For CS Majors, How Important Is the "Where?" 991
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?"
HERE !!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Have Fun (Score:3, Insightful)
Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
The answer to this and most other decisions. (Score:5, Insightful)
However, in my country, right now, there's no chance of not finding a nice job with any kind of CS higher education.
Also, take into account the importance of your choice of college will fade after some years. At 45, your rank (?) won't really depend on your college but on your skill and abilities.
It's Not Gonna Matter (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you need to ask yourself if you want to go to a school where they force you into requirements like taking one anthropology course or two upper division reading courses. You're other choice (the tech school) is having all your courses picked for you but never accidentally stumbling onto something you love or have never experienced.
Me, I opted for the liberal arts college and will never regret it. Sure, my coworkers who went to a tech school get to brag about how intensive their CS coursework was but I've learned what they know (if not more) a couple years into my job.
Do what you want to do, what you think will be fun and exciting. The place ain't gonna matter, what you put into it will and will be evident to anybody that talks to you.
Liberal Arts Has Its Place (Score:5, Insightful)
In the L.A. school, you'll have to educate yourself. The tech school will let you bounce ideas off of other students as well as the more numerous professors.
This from a Liberal Arts major
That, and experience (Score:5, Insightful)
But a healthy presence in open source projects to gain experience, as well as being active in your local tech community can go a long way. Having the degree is fine - having it with experience is even better.
Where will you be in 20 years? (Score:2, Insightful)
The liberal arts school will teach you a bunch of apparently useless abstractions and hands on programming will be considered an annoying little detail. You'll also learn a lot about long dead societies, peoples and languages. And other, less tangible things.
20 years out, the tech graduate will be working in a cubicle at a dead end job. The liberal arts student will be doing whatever he wants.
Chose what you like better (Score:5, Insightful)
Liberal Arts CS Minor thoughts (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd say that 90% of my useful software engineering skills came from my on the job learning. It's a question of what you want to do with your degree. My CS studies were a casual continuation of a personal passion, which in the end has turned into a career. I've also worked in finance (not as an engineer, but as an analyst), and find myself now in more a product management position with the ultimate goal of starting my own company. My liberal arts education has definitely helped me leverage technical skills in the business world. Some of my engineering focused friends have to work harder to not be pigeon-holed (i.e. go back for MBA's or Masters).
Employers Want Fast Learners & Good Communicat (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, I suspect you'll get a fair number of comments arguing against attending a liberal arts college. You're asking a Slashdot audience, so approach such comments with caution.
I've interviewed and hired some employees, and I have also interviewed dozens of students applying to one of America's most elite universities for admission (or much more often rejection). (I also had a similar decision to make at age 17.) Above all else I look for candidates who can learn quickly and who can communicate well. That second attribute is arguably less common among graduates from technical institutions, but communication starts with your resume (or a campus recruiting event, or whatever), not with the mere identity of your college, so I keep an open mind and would invite you to an interview if the signs are otherwise positive. I also look for inquisitiveness: are you a person who is inherently curious about the world? I look for other attributes, too, but those three are priorities.
But even before you get to an interview or apply for a job, do you know what you want to do when you grow up? A lot of prospective college students are not sure, and many or most change their minds. Some colleges provide more options than others if you do change your mind. I would recommend using college as a vehicle to explore your curiosities. That journey of exploration builds confidence, and confident, thoughtful people often interview better. If you are already sure about your path, great, go chase your dream. If you are not, then go explore what fascinates you to build your dream.
Good luck.
Re:It's Not Gonna Matter (Score:5, Insightful)
DIY: Good programmers are largely self-taught. (Score:2, Insightful)
It may be useful to hang around with other people at a university so that you can compare yourself with them and decide where you fit.
Find a School Near a Beach (Score:3, Insightful)
I went to the best tech school that accepted me (Rensselaer). I have this piece of wisdom to pass on: choose a school that's near a beach--Miami, California, whatever. The climate should be temperate all year round.
I went into the Air Force after I graduated, and since then, only one employer was impressed by the fact that I graduated from Rensselaer.
I would, however, suggest that you try to get a technical/engineering school that meets the above requirement of beach-i-ness.
To some it may seem like this post is meant to be funny. It's not. If I could do it all over again, I would choose the best technicial university that's near a beach in a temperate zone.
Advice from someone who hires programmers (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Seek a good internship/coop that allows you to develop practical experience. Many of these are one or two-semester gigs (or one or two summers). When I was in school, I had a 3.5 yr coop which was basically a long-term relationship with a local employer. That was hugely valuable, as by the time I graduated I had a ton of experience (even leading small projects). I would have gotten a full-time offer had that department not been closed down shortly after I left.
2) Work on some interesting hobby projects. School projects are often an interesting spring board, but consider ways to apply what you are learning to scratching some itch.
Personally, I don't give the candidate's school a whole lot of weight. Maybe it gets my attention when looking at a sea of applicants, but I consider each applicant on his/her own merit as demonstrated by the resume, cover letter, and other submitted materials. The most crucial aspect of the whole process is actually the on-site interview. Everything else is just a screening mechanism.
What I look for most is what Joel Spolsky from Joel on Software refers to as "Smart and Gets Things Done." For me, that means someone who is interested in programming because they think it's cool and provides an outlet for creative problem solving, and someone who has demonstrated an ability to tackle problems in the past.
