For CS Majors, How Important Is the "Where?"

An anonymous reader writes "I'm a high school senior who is trying to pick a college to attend. I've been accepted by two comparably selective schools. One is a highly regarded tech school, and the other is a highly regarded liberal arts institution. I prefer the liberal arts college, but the computer science program is small, graduating about a dozen students a year. The course load is heavily theory based; programming languages are taught in later years. How much would the tech school vs. non tech school matter? Are CS majors from non-tech school considered inferior? What would an HR department think? What would you think if you were hiring?"

Comments

HR departments don't care

[BadAnalogyGuy]

First, HR departments don't care where your degree is from.

Once you understand that, you need to understand yourself and your goals. What do you want to do with your degree? Do you want to be a sysadmin (face it, you can go to Devry and do that job competently), programmer, manager, researcher? These are things that should influence your decision. If you want to work in a research department (say PARC or MSR), you will need postgraduate degrees, and the best thing in that case is to choose the tech school. Other than that, you would probably have more fun at the liberal arts college.

You should also think about what kind of college experience you want. Do you want to go to a large school with many opportunities to meet a very diverse set of people? Do you want to go to a small school and be more than just another face in the crowd? Do you want to be involved in fraternities? Which school will give you the school experience you want?

Where are the schools located? Do you want to live in a small college town? How about a big city? Do you want the college to be your primary connection to the world, or do you want to explore outside the gates? How much cold weather can you stand? How much crime can you stand? Which school has the best location for you?

There are a great many factors in choosing a school. Do not limit your choices because you heard that one program is better than another. If you really don't know what you want to do yet, don't make the choice on program reputation alone. If you know you want the best program, then maybe that is the best choice, but in the end the "better" program is not going to prepare you much better than the "worser" program.

Not very

[Narmacil]

I'm a second year ME major at Virginia Tech, and about half of my friends are CS majors. From what I've seen here it does not really matter where you go, but what projects you've worked on and completed. Also whether or not you have a 3.0 or higher GPA. You really have to be careful when you're going for a CS degree straight out of high school, because most people who are 'good' with computers and like video games and web design don't really want to do CS. Of course if you're all into algorithms, complex math and finding the most efficient sorting method, then by all means go for it. When trying to get jobs typically there will be a short technical part of the interview and then a general interview, and as long as you nail the general stuff in your classes you should be Ok for the technical part, and the rest rides on your personality. This of course is based on what I've gleaned from working on our annual engineering expo (job fair). You might want to go with the liberal arts school just so you can get a more rounded education, as smaller departments generally mean alot more individual attention, check into the school's hire rate out of college from their CS department, as that is normally the best indicator of whether or not its a school you want to go to if you're focused on getting a job. Don't forget to enjoy life along the way, if either of the school's campuses are miserable, you'll be living there for the next 4 years :D Good luck with your decision

Re:Tough call

[cnoocy]

if sign language counts as a "foreign language", then so should any advanced programming language ;) You may want to educate yourself about ASL before you make blanket statements like that. Programming languages aren't anything like it.

True, Experience matters

[jettawu]

I graduated from a smaller university that isn't really known for its computer science or any technical schools. I now work for a mobile phone game company and prior to that, I worked for Amazon. A friend of mine graduated from the same university with the same major and is now working for Lockheed Martin.

youll find your job. experience outdoes almost any college name. At the bottom line, I agree with the parent, that experience is huge. On top of that, how well you interact with people and "market yourself" to potential employers matters a lot too (the friend who works for Lockheed got his initial position there from a very impressive conversation with a recruiter at a job fair where the recruiter wasn't even really looking for anyone new).

Re:OH NOES!

[Nursie]

Switch to a european (specifically British) University.

We don't do a single thing that's not related to the course. My CS degree was three years of CS theory and practice along with software engineering. Perfect.

Also you're legally allowed a beer here.

Re:Maybe a story will help.

[DieByWire]

Woah woah woah. Why is the liberal arts major a girl?

Two X chromosones.