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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."
In the end your own talent matters more than where you go.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
My brother is an IT consultant, he says the contract job opening has been consistently high and the unemployment is quite low in that field. However his skill set is mainly in coding on the PeopleSoft API. Comp Sci degree is not required for that job. Wonder how many high school students flock comp sci thinking of coding jobs? How many are going to confronted with concepts like P and NP problem sets and equivalences and find that harder than calculus?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The world is as it is, but, it is my desire that these tips were directed at (and people expected them to be directed at) the "children" (adults) applying and not the parents.
From the article:
It also helps to be a girl. At Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, for example, only 14% of the computer science majors are women, so it's easier for female applicants to stand out from the pack. [...]
What kind of advice does that lead to?
"MISC NOTES FROM APPLICANT: He walks like a girl, swims like a girl and talks like a girl! Also he likes being called Ada!"
Don't be such an asshole.
College rewards those who have the ambition to do the work, not those who are just good at passing tests.
Yep, though I still think test grades are weighted too much in college courses. I don't care what the discipline is, a one hour test over all the material does NOT approximate "a day in the life" of someone who's mastered that material.
PS I hate tests, standardized crap tests infinitely more than other tests.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
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.)
Looking back to when I was in high school, I had no idea what I wanted out of college or what I really wanted to do with my life. By my last year in high school, I had been an unpaid summer intern at a software company and taken AP Computer Science, but even then, I really wasn't sure. I _thought_ I wanted to study Computer Science, but I had no idea how hard the theory courses would be or if I had any hope of becoming a competent programmer. When I was in high school, I thought that after a semester or two of college CS courses, I might change my major after deciding it wasn't what I had hoped for. In the end, everything turned out well and I did get a CS degree, but that doesn't happen to everyone.
As a highschooler, I also was misinformed about the quality of education I would receive at different schools. The misconception is that only at an ivy league school or other similarly ranked private school will I get a solid education. I applied to several top-level CS schools but ultimately went to an in-state highly ranked public school since it was much cheaper. There are plenty of good public schools that offer strong CS programs -- MIT, Stanford, et. al. are good, but there are many others that also meet a high quality threshold. I came out of undergrad as a strong programmer with a solid understanding of the theory of computation, in part because of my schooling, but also because I was willing to learn. Internships also helped -- these were especially helpful in gaining employment.
Look at Mark Zuckerberg, do you think he managed Facebook because of the superior comp-sci education he got at Harvard? No, it was because of the connections he made and the people he collaborated with. It's the same with any of the 'elite' schools, the real value is that you will either get to know some very smart people, or some people with access to a lot of money or ideally both that is the real payoff for going to such schools.
The other comments are correct that talent and a good mentor can give you what you need to build skill, and that the degree itself really just gets you into your first job with experience getting you your next job, but it's the connections these schools provide that help make the difference between getting a good job and building a world-class career or company.
SATs are a filter. They don't get you in. If you get a 1600 (or whatever the max is these days) you're now on par with 10,000 other kids who also got a 1600.
The valedictorian at my highschool, 5.0 GPA (AP scale), 1600 SAT, smartest guy I know, got rejected from MIT. He ended up going to U Penn, now works at Google. Another girl got into MIT with lower GPA and SAT, but she had like 400 extracurriculars and was involved in everything. Just goes to show it's not all grades that count.
Unless you're planning on getting one degree (bachelor's) and trucking out of academia for life, don't go to a big name university for undergrad. They're expensive and the material and lessons do not change enough to warrant the cost.
If you *are* planning on getting one degree and trucking out of academia for life...still don't go to a big name U. You probably know exactly what you want to study, so apply to a program that's well known for that degree. There's still no need to hit a top 10 college in that case because undergrad material really isn't ground breaking stuff. (It can be, in the later classes, and in those cases you're walking the line toward further academia.)
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
Just crack their admissions system and approve your application. While you're at it, give yourself a scholarship.
If admissions are at an all time high, then why is Microsoft and Google still pushing for exceptions for more visas for foreign workers? Corporate officials keep complaining that there aren't enough CS grads and yet, the schools say otherwise.