Therefore, I would recommend that you choose a college based on the total experience you will get. Consider everything college offers: learning about a lot of topics, meeting new people, exposure to new ideas, a new level of freedom and independence, moving to a new place to be exposed to new culture, etc... Many of the classes that had the most impact on me and were most memorable were far outside the CS curriculum. Consider what opportunities are available there with each school. Think about what it will be like to live in each of the cities the colleges are located in. Think about what there could be to explore and discover there. Choose the school that is best for you on all of those fronts - don't limit yourself to just choosing a CS program.
In a few years where you got your CS degree won't matter so much, but the memories and experiences you got while in school will last your entire lifetime. Many of those experience will be unrelated to what happened in the classroom.
Re:Where will you be in 20 years? (Score:2, Insightful)
That doesn't make it better than a liberal arts school. It has its own strong points, such as breadth outside of the major (which engineering schools are extremely weak at providing). But anyway, a community-college tech school is vastly different than a traditional tech school.
Re:It's Not Gonna Matter (Score:4, Insightful)
Me I opted for the tech school, and I regret it. Your college experience is partly about your career options, and partly about an important stage in your personal development, and I'm thoroughly of the opinion that the liberal arts school will serve you better in the latter regard. You'll be exposed to more diverse ways of thinking, you'll probably come out better adjusted, and your chances of getting some good experiences with wine, women, and song (figuratively speaking) will be much higher.
If it is me doing the hiring (and sometimes it is), all other things being equal I take the liberal arts guy. My experience with tech school graduates has left me soured on them (even being one myself). Their personal shortcomings (read 'huge ego problems') often outweigh any technical benefits they have to offer. Anyway, when I'm hiring I ask people to send me a portfolio, and that matters more than anything else they have to send.
As for the career stuff, you won't suffer having gone to a liberal arts school. If you do some creative work while you're in school, that'll count much more than the name of the school you attended. Sometimes the big-name tech school helps you get an interview, but I don't think it does much more than that.
Re:The answer to this and most other decisions. (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, the work force is nice in that your extra-curric skills _do_ count for more than they did getting into college. So if you go learn Linux backwards and forwards through attending a LUG or something, that's going to be a tremendous asset to you.
No, you have it ALL wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
University is about "networking"; building contacts who will help progress your career. The actual degree or even qualification itself are almost completely irrelevant. At Uni you are creating your "old boy's network". People who will later give you work contracts, quash driving offences, introduce you to politicians etc.
With that in mind you should take a look at the type of people going to each institution. Are they middle class, working class, wealthy etc. What are the entrance fees?
I recommend the Tech college (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Some companies look for someone from a good tech college. If they are doing resume mining you can be sure they aren't looking for U of Nowhere. Also for example my current employer has half its staff from the same school. They see the school name and have an idea of what someone graduating from there should know.
2) If you get a more specialized interest as you go through school you'll be more likely to find courses/research supervisors for your interest. If you are in a small faculty you might get lucky. But if you are in a large one you'll almost certainly have someone in any niche you are thinking about.
3) You'll get a wider peer group from which to use for future job info, business partners etc. Plus in a small school you might date the one girl in your program and have it not work out. At a big school you can choose between several geek girls, or go to another department.
4) You also can be more selective with your friends/project team mates, you don't have much choice with a small program because either you will clump up with a couple people and do projects together, or some other group with form and force you into a group by default. You don't want to be forced to work with people you can't stand. It happens enough in the real world why experience more of it than you have too? ;)
What is your goal? (Score:4, Insightful)
I went to a college that had a smaller CS program, but it was decently broad in nature. By the time I got to the 400-level classes there were 15 or less people in each class, but the classes also represented a great number of sub-fields in CS; from advanced classes in AI, Distributed Computing, and Signal Processing to a number of more esoteric courses they were trying out in web and 3D modeling. Not to mention the ability to pick up business classes or additional math or science classes (or even Liberal Arts courses) that could allow you to pick up a minor or further explore another interest.
If your primary goal is a CS degree, I agree that it rarely matters to an interviewer where you received that degree (though it does matter on occasion). However, the breadth of courses available from the institution and the number of classes they will _allow_ you to take from your major (as opposed to required credits from other branches and required elective credits from other branches) are going to have an impact on the level of knowledge you attain and the number of sub-fields you will get to explore. Additionally, you should look into how much the school supports internships. One of the things that helped me best during my college education was the fact that I was working for pay on real projects, which then gave me a different perspective on the course material.
Also, if you are considering a highly recommended liberal arts school and a highly recommended tech school, why not look at one or two state colleges that have good CS departments? The price range (even out of state) may be in the same range you are looking at for that liberal arts college, the fact that it is a state school will likely have brought in students for a wide variety of degrees, but (if you use CS program quality as criteria) there will also be a greater breadth of CS classes available, allowing you to learn about multiple sub-fields to better determine where you would like to go in CS.
Re:Have Fun (Score:4, Insightful)
> music works, its easier to pick up a musical instrument
Math is kinda like music. Programming is a lot like designing and building musical instruments. Theory is necessary to do it well, but theory alone will give you a violin which implodes when you tighten the strings.
c.
