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How To Get Into an Elite Comp-Sci Program
alphadogg writes "With early applications to elite colleges at an all-time high, the nation's highest-rated undergraduate computer science programs are bracing for an uptick in applications between now and January. High school seniors are facing stiffer-than-ever competition when applying to the nation's top computer science programs this fall. But admissions officers and professors at elite tech schools can offer tips aimed at helping your child get accepted come spring."
I take it you didn't take statistics from an elite school. Since 'elite' schools have tougher acceptance criteria, it only makes sense their students would perform better. To my knowledge, there has never been a true 'double blind' study, where students with similar grades and performance levels in high school were compared between community colleges and 'elite' schools. Please post one if there is one.
I will admit that there are a few companies that specifically seek out and recruit from elite schools, but they will see through anyone that doesn't have talent. So, at best, going to an elite school really only provides someone a slight edge. And they will only take 'the best of the best', so unless someone is sure they are in the top 10% already, good luck with that degree really amounting to more than from a community college.
As long as someone can click on the box 'I have a degree', that's all HR will care about. The manager might be impressed by an elite degree, he might be intimidated by it, or he might turn it away because of expected salary costs. These things can work against you also.
I remember talking with a VP of programming about 10 years ago, wondering why someone with a masters in marine biology would want to be a computer programer. He didn't even interview the kid. But then again, the VP had his PhD in neural networks, and was working for a financial company and was fired after two years because he had terrible people skills. A lot of good his degree did him, he was one of the worst managers I'd ever seen. The company I worked with hired a financial wizard from some elite school with a very impressive background, and just fired him 6 months ago for the his lack of people skills and terrible work ethic.
If someone has the money to blow, there is nothing wrong with an elite school. But I sure as hell wouldn't spend a lot of money I didn't have in the hopes of making up for it later.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
I completed my BS in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University ( consistently ranked #2 or #3 in CS), and I'm currently in the master's program there. How did I get in? I'm not sure. I've never felt like I was smart enough to be at this school, and I think this is a common conception among students here. We all feel like the admissions staff made some kind of mistake. I think it all comes down to showing that you are really passionate about computers, and have taken initiative to do stuff on your own. What did I do in high school? Mostly, I just screwed around, but I did do a lot of programming projects on my own: video games, web apps, robots. That's what we talked about most during my interview. Not my grades, or my SAT scores (though they were pretty good.)
I had the unfortunate experience of going through Stanford for a MSCS just before the "AI Winter". The "expert systems" (remember "expert systems"? ) profs were running the department. It was becoming clear that expert systems weren't going anywhere, and the faculty was in denial about that. They'd set up a 5-year "knowledge engineer" program, with a combination of computer science theory, philosophy, and psychological interviewing technique to write rules for expert systems (Where are those people now?) I had one exam where a question was "Does a rock have intentions"?
It took over a decade for the CS department to recover. After I graduated, the CS department was moved from Arts and Sciences, where it had been mostly autonomous, to Engineering, where it had adult supervision. It wasn't until the DARPA Grand Challenge forced Stanford to bring in machine learning people from CMU that the department really started moving forward again. Now they're making real progress.
(This is not well known, but Tony Tether, the director of DARPA, used the Grand Challenge to kick some ass in academic AI. The schools receiving funding from DARPA were told that if the private sector did better than they did, DARPA was turning off their grant money in AI. That's why the big schools put entire CS departments on the Grand Challenge.)