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?"

OH NOES!

[Plazmid]

Never ever go to a liberal arts college, they make you write PAPERS about POEMS some DEAD GUY wrote.

depends...

[Anonymous Coward]

do you want to go to school with a bunch of geeks or a bunch of hippies?

that is the dilemma you are facing. it's a double-edged sword.

Re:OH NOES!

[Plazmid]

Although you might develop some 1337 Markov Chain skills at liberal arts colleges, given the amount of papers you have to write. In fact, I used Mark V. Shaney to write my English papers for me in highschool. They never caught on that my papers were algorithmically generated, and I received A's on all of them.

Re:Where will you be in 20 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

meanwhile in reality...

both the liberal arts and tech grads are stuck in cubicles, but the liberal arts grad can make wittier whips at the water tank and has an extra smirk when he sips his latte.

Re:Not very

[xtracto]

Here,

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take some of them

Re:depends...

[gbjbaanb]

liberal art school... full of, well, girls. All of which have their heads filled with romance, poetry, and a total lack of understanding about anything real world. Go there :-)
 

Maybe a story will help.

[DieByWire]

Maybe the story of an invention will shed a little light.

Once upon a time there was an invention.

The inventors showed it to a scientist. He said, "Cool, why does it work?"

Then they showed it to a engineer. He said, "Cool, how does it work?"

Then they showed it to a business major. He said, "Cool, how much can we sell it for?"

Then they showed it to a liberal arts major. She said, "Cool..."

"You want fries with that?"

The "Where?"

[csrster]

The "Where?" is important, but the "Select" and "From" are equally important.

Re:depends...

[vain gloria]

do you want to go to school with a bunch of geeks or a bunch of hippies?

that is the dilemma you are facing. it's a double-edged sword.

Either way the smell is going to be terrible.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Tech schools have girls?

Re:What?

[Aqualung812]

What? You can finally major in Counter Strike?

Yes. I have a PhD in CS with a focus on pwning n00bs. You're welcome to attend any of my courses:

CS 100: Strategic Placement (Camping)

CS 200: Circuits & Timers (Bomb Defusing)

CS 300: Psychology (Greifing)

Re:Great programmers have formal training

[ciggieposeur]

You're not going to get the plum job at Google unless you know what a fixed-point function is and what it's good for.

What is a "fixed-point function" ?

Not true.

[raehl]

Women at the technical college will be hotter. But then again, fantasy women always are.

Got me.

[raehl]

But I don't work at Google.

Re:Liberal Arts Has Its Place

[dheltzel]

Pansy. In my day we did CS 24/7 and liked it. You youngsters are too soft, you need that to toughen you up.

Re:Liberal Arts Has Its Place

[hesiod]

In other words, "GET OUT NOW, IT WILL KILL YOU!!!!! But have fun, it'll be great."

Re:depends...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in a CS program at a UC, and I can tell you that the smell is a huge issue for me. I can't stand working around most of my classmates. They reek like they've just got off a 20 hour WoW raid... ALL THE TIME!!