Re:It's Not Gonna Matter (Score:3, Insightful)
Emphasis on Fun (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong - half of college is about working your ass off, sleeping in the lab and submitting term papers 38 seconds before the deadline after having worked on them for three days straight (what smells like coffee and bacon?).
But the other half of it is meeting people and becoming an adult (if one is so fortunate as to be attending college immediately after high school in the conventional manner). If you have time, join any and every student organization that interests you - even if it doesn't fit your major. Talk to people. Make weekly attempts to eat the entire two pound burrito (goals are important). Wear sunscreen. Et cetera.
When you look back on college and don't chuckle out loud, then you didn't do it properly. You only get one chance.
Think long term (Score:3, Insightful)
Long term, your liberal arts college is probably going to give you a broader education, and set you up for a quicker career path to management, starting your own business or other broadening out from plain development, if that is what you want. It'll also offer more opportunities for liasing with hot chicks during your college years, which is not to be underestimated.
Short term, you might find that the initial job offers immediately after graduating offer better salaries, or are more forthcoming from the tech focused school, but that's more difficult to predict, and it could just as easily swing the other way.
Re:Liberal Arts Has Its Place (Score:5, Insightful)
Give very, very serious thought to going to the liberal arts school. In my case, the school has forced enough computer science, math, bio, engineering, physics, etc. down my throat that I've actually soured somewhat on the idea of having anything to do with computer science after graduation. If it's a top
I know it sounds weird, but if you do CS 24/7 (perhaps literally 20/7 for long stretches) there's going to be a time when you long for a course that will teach you about poetry, or history, or something completely unrelated to what you spend the rest of your time on. And there will be a good chance you're not going to be able to fit such a course in your schedule.
Also, keep in mind that many, many of the people at very good engineering schools are extremely socially maladapted. Sometimes staggeringly so. So you have to reconcile yourself with that, too.
Some people absolutely thrive at those sorts of colleges. But most, from what I've seen, just leave technically more proficient (though not much more so than if they went to a liberal arts school) and quite a bit more hollow.
Then again, if you do go to a technical school, I can tell you from quite a bit of anecdotal evidence that you're going to get preferential treatment in the hiring process with a huge name engineering school. I've personally had two interviewers confide in me post-selection that I was picked over (to me) obviously more qualified candidates because they didn't believe that someone from [X. State] could be better qualified than a person from [ABC] and that they had just assumed that I flubbed the interviews. So if you're truly unsure of your ability to make a name for yourself at a liberal arts college, you could at least leverage the branding power that the engineering school has.
If you do wind up at the engineering school, see if you can get attached to a research project as soon as possible. At most of the interesting places to work, saying "I have [x] papers published in [journal A], [journal B], and [journal C]" has way more sway -- even if the topics aren't related to the job -- than saying "I can do pointer arithmetic really fast in my head." If you decide to go to grad school, publications in your name make them start salivating when they see your application packet, because doing original research and writing about it is generally what grad school is about.
Christ, that was supposed to be a "I think liberal arts colleges are good" and turned into a novella. College really is what you a make of it, and you can do very well for yourself either place. Just make sure you find friends who are smarter than you and start hanging out with them. And then make sure you make friends who aren't technical majors at all, and hang out with them at least as often. To get perspective.
Re:Liberal Arts Has Its Place (Score:2, Insightful)
Good luck on your decision, and best of luck to you wherever you end up. You're going to do just fine.
Great programmers have formal training (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a lot of really good self-taught programmers out there, and they can write some pretty cool software. However, the truly elite programmers are the educated ones that can understand the principles that make it all work.
The really good employers know this. 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. Fog Creek Software doesn't want to hire you unless you really understand pointers and recursion. There's really neat jobs at Sun Microsystems that need you to DEEPLY understand object-orientation and algorithm analysis.
The number of people that can learn that stuff on their own is vanishingly small. Even if you can learn it by yourself, there's nothing like going through a rigorous 4-year program where you have these topics stuffed down your throat and drilled into you until you know it backwards and forwards. A good CS degree practically guarantees that you'll have a suite of kick-ass high-level skills by the time you graduate.
Yes, a good programmer will teach his (or herself) on a lot of topics. However, for many things there's just no substitute for a good old education.
Re:It's Not Gonna Matter (Score:5, Insightful)
As the GP mentioned, you only get to make a good impression once you have the interview. Getting to the interview is based first (and foremost) on networking (who you know). If you don't have connections, then you need to rely on your resume; fresh out of college, the school's reputation is one of the few hooks you have to land that interview. Companies tend to get many more applicants than they can reasonably interview, so some amount of cheap (however unfair) filtering is necessary.
Once you're in the interview, your resume serves largely to help the interviewer frame his questions.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:HR departments don't care (Score:2, Insightful)
Do you want to be a sysadmin (face it, you can go to Devry and do that job competently),
I was going to call you an idiot, but then I read the rest of your post, and it's entirely correct. So I am going to assume that by "sysadmin" you in fact meant "reboot monkey" and didn't feel like typing the extra characters.
I make six figures for doing sysadmin-type stuff for Very Large Companies with Very High Availability Requirements. Trust me, kids from DeVry don't and can't do my job. A good sysadmin needs skills from all three of those domains that you mentioned. There aren't a lot of people who can do that.
