Colleges without overenrolled/oversubscribed Computer science

[Anonymous]

William & Mary, esp with additional resources on the way as the school of Computing, Data Science, and Physics launches fall 2025.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How are things at the smaller liberal arts colleges, like Williams, Swarthmore or Amherst?

Swarthmore is a mess and is rationing out CS courses, because it's such a problem. Williams and Amherst are fine. Pomona, well known on this forum, is stretched beyond imagination with about 2x the amount of CS majors of Williams and Amherst, while being a smaller college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The better private universities.

Stanford
MIT
Princeton
CMU
Duke
Rice
Northwestern
Hopkins
Penn
Cornell

A lot of publics might be better ranked in CS, but it's a pain and a slog getting a degree with so many 500/1000+ intro classes. Berkeley alone has CS classes with more than 1700 students.

Of course this is only applies if you are taking intro courses.
If you are taking the non-elite school's advanced/honors equivlacent of the elite school courses, you won't have this problem.

The 1700 intro class is the CS version of Calculus I and II, which is largely online self-study or taught by grad students almost everywhere, and it's not problem. You don't need a professor's handholding for these classes.

A professor's "handholding" can push you a lot further. DC repeated Calc 2 as a math major at an LAC, thinking it'd be an easy way. What he didn't expect was the professor could tell most of the class was comfortable and began transitioning to an Analysis class to up the anti. The "intro" Linear Algebra class is an advanced linear algebra course and the Advanced linear algebra course is the grad school linear comparison. You can push students pretty hard if you only have 10-15 of them in a class.

[Anonymous]

The service academies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:William & Mary, esp with additional resources on the way as the school of Computing, Data Science, and Physics launches fall 2025.

Sounds like lack of history and inexperienced.
Sounds like red flag.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:William & Mary, esp with additional resources on the way as the school of Computing, Data Science, and Physics launches fall 2025.

Sounds like lack of history and inexperienced.
Sounds like red flag.

They've always had a Computer Science program, they're just breaking it out of the school of arts and sciences. In what world does that mean a red flag?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:William & Mary, esp with additional resources on the way as the school of Computing, Data Science, and Physics launches fall 2025.

Sounds like lack of history and inexperienced.
Sounds like red flag.

They've always had a Computer Science program, they're just breaking it out of the school of arts and sciences. In what world does that mean a red flag?

Troll. Just trying to get a rise out of WM folks.

[Anonymous]

If DC hates large class sizes, tell him to join the dark side and major in applied math. My upper division probability and numerical analysis courses had 5 students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How are things at the smaller liberal arts colleges, like Williams, Swarthmore or Amherst?

Swarthmore is a mess and is rationing out CS courses, because it's such a problem. Williams and Amherst are fine. Pomona, well known on this forum, is stretched beyond imagination with about 2x the amount of CS majors of Williams and Amherst, while being a smaller college.

Carleton has a match system to help students get the CS courses they need (https://www.carleton.edu/computer-science/resources/registering-via-the-match/). My student is a non-major but has been able to take lots of higher-level CS courses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How are things at the smaller liberal arts colleges, like Williams, Swarthmore or Amherst?

Swarthmore is a mess and is rationing out CS courses, because it's such a problem. Williams and Amherst are fine. Pomona, well known on this forum, is stretched beyond imagination with about 2x the amount of CS majors of Williams and Amherst, while being a smaller college.

Carleton has a match system to help students get the CS courses they need (https://www.carleton.edu/computer-science/resources/registering-via-the-match/). My student is a non-major but has been able to take lots of higher-level CS courses.

This seems like it would become overburdened after a few years in test phase. After a while, these type of ideas falter when Popular CS courses are offered such as AI, ML, etc. Likely a good amount of students are being denied courses they want, because they need to match appropriately for upper division classes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:William & Mary, esp with additional resources on the way as the school of Computing, Data Science, and Physics launches fall 2025.

Sounds like lack of history and inexperienced.
Sounds like red flag.

They've always had a Computer Science program, they're just breaking it out of the school of arts and sciences. In what world does that mean a red flag?

Troll. Just trying to get a rise out of WM folks.

Yeah figured as much, just thought I might as well point out how ridiculous they are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The better private universities.

Stanford
MIT
Princeton
CMU
Duke
Rice
Northwestern
Hopkins
Penn
Cornell

A lot of publics might be better ranked in CS, but it's a pain and a slog getting a degree with so many 500/1000+ intro classes. Berkeley alone has CS classes with more than 1700 students.

Of that list with CS issues, Cornell ( https://cornellsun.com/2023/01/31/computer-and-information-science-students-struggle-with-course-enrollment-adding-stress-instead-of-classes/ ), Penn ( https://www.thedp.com/article/2019/03/computer-science-classes-coding-ivy-league-upenn-philadelphia ), Johns Hopkins (https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2017/02/over-500-waitlisted-for-comp-sci-classes ), Duke potentially (https://www.reddit.com/r/duke/comments/n0905v/duke_cs_concerns_is_it_really_as_bad_as_some_say/ ) and Rice potentially ( https://www.reddit.com/r/riceuniversity/comments/4h32r9/how_is_rice_cs/ ).
It has been a nightmare at DC's college, Umich, and I am very pessimistic about colleges ability to change this.