I've managed to carve out a pretty successful IT career graduating from a big state university, in a completely unrelated field (chemistry.) The thing that seemed to help most was the practical experience I got during school (tech support was my student job), and graduating in the late 90s helped. That said, recruiters weren't falling all over themselves to hire me like they might a grad from CMU, UIUC, Stanford, etc. It took work to get my first job, it was a crappy one, but every job thereafter has been won based on skill (and decent interview skills.) I do systems integration work rather than software development, and a good part of my job falls back on critical thinking skills and the ability to creatively solve a problem without infinite money, hardware or compute time. You gain that experience IMO, by doing what I did -- riding out the dotcom boom in a "boring" field where I could learn as much as possible about a wide array of systems and concepts. I wasn't an HTML millionaire, but I managed to get through 2000-2001 with marketable skills that kept me employed.
So, is a big-name school worth it for a CS degree? I think not, and here's why:
- If you believe the IT field is shrinking, and you'll probably have to take a lower wage to do what you want, then you shouldn't blow all your money on an expensive school. Especially if you need loans, you'll be paying for that education for a very long time.
- "Reputation enhancement" that you get from the big name probably isn't the same as what you get in other degrees/fields. If you graduate with an MBA from an Ivy-league school, you are almost guaranteed to make a few high level connections that will get you ahead faster than your peers. Some jobs like investment banking or management consulting are very difficult to get into without big-name school recognition, simply because they're a ticket to instant riches and kind of a closed club. Some "elite" tech companies like Google might place a premium on your educational pedigree, but unless you have your heart set on working there, it's probably not going to matter much.
- Recruitment is easier at big name schools, because large corporations seem to just send people to collect a few new grads based on the fact that they went to that school...at all levels of work. So, the difference might be "hand in your resume and watch the offers pour in" versus "hustle and pound the pavement yourself." If you can handle that for your first job, you don't have to do that for the second if you've managed to gain any marketable skills in the first.
Here's something else to consider -- I didn't do CS, but knew a lot of people who did. Very few people end up working as "computer scientists" doing the low level theoretical stuff. In fact, the secret is that business IT is full of contractors/consultants who make huge amounts of money doing work in some obscure niche. SAP implementations, Oracle DBAs (good ones,) and guru level network guys come to mind here. Think about the places you've worked where they parachuted some consultant in to work on fixing some problem. That guy probably makes $150+ an hour, and works 8 months out of the year.simply because he fills an immediate need for some weird combination of skills. You certainly don't need to be a computer scientist to figure out Oracle's garbage dump of a documentation collection [1], or solve a thorny OS problem. You just need to have a head for problem solving and the ability to travel anywhere at a moment's notice (perfect for a recent grad.)
Also, as noted in many other places, the cost of a college education keeps going up every year. Big name schools can charge more. You have to think of it as an investment, in terms of future payback. Do you pay, let's say, $50K at a state school or $200K at a name brand school? Are you reasonably guaranteed to make back to $150K difference and way more? If not, then don't do it!
[1] Oracle's a perfect example of what I'm talking about. First rule is that you can't properly install or tune an Oracle system without
The advantage of going to a more elite school is that your peers, on average, are going to be smarter and generally more accomplished. This ripples down in many ways, including a faster paced, more in depth curriculum, better resources, better professors, and, perhaps most importantly, connections & relationships for networking that can last a lifetime.
Not saying there aren't smart, capable people at the less elite schools, but generally those who claim it doesn't matter where you go are those who really didn't have a choice.
Another girl got into MIT with lower GPA and SAT, but she ...
... was a girl.
fixed that for you.
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.)
SATs are a filter. They don't get you in. If you get a 1600 (or whatever the max is these days) you're now on par with 10,000 other kids who also got a 1600.
Yes 2400 is the max these days... I've been involved with admissions with my school (one of the top-10 depending on the list) and certainly SAT is used as a coarse filter (once above a certain level, the actual score is mostly irrelevant)... Also note that 2400 doesn't necessarily mean "perfect", every year the test is scaled so it may be that missing 1 question is still 2400. Also with the "free-form" math, and essay, it isn't they same test as in the old days... Also, most selective schools also require the "subject" SAT tests (used to be called SAT II, and if compsci, probably at least math 2 and one of the science tests).
Schools are generally more interested in grades/GPA than SAT scores, but even those are conditional (e.g., what courses you took vs GPA is more important than actual numerical GPA, say IB, Honors, or AP classes vs standard classes or underwater basket weaving).
The valedictorian at my highschool, 5.0 GPA (AP scale), 1600 SAT, smartest guy I know, got rejected from MIT. He ended up going to U Penn, now works at Google. Another girl got into MIT with lower GPA and SAT, but she had like 400 extracurriculars and was involved in everything. Just goes to show it's not all grades that count.
