for financial aid! As someone mentioned, Berkeley netted out to be the most expensive since I was from out of state.
Talk to your counselor - lots of scholarships floating around to be applied for.
Plus you can earn good $$ now and part-time with your programming skills.
Keep your dream and good luck!
Take a look at the statistics. US research is over. With the 'terrorist' precautions, us closed themselves to the outside world, and it means the best scientists are not able to go to there anymore. The great mathematicians are still in india, or in china, or going to europe, that still didn't close itself... Yet. My advice? If you NEED to stay in the us, go to berkeley. It's cheap, it's fucking great. And you are at 150 of google, apple, yahoo, oracle, sun, etc... If you DON'T need, well, go to europe. You can get your degree free, a good one, learn another language (which is a plus always, but especially for americans who doesn't use to have a second - or a third - or a fourth - language at school), and a NICE experience of life, which is what counts in the end.
Like the OP, I'm a prospective college student looking for FOSS scholarships. The difference is that I've already released my code, see http://wubi-installer.org/ (collaborative effort, 500,000+ downloads), and http://lubi.sourceforge.net/ (individual effort, 100,000+ downloads). As for revision control, see http://code.launchpad.net/~gezakovacs/ (mostly shellscript+NSIS, but I've recently begun using Qt4 and C++).
So back on topic, what are the best sources for FOSS scholarships?
I'm probably picking the wrong forum to be making this remark, but it is on-topic and no one else seems to have raised it in the numerous messages I scanned...
Am I the only one who finds any irony in the notion of someone committed to giving away, rather than selling, his work then turning around and saying "now where does the money come from?"
This entire thread seems side-tracked on the issue of what is a good school, and seems to be ignoring the main thrust of the question, which is that an industry founded on giving away value instead of selling it is getting money in, but that money is not going back to the people that are supplying the value. If it were, there would be a way to contribute and get paid. Instead, there is this mass illusion that if you do well for the community, it will do well by you. And yet the fact that people have to ask questions like this and get no really good answer seems to show the fallacy in that.
From a post in the comments on his own article:
Why does asking them for their money support them? Wouldn't it make more sense to support them by not asking for their money? I must be missing something here. If you can't see where the money is in the system, maybe that's your first clue that this isn't a movement to be viewing as a career choice.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
Seriously. I went to Oxford University, and the fees as a US student were still far less than MIT etc. The quality of education was infinitely higher (1 on 1, or 2 on 1 tutorials with experts in the field three or four times a week) and the brand value of Oxford is immense.
Take them out. If you get into MIT/Cal/Stanford they're worth it. If not a top tier school, then go to state schools with good programs and good tuitions. Take FAFSA backed loans. It's worth it.
From personal experience I've found just having a degree of any calibre is good (obviously I didn't go to one of the big name universities). It gets your foot in the door and that is about it. After a couple years working as a grunt (which you will do regardless of where you get your degree) your experience in the field that you've chosen will become much more valuable than your degree ever could.
CH: Or French. Or Italian. Out of the 4 Swiss linguistic areas, 3 have universities and thus 3 languages to choose from depending on where you choose to go.
And I'm sure, the other European country will give opportunity to do *cheap* studies in even more other languages (are there some French/Italian/Spanish/etc. around here on
Or you can see it as a big opportunity to develop a little bit more those foreign language skills acquired in school. Some country even propose a semester mostly composed of language courses either before starting the actual courses or during the begining of the studies (depending on the level the foreign student has - if the student isn't ready to start yet). In fact, EU and other European universities have a nice programme called Erasmus which exists to promote student mobility and exchange between universities; and studying in a foreign country using another language is a very good experience both from the student's point of view and as something you can brag about on your résumé.
I hope that the original poster has actually learned something else beside English. Both from a point of view of enabling to work/study abroad and of having some more culture.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
There are a couple of things. First of all you need to get in to MIT. The hard part is admissions. I am not trying to be all critical but there are a lot of C programmers in High School (I teach High School) or kids who are learning how to do all kinds of other cool stuff, but you also have to have grades and SAT scores. If you get in most private colleges of that calibre are going to work with you to get you there. Secondly, there are some companies who will hire you because you have a degree at MIT and others that don't care. But venture capitalists will look at the MIT degree and a good idea and write you a blank check. . . just food for thought
2. Publish in c/c++/Ada/Java (NO scripting languages). Again, this demonstrates competence.
3. Participate in HELP FORUMS! Again, this demonstrates competence.
4. Accept criticism graciously. Be mature. Be relevant and succinct in all replies. Ignore slams. Competence and acceptance will expand.