Aside from that, though, great post. Listen to him, article poster. Two supplementary notes:
1) Some companies and HR departments (mostly larger ones) do care about your GPA, so keep it above a 3.0 at minimum. 3.5 is best, but not always possible.
2) If your transcript, recommendations, and GRE scores are good enough, grad schools don't care where you went to school either. I went to a small Midwestern college because I wanted to be able to talk to my professors face-to-face. I graduated valedictorian and got in at every grad school I applied to, and I applied to the best programs in my field.
Finally, remember that you can always transfer. And if you're not happy with the place you choose, for God's sake, do it. Life's too short to be miserable.
Re:Tough call (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Liberal Arts Has Its Place (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say the 'where' is very important - but not for the usual reasons. Its possible to be just as successful either way -- but there's a reason you hear of more success stories from the big-name schools.
What it comes down to is standards. Its very difficult to maintain high standards in isolation. In a recognized/sought-after school you will usually face much more competition, more motivated and focused classmates. They are your competition for good grades (especially when graded on a curve) and at job fairs on campus. The result is that you get pushed harder (and you in turn are one of the people pushing your classmates to excell as well). Bottom line: if you want an A in Compilers in the big tech school you'll have to really know your shit inside out. If you want to get an A in the Liberal Arts school its a lot easier. At the end of it, you'll have much more airtight concepts if you've gone through the grind at the big school.
A long-term perk of the big school is that you'll make close friends from among this pool of competitors -- they help you keep your standards high even after school (as will your colleagues at work, etc. etc.)
Of course, all this advice is based on certain assumptions about your goals and career ambitions, and might not apply if the assumptions are invalid.
Re:Liberal Arts Has Its Place (Score:5, Insightful)
You're assuming that people at a liberal arts school don't know more than he does. It could be argued that by going to a LA school he is more likely will run into people who know things that he's not even aware he doesn't know.
Re:That, and experience (Score:3, Insightful)
Then I heard an interview with Bill Gates in which he implied MS hired all the top graduates from certain colleges. They were trying to establish relationships with other schools, but these were the only ones that had acceptable candidates. This was in conjunction with his assertion that there not enough CS majors in America, so MS had to import workers from other countries.
From informal observations, I also note that in certain parts of the country there are preferential schools for certain disciplines. For instance, if one wanted to be an engineer or a lawyer or an artist or writer, it is beneficial to choose the right school.
So yea, when you graduate it might matter. It depends if one plans to stay local or engage in a nation wide search. It depends if one can get into a big name college, or a state school is all that is available. It depends if one goes corporate or small business. But, above all else, choose a school that matches you personality. Choose a school that gives a renaissance education, if that is what you want, a technical education, if that is what you want, or a party education, though that is risky. If you wish the later, do not believe the surveys. Check the beer consumption statistics, and make sure to include the bible belt in your search. You will be surprised.
Re:OH NOES! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:OH NOES! (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a strong possibility, even a probability that you will not be programming for your entire life and you will need a skill set that serves you far beyond the technical focus of your major. As someone with some (limited) experience interviewing job candidates, IMO the ability to be thoughtful and articulate will serve better than narrow technical skill.
You have the rest of your life to gain technical skills, which in CS are constantly changing. Don't train yourself to be a specific cog in a machine, instead try to gain the ability to handle a wider variety of tasks.
What college is for (Score:2, Insightful)
1. Self-sufficiency. You need to be able to manage yourself and your affairs. Eating meals, prioritizing work, rest, exercise, and social life are all managed activities which your parents have been your partner with up til now. In college, you become your own ideal parent. You also learn to manage success (no gloating), failure (no despondency), disappointment (no self-pity), and courage (no quitting "just because").
2. Interpersonal relationships. You need to be able to navigate and function in a complex world, filled with a large variety of people. You'll learn better how to deal with people who are smarter, better-looking, more talented, less sophisticated, less academic, narrowly focussed, and weird. That's real life and you'd better have a sense of who and what you are to be able to develop and understand relationships with every one of them. And some of those people will be your professors, some will be other students, and some will be the people you meet in the college town. After college, they will be your boss, your co-workers, and your friends.
3. Individuality. Part of who you are is based on the history and perspective of culture, both your own and that of others. Your individualism is enhanced by understanding what has stimulated or constrained development, so that you can recognize, and then reduce or enhance, those cultural effects on your own development. Learning to "be who you are" is not easy.
4. Academic discipline. It is important for you to find something that captures your dreams, your aspirations, your interest and your commitment. To engage your mind in exploring some facet of life (whether english literature or computer language theory) creates a lifelong pursuit that becomes uniquely you. This study also gives you proficiency in recognizing and dealing with the unknown, and then applying your energy to learning what you want or need to know.
5. Job skills. The most important job skills are listed above, in order of importance. This last category includes the non-technical (writing your ideas clearly, speaking articulately, organizing and categorizing information in a meaningful way) and technical (both historical and current theory and practice of your chosen discipline).
6. Specific knowledge and practice. You'll learn the foundation in these areas, but they are also the most ephemeral part of your college education.
So, evaluate yourself. Where are you in these areas and where do you want or need to grow the most? Then ask, which of my college choices will give me the most opportunity to develop?
