This is the year to get into CS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:cite your source?

link is in the original post - a little hard to see but it's there.

i think they need to show other majors to show if it's only computer science

OP. Interestingly, applications across engineering are flat, so there seems to be some flow from CS towards other engineering disciplines.

lol. OK whatever you say.

[Anonymous]

CS has long been a field where the most successful often have no formal University degree. If you're smart enough to lead in CS you probably were/are bored in formal education settings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:CS has long been a field where the most successful often have no formal University degree. If you're smart enough to lead in CS you probably were/are bored in formal education settings.

Or actually challenged and learn something.

[Anonymous]

Anthropic engineer says "software engineering is done" first half of next year.

This newest version of Claude Code…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Practically all CS departments (public, private) have been seeing a decline in CS applications that started in 2024. Numbers from EA interest for the Fall 2026 cohort indicate a further drop.

This seems to be the year to get into CS programs.

Hold on. Depends on the school. CMU, MIT, CalTech, etc. are still receiving record numbers of applications for CS. It is still the TOUGHEST admit.

+1 I think you will see declining numbers at non selective colleges for CS, and that makes total sense to me.

UMD halved their program incoming 2024 class. They had . So, if you look at UMD alone, you'd see enrollment numbers halved. They have about a 20% acceptance rate for CS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I did not know ...my kid graduated last year and us out earning me in big tech. He knows it might not last but right now he is doing really interesting work and saving $$.

+ 1 my kid just got an internship this summer making $96/hour, plus a $20K signing bonus. I mean, sure.. they may not get a return offer, but they actually had four offers, two big tech and two quant firms. And they are at a public univ.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I did not know ...my kid graduated last year and us out earning me in big tech. He knows it might not last but right now he is doing really interesting work and saving $$.

+ 1 my kid just got an internship this summer making $96/hour, plus a $20K signing bonus. I mean, sure.. they may not get a return offer, but they actually had four offers, two big tech and two quant firms. And they are at a public univ.

Thought my kid's $65/hr at a software/AI company was ridiculous. That must be a quant. Congrats

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Practically all CS departments (public, private) have been seeing a decline in CS applications that started in 2024. Numbers from EA interest for the Fall 2026 cohort indicate a further drop.

This seems to be the year to get into CS programs.

Hold on. Depends on the school. CMU, MIT, CalTech, etc. are still receiving record numbers of applications for CS. It is still the TOUGHEST admit.

+1 I think you will see declining numbers at non selective colleges for CS, and that makes total sense to me.

UMD halved their program incoming 2024 class. They had . So, if you look at UMD alone, you'd see enrollment numbers halved. They have about a 20% acceptance rate for CS.

62% of CS programs reported declining enrollment, according to the CRA, the premier organization that tracks trends. The major decline is in software engineering, but increases in AI.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I did not know ...my kid graduated last year and us out earning me in big tech. He knows it might not last but right now he is doing really interesting work and saving $$.

+ 1 my kid just got an internship this summer making $96/hour, plus a $20K signing bonus. I mean, sure.. they may not get a return offer, but they actually had four offers, two big tech and two quant firms. And they are at a public univ.

Thought my kid's $65/hr at a software/AI company was ridiculous. That must be a quant. Congrats

It is. The offer floored my spouse and I. We've been in the IT space for 20+ years, with a stint at a FAANG, and my kid's offer blew me away. Never heard of a company giving signing bonuses to an intern. TBF, I didn't know much about quant firms. We are clearly dinosaurs. LOL

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Practically all CS departments (public, private) have been seeing a decline in CS applications that started in 2024. Numbers from EA interest for the Fall 2026 cohort indicate a further drop.

This seems to be the year to get into CS programs.

Hold on. Depends on the school. CMU, MIT, CalTech, etc. are still receiving record numbers of applications for CS. It is still the TOUGHEST admit.

+1 I think you will see declining numbers at non selective colleges for CS, and that makes total sense to me.

UMD halved their program incoming 2024 class. They had . So, if you look at UMD alone, you'd see enrollment numbers halved. They have about a 20% acceptance rate for CS.

62% of CS programs reported declining enrollment, according to the CRA, the premier organization that tracks trends. The major decline is in software engineering, but increases in AI.

Link doesn't work but that tracks as AI is now the hot thing, but SWE are still needed to support AI.

But, like I said in my previous post, non selective CS programs are seeing a huge drop, not the highly selective ones.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Practically all CS departments (public, private) have been seeing a decline in CS applications that started in 2024. Numbers from EA interest for the Fall 2026 cohort indicate a further drop.

This seems to be the year to get into CS programs.

Hold on. Depends on the school. CMU, MIT, CalTech, etc. are still receiving record numbers of applications for CS. It is still the TOUGHEST admit.

What you say is still true, but there’s a more important part of the reality that you are omitting. Our DC graduated from CMU 2 years ago (non-CS degree) and none of his friends (who did graduate w/ CS degrees) have jobs - they’re now looking at grad school as all those lovely entry level jobs have all but disappeared and been replaced with AI.

The first jobs are still "entry level" they are just different jobs. Entry level literally means the first job you get in the company at the bottom of the ladder. The ladder is still there and it still has a bottom rung they need to fill every year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:cite your source?

link is in the original post - a little hard to see but it's there.

i think they need to show other majors to show if it's only computer science

OP. Interestingly, applications across engineering are flat, so there seems to be some flow from CS towards other engineering disciplines.

lol. OK whatever you say.

I'm not sure what you had to laugh out loud here. I'm giving you first hand info.

CS is part of the college of engineering at many schools, and the numbers I was sharing say that the overall number of applicants to the college (of engineering) is relatively flat, but the number of students who indicated an interest in CS has declined. This means that other areas of engineering saw some increase. I actually do not know which areas did, just that some must have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Practically all CS departments (public, private) have been seeing a decline in CS applications that started in 2024. Numbers from EA interest for the Fall 2026 cohort indicate a further drop.

This seems to be the year to get into CS programs.

Hold on. Depends on the school. CMU, MIT, CalTech, etc. are still receiving record numbers of applications for CS. It is still the TOUGHEST admit.

What you say is still true, but there’s a more important part of the reality that you are omitting. Our DC graduated from CMU 2 years ago (non-CS degree) and none of his friends (who did graduate w/ CS degrees) have jobs - they’re now looking at grad school as all those lovely entry level jobs have all but disappeared and been replaced with AI.

Bull: https://www.cmu.edu/career/outcomes/post-grad-dashboard.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:CS has long been a field where the most successful often have no formal University degree. If you're smart enough to lead in CS you probably were/are bored in formal education settings.

I think it's because the material accessible and you can check if you are correct or not. For someone that self-studies - CS is a good field. The advanced stuff like creating your own programming languages - you can stumble through it. But you will get criticized by repeating past-mistakes. The creator of PHP - a good chunk of the Web relies on it. His stuff got cleaned up early on - he knew very little about programming languages. I heard him talk about this at a Conference. He created PHP because he hated Perl.

Other fields require some guidance and feedback. My hope is Gen AI will provide that guidance and feedback for other fields. We're getting there.

[Anonymous]

Here's the thing if you learned to code while at your ca degree you aren't going to make it. Those that make it already were coding as children