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
I went to Harvey Mudd, and I would rather screen mudders or MIT people than people from, say, USC or UC whatever. Not because of any inherent quality, but because Mudd, MIT, and other institutions of their caliber generally admit very good people, push them hard, and give them access to the very best resources. Further, they are used to being around smart people, so there is less of the lesser nerd bull - you do not have to prove you are a fripping genius with every statement, and thus we can get on to the work.
Knowing that they came from HMC/MIT increases the odds of finding a very bright generalist. Further, I have found that Mudders tend to be aware of their limitations - they do not know everything, and they know it. I have found that people from the Ivies tend to assume their own genius. I would rather someone know what they need to learn, because people that smart should always be learning.
Some people come out of the best schools barely capable of independent thought. Some people come out of middle or lower tier schools sharp as a tack. My job in hiring is to figure out whether a given candidate is one of those very good people. So, will Mudd on your resume get you in the door? No, but it might just get you a phone screen even with an unexceptional resume, because your resume might not be indicative of real skills.
That said, I _have_ hired people from USC, UCI, and other schools. They tended to be unusual for their schools, in that they were generalists, thoughtful, and just plain interesting, but that is unusual in the general population, and no degree is a guarantee of that flexibility.
You would almost certainly find that an MIT education has value, as does an MIT degree, but if you do not get there, try to excel and try to learn as much as you can about as much as you can, as the world does change over the course of your career, and this is a good chance to learn that flexibility.
So, would I pauper myself for an MIT degree? No. I might take out student loans - I had to when I was an undergrad - but I would make sure I had a sustainable amount of debt and a plan to get it paid off. Don't expect a killer salary, but do expect to find something rewarding with a bit of searching. Debt limits your options, just like a ROTC commitment, but if that is what you need to do to get where you want to go, then by all means, do it. The name has some value, but the work you will have to put in to get it, and the people you will get it with has much more value over the long term.
--- scott_ellsworth@alumni.hmc.edu Java, Databases, and Software Magic
As an ex Army officer, I'd go navy today as with experience I had in the army, don't get me wrong I learned a lot in the army, its just if you want high tech, the navy, in my opinion is ahead of even the air force they have a huge developing need for data analysis & that means a need for computer jocks , also the navy is (from what I've observed) using a lot more Linux than either of the other service branches does at present. just food for thought.
This probably won't get read, but I need a way to procrastinate my thesis :) I can't say much about the financial aid policies of lesser institutions, but I do know my college's financial aid policies pretty well, and the other elite institutions have been catching up to us lately. Just some rough figures for Princeton, the median income for a family on financial aid here is $90,000/year, and the average family on financial aid only pays $10,000/year to Princeton. Our aid policies are all need-based, so it depends on your exact financial situation, but I'm guessing that "upper-middle class" will be somewhere in that range. Also, education is an investment, so you might also want to consider student loans. Princeton doesn't make you take out a loan as part of the aid package either, but if you need a loan to help cover the family contribution, they are available.
:)
The best advice I can give you is, for the most part, apply to colleges without looking at the price tag. Then, when you get your acceptances, look at the aid awards and make a decision then.
Oh, and if you're interested in CS, I just have to say that I'm currently taking Brian Kernighan's class, and it's awesome
I went to a big name college for a year and regretted it greatly. There wasn't anything wrong with it, but it wasn't the amazing experience I thought it should be for the price. I was young and foolish, and didn't fully comprehend the meaning of $30,000 a year. I could have gone to a state school for free, or gotten a bachelor's degree in the military while getting paid. But no, I choose to assume massive amounts of debt from unscrupulous lenders. Still kicking myself for that one.
I took classes at my local community college during high school, and got as much or more value from them as I did from the brand name school. The community college actually wound up being free, but even at sticker price, it's a tiny fraction of the cost of a private college.
Particularly for a good major, like CS (as opposed to a burger-flipper, like History, I wanted to major in History once, can't for the life of my remember why) state schools have some of the best programs. If you pay attention to the universities that are involved with your favorite OSS project, or publishing the fascinating new research you read about on Slashdot, at least half are state schools, probably more. Sure, MIT's doing great stuff, but what about Oregon State University? Take a look at the OSU Open Source Lab, and tell me that wouldn't be an awesome place to go to school!