So are horrible programmers. (Score:3, Insightful)
How many athletes do you know who started playing a sport in college? How many musicians? Even things like Chemistry, Math, Medicine, Law - you started learning the basics of those careers in junior high and high school.
Programming isn't any different. People who are going to be great at programming started doing it in high school (or earlier) and are going to get a more structured education out of college. I already knew how to program before I got to college, but I learned a lot of stuff I would not have learned on my own by going - and I wasn't even in a straight CS program.
Someone who shows up at college with no programming experience is likely not going to be a GREAT programmer. It's too late. They're competing against people who have been programming for 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 years. It's too much of a head start.
But, there are also plenty of people who do not go to college who are SHITTY programmers. Oh, sure, they learned how to do some things on their own, but there's also a big pile of stuff they never learned. And worse, they don't even realize how much they don't know.
Education is a good thing. You learn a lot faster when information is given to you than by discovery.
So, to the topic at hand...
Go to the liberal arts school. Learn the theory. Anybody who isn't an idiot can learn software syntax. As far as employment goes, most people who get great CS jobs out of college get them based on the projects/open source work/internships they did in college. Education teaches you how to work better, but you prove you can work well by working.
And, as mentioned elsewhere, bonus: Girls.
Re:OH NOES! (Score:3, Insightful)
The flipside of that is, I went to more of a respected engineering-ish school and I spent more time in physics/chemistry/engineering classes than in my CS classes. For the kind of work I do, honestly, more of the liberal arts would have been more useful. Being able to write and express your ideas clearly is of immense importance to anyone with a CS degree who wants a job that can't/won't be outsourced.
No it isn't! (Score:2, Insightful)
No, no it's not.
The point of university is to totally immerse yourself in your chosen subject. See European universities for examples of how this really works. You spend three or four years doing nothing but what you signed up for. Far better use of time.
"As someone with some (limited) experience interviewing job candidates, IMO the ability to be thoughtful and articulate will serve better than narrow technical skill."
Whilst being articulate helps, you've clearly never hired a software engineer. Some narrow technical skill is EXACTLY what will get you the big money in software, and what will get you hired over and over. Having a general understanding of computers and an intimate knowledge of how they work (plus language theory and a wide exposure to different languages) is also a good thing.
But studying arts/humanities alongside? Waste of time. You had high school for that.
Re:Or rather (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Liberal Arts Has Its Place (Score:5, Insightful)
This post raises a crucial point:
There's more to life than technology.
I'm Canadian, so it's possible that there are cultural differences here, but a friend of mine does a lot of hiring, and he's told me that part of what he looks for in a candidate is what knowledge, experience, and interests they have outside of computers. For example, if he were considering hiring me, and didn't know me, he would be impressed to learn that I have a pilot's license, as it shows two things: I'm a well-rounded individual with interests beyond just computers (ie. not obsessive and unbalanced); and I'm capable of learning and understanding concepts beyond just those involving bits.
So, don't be a one-trick pony. For the sake of your resume, and for the sake of your own sanity, get an education that covers more than just technology.
Re:Liberal Arts Has Its Place (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want to spend your whole career competing with folks in India, China, and other low-wage emerging tech economies, get a degree that's focused entirely on CS. Those skills are trivially easy to outsource overseas, and they will be. On the other hand, if you want to have a competitive advantage based on your familiarity with Western culture, economics, human psychology, creative arts, and a foreign language, get a degree with a CS major at a Liberal Arts school, and take all those non-CS "core" classes seriously. You'll also meet a more interesting cross-section of people.
Re:Liberal Arts Has Its Place (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Liberal Arts Has Its Place (Score:3, Insightful)
Since the only reason you're working in the first place is to make money, you should think outside the "go to college, get a good job" box. Find something and start your own business. I think he/she should skip the CS degree, get a job in construction, and after a few years become a contractor. Essentially get into some field for a few years to learn the trade (and make it a trade that EVERYONE needs. Plumber, electrician, etc.) and work hard for a few years to gain knowledge into doing the job and keeping an eye on how to run a company of that type.
Don't spend your life working for someone else. It's a horrible experience now, and it's only going to get worse as corporations expand their control. Start your own company and work it from a young age and you'll be much better off by the time you're 30.
Re:Liberal Arts Has Its Place (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Liberal Pace Has Its Place (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Liberal Arts Has Its Place (Score:5, Insightful)
What you are describing is burnout. You should be glad that this is happening now, and not later when in the workplace.
There is no harm in discovering you no longer wish to pursue a career in a particular industry. It is better you discover this sooner rather than later.
Competitive programs in competitive schools are going to be, well, competitive. If you're afraid of competition, pick an easy program at an easy school ("Liberal Arts"). Having technical knowledge drilled into your head against your will isn't a bad thing either -- it is going to be much more difficult and unpleasant if you try and do it later in life.
A technical degree from a technical institution is going to be worth more than a technical degree from a liberal arts college. You are going to be taught by and work with some brilliant minds. Late night 5am coding sessions are part of the deal -- and you are going to build great camaraderie with your peers in the process. This is all part of the experience.
Perhaps I'm showing my age here, but I don't buy into the notion that one should use time at college to "explore" and "discover oneself". One should be doing exactly this before, during, and much after college. Similarly, your education does not stop once you leave university. You will be able to take all those extra arts classes you wanted to later in life too. It will be much more difficult to get a specific technical education later.