Can you elaborate? DC (rising senior) has never had issues with getting a class he wanted, is on track to graduate this semester with a minor. Several of his friends have already graduated (in 3 years) without issues.

Hey, DC just graduated from Mich! It's not a graduating issue, but likely a fit issue. He chose to go to a university, because he was advanced in computer science and wanted grad-level coursework/PhD (and the support wasn't great also takes forever for office hours in some courses). By his junior year, the courses he was looking to take all were immediately gone with long waitlists, and he felt like he was still scrambling after underclassmen years. It's definitely softening after first year admission restriction changes. By the time he wanted to try out grad school courses, he was met with a lot of resistance and realized it wasn't going to happen.

I feel like this is a big issue that gets discounted quite a bit. Not to pile on Berkeley but the tour guide and admissions said that you can graduate on time, but you may never get 100% of the classes you really wanted.

Maybe 98% of kids don’t care…but it’s something you need to consider.

For what it's worth, DS24 is going to UMD for CS. He was able to get all the classes he wanted, though one is not at an ideal time. They have cut the CS class in half, so hopefully that will make scheduling easier for everyone in the future.

+1 For three semesters, DS HS 23 at UMD, has been able to get all CS classes wanted, just not necessarily the first choice for time/instructors

CS Major DC at UMD, second year but a senior (thanks to a generous number of AP/IB credits). They've also been able to get all the CS courses they wanted so far, albeit some not at the time they wanted (cause 9am is too early ).

I think the changes to the UMD CS admissions will definitely help with class sizes and ease of getting classes going forward. That change was made after DC's year, so DC's lower level CS courses are still fairly large (200 or so?), but I think it will get better for future CS students.

[Anonymous]

Full Sail. My husbands coworker had 3 job offers upon graduation-one being Microsoft. He took the Microsoft job with really, really good pay. He also worked full time while doing his degree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:William & Mary, esp with additional resources on the way as the school of Computing, Data Science, and Physics launches fall 2025.

Sounds like lack of history and inexperienced.
Sounds like red flag.

They've always had a Computer Science program, they're just breaking it out of the school of arts and sciences. In what world does that mean a red flag?

It's a third option at the best for VA in-state, even forth after GMU for some people anyways.
Can't imagine paying OOS for W&M CS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The better private universities.

Stanford
MIT
Princeton
CMU
Duke
Rice
Northwestern
Hopkins
Penn
Cornell

A lot of publics might be better ranked in CS, but it's a pain and a slog getting a degree with so many 500/1000+ intro classes. Berkeley alone has CS classes with more than 1700 students.

Of that list with CS issues, Cornell ( https://cornellsun.com/2023/01/31/computer-and-information-science-students-struggle-with-course-enrollment-adding-stress-instead-of-classes/ ), Penn ( https://www.thedp.com/article/2019/03/computer-science-classes-coding-ivy-league-upenn-philadelphia ), Johns Hopkins (https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2017/02/over-500-waitlisted-for-comp-sci-classes ), Duke potentially (https://www.reddit.com/r/duke/comments/n0905v/duke_cs_concerns_is_it_really_as_bad_as_some_say/ ) and Rice potentially ( https://www.reddit.com/r/riceuniversity/comments/4h32r9/how_is_rice_cs/ ).
It has been a nightmare at DC's college, Umich, and I am very pessimistic about colleges ability to change this.

Can you elaborate? DC (rising senior) has never had issues with getting a class he wanted, is on track to graduate this semester with a minor. Several of his friends have already graduated (in 3 years) without issues.

Hey, DC just graduated from Mich! It's not a graduating issue, but likely a fit issue. He chose to go to a university, because he was advanced in computer science and wanted grad-level coursework/PhD (and the support wasn't great also takes forever for office hours in some courses). By his junior year, the courses he was looking to take all were immediately gone with long waitlists, and he felt like he was still scrambling after underclassmen years. It's definitely softening after first year admission restriction changes. By the time he wanted to try out grad school courses, he was met with a lot of resistance and realized it wasn't going to happen.

I feel like this is a big issue that gets discounted quite a bit. Not to pile on Berkeley but the tour guide and admissions said that you can graduate on time, but you may never get 100% of the classes you really wanted.

Maybe 98% of kids don’t care…but it’s something you need to consider.

For what it's worth, DS24 is going to UMD for CS. He was able to get all the classes he wanted, though one is not at an ideal time. They have cut the CS class in half, so hopefully that will make scheduling easier for everyone in the future.

+1 For three semesters, DS HS 23 at UMD, has been able to get all CS classes wanted, just not necessarily the first choice for time/instructors

CS Major DC at UMD, second year but a senior (thanks to a generous number of AP/IB credits). They've also been able to get all the CS courses they wanted so far, albeit some not at the time they wanted (cause 9am is too early ).

I think the changes to the UMD CS admissions will definitely help with class sizes and ease of getting classes going forward. That change was made after DC's year, so DC's lower level CS courses are still fairly large (200 or so?), but I think it will get better for future CS students.