Also, if you're a self-taught techie, which most techies are, you'll understand the value of books, online resources, and the ever-insightful FreeNode IRC network, which are available no matter where you go to school.
Something else to be aware of is that the world of programming is such that a lot of what you learn in ANY CS program will not fully prepare you for a career in computer science. I know a lot of guys who took FORTRAN, COBOL, and PASCAL in college, and did very well in them. Those skills have exactly zero value today, and that's going to happen to all of us working in IT. What you know today will be outmoded within 1-10 years, guaranteed. The principles may be applicable to the new material. But regardless, once you get you CS degree, whether it's from MIT, OSU, ITT, or CGNU, you're going to have keep hitting the books. And it will be your ability to teach yourself, not the initials of the people who once taught you, that will determine your future employability and viability.
If that seemed tangential, wait till you read the rest.... If the price tag says "$20,000" or more, look for the scantily-clad, nubile slave girls who will be feeding you all your meals. If they're not really, really hot, save your money. Get a cheaper degree, and THEN get your own scantily-clad, nubile slave girls who are really, really hot. You gotta have your priorities in order.
Something else I learned that I'd like to pass on, regardless of what your parents say, college really is about sex, which is another strike against MIT. Attractive women major in Education and Psychology, not Mathematics. It's not that Math nurdettes aren't hot, there just aren't enough of them to go around.
I don't mean to mock you. I respect your ambition; I think it's awesome that you're getting into programming this early. And I'm sure MIT would be a great incubator for your nascent talents, but there are other important aspects of life that are also very enriching. While my education at the anonymous big name school was a waste, I made a lot of friends, I got away from my parents and learned who I really was, and I met an amazing woman who I chose to spend the rest of my life with. On the one hand, my experience was a disaster, but on the other hand it was amazing. But I think if I'd found a school in my price range, I might have been able to have the amazing without the disaster.
One of the most enduring and universal truths I discovered on this adventure was this: DEBT SUCKS. If you continue your ascent to academic upper-echelons, and do graduate work at yet another prestigious university, or if you abandon school to pursue your dream of bec
Many of the big-name universities like Caltech and MIT offer hefty financial aid packages. I recommend that you apply and see what you get.
Keep in mind that schools like MIT and Caltech aren't for everyone, even if you are accepted and get enough financial aid to afford it. I graduated from Caltech, but I did not enjoy my time as a student. It was too much work, and I'm not as passionate about math and science as most other techers. After the struggle to keep up and get good grades, I think I would have retained more if I had gone to an easier school. However, I do have an impressive Caltech diploma that makes it easier for me to get in the door when applying for jobs.
My ex-girlfriend is a finalist in the determination for the Stokes scholarship (we're still good friends) and the thing about the scholarship is that 1) You have to major in one of IIRC 3 fields, Math, EE, or CS and 2) you really are stuck with the NSA once you take their offer - if you decide to work for someone else after you graduate, you have to pay the NSA all of what was owed. It's a great opportunity, but some people may not want that - just be careful and read the fine print with that scholarship. ;)
You need to give yourself some options! There are plenty of schools that are good enough for you!
First, there are plenty of MIT-class schools in the US.
Stanford is in the center of Silicon Valley, and is where the first GUI and computer mouse were invented! On a side note, I work very close to Stanford, and I've been to events where Vint Cerf (lead the TCP-IP projects) and Douglas Engelbert (invented the mouse and GUI) were present.
Berkeley is about an hour north of Silicon Valley, and has a culture similar to MIT. They also like to get out-of-state people. BSD (the open-source unix that MacOS uses) came from Berkeley.
Second, most reigons have tech schools that are excellent. I ended up going to Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), which is very well known in the Northeastern US. (It's about 1 hour west of MIT.) You can look at Rensellere (sorry if I spelt it wrong,) RIT, Case-Western, CMU, UMass Amhearst, some of the California State Schools...
I've worked with very smart people who went to school in Ohio, Michigan, ect.
Third, don't forget that you can always transfer into another school after a semester, year, ect.
Finally: Don't forget that Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerman (Facebook) both dropped out of Harvard. Harvard and MIT are a short bus ride apart, and share student events. (I went to a concert at MIT as a guest of a Harvard student.)
The fact is that there are many ways to achieve your life goals, and many schools are capable of getting you there. If you're smart and determined, you'll be successful...
No, I will not work for your startup