There are perennial jokes about liberal arts degrees and they exist for a reason. As an employer, I would prefer a student that was able to thrive in a difficult and competitive environment over one that was mostly self taught if it better suited the position. Having said that, I cannot discourage you enough from choosing a school for CV purposes. Good networking, confidence, and social skills are going to get you much further in the workplace than your choice of university.
A CS degree doesn't necessitate that you work in a CS field. It will create a solid foundation for you to further your education or begin your career.
Late night coding sessions are all part of the experience. Don't choose the path of least resistance. Select the liberal arts college if there are other things about it that really appeal to you, but don't be afraid of the competition.
I don't attach any weight to the previous poster's comments about psychological issues. If these problems exist, they will be exposed in a competitive workplace later on. A competitive college will do far more good for you than it will harm.
You will never again in your lifetime be in such close proximity to so many people your own age. The same is true of everyone else, and they will be looking to maximise use of their time and their own experience. Any experience is a good experience -- at either university -- and the only thing you should avoid is wasting your time. Lab time at 5am is not time wasted, nor is time looking at the sky with hippies -- but playstation in your room is. You will get as much out of college as you want to.
Best of luck to you!
That just doesn't make sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't spend your life working for someone else. It's a horrible experience now, and it's only going to get worse as corporations expand their control. Start your own company and work it from a young age and you'll be much better off by the time you're 30.
Since this is slashdot, I feel justified in psychoanalyzing you just from this one post.
Re:Liberal Arts Has Its Place (Score:2, Insightful)
In hiring here, a nameless little software company, we only look at current technical skills enough to determine how much training we'd have to do. We dig for problem solving skills and an ability to learn. We've hired old iron developers and folks without degrees. We've also hired some with years of experience who have gone back to school to earn their masters in CS.
My boss prides himself in our "not following convention," but my friends in other companies say they have similar policies.
Re:No it isn't! (Score:4, Insightful)
The liberal arts school has given me a very well rounded resume, and there are several recruiters that have said they really perked up when they saw I was a philosophy minor. Yes, if you want to 'get the big money in software engineering' a tech-only school might be the one for you. Enjoy sitting in a cubicle and living out the Office Space life. I've gotten a very good education in CS areas like theory of computation, language theory, reinforcement learning for artificial intelligence, genetic algorithms, and Markov chains and I've taken classes that taught the languages Python, Perl, C, C++, Java, and assembly. Plus, I can have an intelligent conversation about political theory and the merits of the arts and sciences as they relate to society. The best part? I actually enjoyed my education.
A well rounded education allows a person to discover exactly what it is about a particular subject that they enjoy doing, not just how to apply a method to a problem. There's nothing wrong with immersing yourself in a specific subject; that's why I'm going to graduate school.
IT != CS / Computer Engineering (Score:5, Insightful)
All that said, I'd still also say that the quality of either job, IT or CS, depends on the company. I believe the IT and Web people where I work are much happier than typical IT and Web people elsewhere.
Re:Liberal Arts Has Its Place (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Liberal Arts Has Its Place (Score:2, Insightful)
Part of your decision should be based on what you want to get out of your college experience BESIDES an education:
The best 4 (or 7) years of your life?
The best experiences you can find?
The broadest experiences you can find?
The most or best real-life work experiences (co-ops, internships, etc.)
Improved social skills.
Getting to know a wide variety of people.
etc.
I went to a LARGE state university that has several different colleges for both L.A. and Engineering/Technical areas. And while you get a great education (top 1, 2, 3 . . . in different areas), you also get an amazing college experience with sports, groups, clubs, organizations, social life and just about anything else you could want.
What was most important to me was a great experience you literally can't find anywhere else outside of college, finding lifelong friends from all over the world and from vastly diverse backgrounds, and having experiences one can only really enjoy while in college (getting in trouble for stunts, pranks, dumb ideas, etc, doing crazy things only students who think they're invincible would dare try, late night road-trips to different parts of the country just because you don't have anything due the next 2-3 days, etc.)
One of the things MANY employers look for is the ability to learn. Sadly, this is often "proved" by how you did in random college courses on poetry or anthropology. Since most jobs will have to train you on how they do things anyway, what you learned isn't necessarily as important as how much or how well you did.
One last thing: many of the students I went to school with for C.S. went on to get graduate degrees anyway. So, I would advise you to pick the school where you will have the experiences you want, and the education you need and the best time of your life. If you want a highly technical education as well, you can get your master's degree from another place.
Re:Liberal Arts Has Its Place (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Resumes are looked at by a scoring program in most large corporations before a human ever sees them. Whatever you put in a resume has to make it past these.
2) HR cares in so much as it is a real college and you actually got the degree you said you earned.
Now here is the rub:
3) In a small company, or in a larger one once you make it past #1 and #2, the people who will actually interview you do indeed care where you went. Was it ABET accredited? Will you understand the problem set (i.e. the thing you are writing software to do)? What experience do you have (did you do any coops, interships, indepedant coding, open-source, etc.)? I favor those therefore who have calculus, physics, etc., since they are more likely to understand the quantitative problems. However, they better also know how to write too.