It's a little more subtle than just 400 extracurriculars. Typical "selective" schools tend to look for long-running extracurriculars, not just bulk (which tend to either be "fake" because nobody can spend 100 hours a day on extracurriculars, or if not actually fake, not representative of actual participation). Just pick a few extracurriculars and do them for > 3-4 years (starting in middle school), and show some commitment (lead developer for an open source project, lead chair in a band instrument, president of the chess team, even treasurer of NHS, attending math olympics, physics bowl, programming competition events or whatever).
Getting someone letter of recommendation from someone involved in the extracurricular is a really good idea so that they don't know it was some sort of "trophy" extracurricular (where you are a member to list it on your application, but don't really do anything). The generic guidance counselor "this is a smart kid" recommendation isn't really that impressive to a selective school because almost everyone gets one of those. Of course if your counselor knows you really well or can compare you to some other folks that ended up going to the school you are applying to, perhaps the counselor can write a better recommendation.
Just saying...
FWIW, there appears to be a better correlation to ultimate success on the schools that you apply to (not get in), than the school you acutally end up graduating from. So if you are the type that is ambitious enough to apply to a selective school, and you actually do it (rather than treat this whole admissions thing as a "thought experiment"), you might be enough of a do-er (or at least enough self esteem) that will make your more likely to be successful in the future, regardless of the school you attend (or drop out of).
And as a total aside, you have the best chance of getting into any program as a so-called "legacy" admit. Just make it past the filter levels and go to the same school as a parent, uncle, aunt or sibling. A "legacy" admit can get you into nearly any school you have the "pedigree" for... :^(
You'll never have the respect of people who have put in the time & work & rigor of earning a degree. Never.
I have a CS degree from a school with a good CS rep.
Yet I have a lot more respect for a clever and talented programmer regardless of path they have taken, than the MANY people I met at college who had no passion at all for CS or programming.
Just because you can make it through college means nothing to anyone who has seen how the system works.
I can use absolutes too. You are simply the exception that proves my rule.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Step 2) Don't be white
Step 3) Don't be male
Step 4) Don't have rich parents
Welcome to the program.
How Gods good name is a CS Major suppose to compete with India & China? If you're that smart, why not just get a nice Math Major (they're practically the same thing anyway) and go off and do your own thing w/o the added stress?
By not being a replaceable code monkey? By not getting a CS degree and then, of all things, specialize in replaceable work like entry-level PHP development or Apache HTTP server admin (yeah, I've seen that title/role)?
The problem of off-shoring software work is present, of course. But it is not the boogeyman retards paint it to be. Never has been.
I honestly don't see how surgeons and engineers have much difference between them when it comes to dealing with people. Remember, surgeons aren't general practitioners; they don't spend all their time meeting with patients, chit-chatting with them about their lives and health problems, how their kids are, etc. Surgeons are specialists, and get paid when they're in an operating room working on an unconscious patient; the only people they have to "deal with" are the surgical staff they work with: a few nurses, an anesthesiologist, etc. Engineers don't spend all their time by themselves, they have to talk with other engineers, talk with their manager, sit in meetings with the other engineers, etc. Granted, they have a lot of individual working time, but there's a certain amount of teamwork there too, plus dealing with management. And unlike the surgeon, who has a nice office with a door where he can have quiet if he needs it, the engineer doesn't have that luxury; he has a shitty "open work area" with half-height cubicle walls that he has to share with a bunch of other workers, including several loud-mouths that love to come by and chit-chat with his coworkers, and the work area is so loud that it's impossible to think unless you wear headphones. But then when you wear headphones, other jerks constantly come up behind you to ask you inane questions and tap you on the shoulder, nearly giving you a heart attack when you're deep in concentration. I'll bet the surgeon doesn't have to worry about that when he's got his hands inside someone's body cavity and is fiercely concentrating on making the incision at exactly the right place so the patient doesn't die; his support staff knows exactly how to talk to him or respond to him to avoid interrupting his concentration.
If surgeons break even with engineers after only a measly 5 years, how far ahead in earnings do you think the surgeon will be after 30 years of work? The surgeon will have saved millions, while the engineer will have been unemployed for a decade or more because companies can get younger engineers cheaper, or just send the work offshore, so the engineer will have to make do with a retail job.
As for fun, the surgeon gets to spend his career saving peoples' lives. The engineer gets to spend his short career (before he's too old to work, at 40) working on idiotic projects that some dumbass in upper management dreams up to copy some other, more successful company, but then these projects are shit-canned before they're complete. The engineer will be lucky if any of his projects ever actually get used by end-users.