Once you get past the first job, having the degree from an accredited school is just the ante. Your experience will count FAR more. When I hire I look particularly at coders who understand the problem set, i.e. if I want someone to write code to analyze a network, they better know routing, optics, etc. Likewise if I need a coder to make code to look at airplanes, they better know aerodynamics. Its not just what languages or methods you know, but where you gained your experience.
A few thoughts.
Re:Liberal Arts Has Its Place (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Liberal Arts Has Its Place (Score:3, Insightful)
People Skills Matter (Score:3, Insightful)
Except people skills. People skills are more important than ever in an outsource-happy world. If you are so annoying that people only want to contact you via email, you might as well be in Bangalore.
There are a handful of techies who are so smart in a given area that they are indispensable even with poor people skills; but at this point in your career, you don't know if you will be one of those exceptions. Thus, people skills are the better bet in my opinion. Unfortunately, selling the mouse trap is just as important as making a better one, if money matters to you.
My Take (Score:2, Insightful)
There are lots of good comments here and I think one can make a strong argument for either type of school. It really comes down to your life goals.
But here's the kicker. You probably don't know what your life goals are yet. None of us really do because our lives are ever-changing. What's in our interest today may not be in our interest tomorrow.
I went to a strong liberal arts school that also had strong law and businesses schools and decent, but not top-tier science and engineering schools. For me this was the right choice, though I didn't realize just how right it was until years after I graduated.
For a lot of people, college/university is a change to widen horizons. I did some of that in college and even more in grad school. I majored in engineering in college but because it is a Catholic liberal arts school, I was required to take theology and philosophy as well as seminar courses. This helped me out a lot in later years as I became a better writer and more in tune with my strongest values and beliefs. These liberal arts classes teach you how to logically form arguments and debate. They're not the end-all, be-all but there are a good foundation to build on.
I decided to go to a top engineering school for graduate work. That's almost a necessity. The combination of the two schools has been very good for me. In graduate school and in work life afterward, I became very interested in politics and getting involved in public life. The one course I wish I had taken is political science. It probably should be required in this country (the U.S.). The liberal arts education allowed me to quickly get up to speed on political life. Yes, anyone can get involved but if you have some sense of history and philosophical thought you can connect more readily with others around issues, debate and be effective. Politics requires reading, forming relationships and having an awareness of what's come before. Liberal arts courses help train you for that.
Now, that's been important for me. I think it's important for everyone to at least be somewhat involved in politics and public life but not everyone will be as deeply involved as I and others are. What the liberal arts give you is flexibility. You'll learn skills that are widely applicable.
I believe training in the fine arts is important for an engineer. That doesn't have to happen in college. Taking lessons on a musical instrument when young, learning to paint, etc. will exercise the creative part of your brain. Engineering is as much art as science. It's a crime that arts are the first thing to go during budget cuts at the local school level.
And PLEASE, take a writing course (unless you test out). I can't count the number of times I've cringed at how engineers write. This is a supremely important skill to have. You need to be able to communicate effectively if you're going to form productive working relationships with your fellow engineers and especially with management. If I had my way (which I don't yet), I would require interviewees to submit some kind of essay just to be able to gauge where they're at with this skill.
Finally, one of the most useful things I was ever directed to do in an engineering class is to read "Soul of a New Machine." The book is an eye opener. I've always remembered the scene where Tom West is interviewing candidates and asks them what they do outside work. If any of them answers "computers," they go to the bottom of the candidate list. Well-roundedness and the ability to get away from work is important.
Re:Why knock yourself out? (Score:5, Insightful)
No it's not. Pick 10 random EWDs [utexas.edu] and see how many of them don't still apply today. If you're actually being taught computer science, the info you're learning should be useful for a very long time.
Re:Liberal Arts Has Its Place (Score:5, Insightful)
So I vote for "liberal arts" where you can at least meet some cute girls (and probably your future wife).
Re:Liberal Arts Has Its Place (Score:3, Insightful)
This sort of woolly analysis is what drives me nuts about interviewing. You focus on IT, learn it, soak it up, live it, love it, and become above average and excellent at many different areas in IT, which is just what the job descriptions all say is wanted (well, we know what they say and what they really want don't usually match), and then you get this kind of subjective evaluation where the very things they said they wanted are now a mark against you!
The people doing the hiring don't really have good reasons for concluding that a prospect is "stable" or "balanced" or not, or any firmly grounded fair way to evaluate these qualities, or any idea how important they really are, or even a freaking definition of exactly what they mean by those terms! Even if you have a clean record, as in, no credit problems, no criminal convictions, no history of mental problems, no drug use, etc., they're still trying to figure out whether you're "stable". Might you go postal if stressed enough? No one is going to learn whether another person is stable after being acquainted for just 5 minutes. No pop psychology quickie multiple choice questionnaire is going to ferret out such qualities. An example: "You observe your boss covering up a problem by falsifying a report. What do you do? A) nothing, B) tell all your coworkers, C) confront the boss in private, D) confront the boss publicly, E) go to the boss's boss, F) report the company to the authorities, G) quit, H) none of the above". Every one of these answers can be interpreted as "bad". There's no right answer. It's the same class of techniques and double standards used to determine whether an airline passenger is a "suspicious character" and should be searched more thoroughly or even detained.
These criteria can be used to justify any hiring decision whatever. And these qualities are ephemeral. A change in a person's situation can change a stable person into an unstable person.
I'm an Ohioan from Missouri (Score:3, Insightful)
Heck, right now I have a great job I got by impressing the interviewer, and by having good references from previous employers where I did good work, and I don't have a degree (yet - working on it). Granted, I'm doing Tech Support and QA, not development at this point, but I still think the point is valid that you can get any job that you can demonstrate competence at.
That is the crux of it, so my suggestion: wherever you end up, do something extracurricular that shows your competence. E.g. Work on an Open Source project that interests you, and document every contribution you make. Or, if not open source, start up/join some sort of student development group at your Uni and work on a project. Or enter some programming contests - even if you don't win, if you create good submissions, and hold on to them, you can show them to future potential employers. You might not even need to do something extracurricular - the school I'm currently at requires all seniors to do a project for graduation. I don't think it's just to make graduation harder - it forces students to take the time to do a project that they can show to employers after they graduate showing that they know how to apply the stuff they learned.
A lot of creative types - artists, photographers, graphic designers, writers, architects, etc, keep portfolios. There's no reason that CS majors can't develop their own 'portfolio'. Keep copies of assignments you are particularly proud of (you might not want to show employers your freshman year stuff, of course, but maybe there are some projects you did for Junior and Senior level classes that you think show off your abilities).
As for picking a school, that's a really hard one - something I've wrestled with too. Mostly, I've decided based on what's close and I can afford. But, if you have the luxury of making choices on less practical grounds, you might try to get a feel for what type of classes each offer, and pick based on which has classes that most interest you. Or, visit the campuses and try to talk to as many professors as possible - maybe sit in on a few classes to get an idea what each professor's teaching style is like. You can take the same class with two professor's, and have a dramatically different learning experience (my past two days of physics class has had one of the other professors teaching while the regular prof is at a conference, and I can barely understand the guy's accent, and can't make out his chicken scratch when he writes formulas up on the board, and I just generally don't think his explanations make a lot of sense - I'm *so* glad I don't have him normally - not that he isn't a nice guy, but I just have a hard time learning from him; whereas with the regular teacher, I do ok most of the time [admittedly, sometimes I have a little bit of a hard time following the math because he tends to go fast, but I pick up *enough* that I can make sense of the stuff in the book later]) .
Re:That just doesn't make sense... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm going to continue working open source projects and such on the weekends, but consistently bad experiences over several years have convinced me to leave IT for greener pastures. Starting soon, I'm moving to skilled physical labor like I worked back in school. As much as I really do love working on computers, the sweat offers a better life. FYI, I'm 25, been working since I graduated at 20.
Access to skills ten years down the line (Score:2, Insightful)
Everyone's answer talks about which school will give you the best or most interesting education, the best social experience, the best resume for your first interview, the best networking to get you your first job, blah blah blah. Young punks, looking at the short-term picture.
Ten, fifteen years from now, you're going to start having really great, innovative ideas you want to develop on your own, away from your employer; but by yourself, you won't have all the different technical skills you need to get the job done.
If you went to an MIT or CMU, you're going to know half a dozen people with the complementary skills you need to get the job done and get your idea into the market. If you went to a liberal arts college, you're going to sit around on your ass muttering about how you could have made a million off this one great idea if the deck weren't stacked against you.
There's a reason technical school graduates keep cranking out innovations, and it's not the great education, nor the old party line about having the right connections for great opportunities or venture capital. It's about having the right connections to do absolutely anything they can imagine. Everything else follows from there.
Re:No it isn't! (Score:3, Insightful)
But the university system in the US is more difficult and demanding than its counterparts elsewhere. I'm often surprised by how little English or Japanese undergraduates have to work: it's pretty much a non-stop party in Japan, and England isn't much better. There are statistics floating around that quantify the different in study load between US and non-US higher education systems: I recall that in Japan, a university student spends maybe 1 to 2 hours a days studying, while the average US college student spends about 4 to 5 hours a day studying (on top of attending labs, lectures, etc.) US colleges regularly out-rank those in the rest of the world. Even Oxbridge lags behind the US Ivies and "public Ivies." On a graduate level, the dominance of US institutions is even more marked.
Getting a broad-based education at a tech school (Score:3, Insightful)
What I found that was important --- studying with lots of smart people really challenges you, and makes you put in the extra effort so you can minor in student activities _and_ still hold down a good GPA. Learning computer science architectural lessons from older systems like Multics is very valuable; much more so than learning the syntax of C or Java. Learning how to schedule workers for the refreshment committees, disassembling and cleaning a soda machine, and figuring profit margins on soda and popcorn, does teach you many valuable lessons in the real world. So does taking classes in economics and law; just as much so as learning how to build a computer using a breadboard, wires, and 74xx TTL chips.
The important thing to remember is that you can get a very broad based education at a technical school, but you have to reach out for it. I would be very dubious about a school (liberals arts or not) that concentrated more on math theory than CS architecture. Learning on the past mistakes and success of real-life operating systems is valuable. I'm not so convinced about learning about type theory and type functions. Most good technical schools will have clases in IP law, negotiating, economics, and those are very much good things to learn. In particular, if you don't know how to read a balance sheet and a profit and loss statement before you leave college, do take the time to find out. It's useful in so many different contexts....
Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)