Computer Science Major

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When your kid fails out of CS, have them switch to information technology.

or data science

“When your kid fails out” is so obnoxious. Why do you even do that?

I was told this when I went into CS as a female that had not yet taken calculus. A CS degree in 4 years and 21 years experience later, they can all go screw themsleves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aside from high grades and SAT scores, what can a student do to stand out when applying to top CS programs?

No idea. My kid had multiple internships, even one paid, a few competition wins and was deferred from Ga Tech and Northeastern and flat out rejected from UIUC. Very high stats and highest course rigor.

Any luck at UMD?

DP.. my kid got rejected to both UIUC and GA Tech, accepted to UMD honors for CS.

Deferred at MIT and UMich.

Very high stats.

Very strange college admissions world.

Not strange at all because you don't understand how top college admissions works. Stats is only a very small part of the credentials AOs look at. You didn't mention anything else other than stats, so I guess your kid didn't have much else to show for.

I didn't mention them because those are more revealing, but DC did various activities, mostly non STEM related to show that they are well rounded; DC had the highest achievement in a national organization.

In any case, I know of another student in a magnet program, high stats, who is already working as a programmer for a company , and even this student was rejected at these T10. I think this student being rejected at T10 made my DC feel better since they know this other student is a lot more capable than them.

Like I said, Very strange college admissions world.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aside from high grades and SAT scores, what can a student do to stand out when applying to top CS programs?

It is incredibly competitive, so apply to lot of colleges including multiple safeties. CS can make your safeties look like reach schools.

EA to as many public schools as possible (GATech, UIUC, Purdue, UT, UMD, Wisconsin etc).

These are my sons stats - UW 4.0, SAT 1560, 12 AP's including APCSA, Physics-1, Calc BC, APUSH etc, multiple self-directed coding projects, multiple hackathons, USACO silver level, speech captain at school, multiple speech finalist etc.

He got accepted for CS at UMDCP, got alternate major at UIUC, got multiple UC's, rejected by GATech, Stanford, UT, and deferred by a few others.

So CS is a crapshoot regardless of the EC's, grades and SAT.

So apply broadly and keep your fingers crossed.

Indian?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aside from high grades and SAT scores, what can a student do to stand out when applying to top CS programs?

No idea. My kid had multiple internships, even one paid, a few competition wins and was deferred from Ga Tech and Northeastern and flat out rejected from UIUC. Very high stats and highest course rigor.

Any luck at UMD?

DP.. my kid got rejected to both UIUC and GA Tech, accepted to UMD honors for CS.

Deferred at MIT and UMich.

Very high stats.

Very strange college admissions world.

Not strange at all because you don't understand how top college admissions works. Stats is only a very small part of the credentials AOs look at. You didn't mention anything else other than stats, so I guess your kid didn't have much else to show for.

I didn't mention them because those are more revealing, but DC did various activities, mostly non STEM related to show that they are well rounded; DC had the highest achievement in a national organization.

In any case, I know of another student in a magnet program, high stats, who is already working as a programmer for a company , and even this student was rejected at these T10. I think this student being rejected at T10 made my DC feel better since they know this other student is a lot more capable than them.

Like I said, Very strange college admissions world.

.. and to add...

you sound a bit obnoxious with the " so I guess your kid didn't have much else to show for.".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Aside from high grades and SAT scores, what can a student do to stand out when applying to top CS programs?

No idea. My kid had multiple internships, even one paid, a few competition wins and was deferred from Ga Tech and Northeastern and flat out rejected from UIUC. Very high stats and highest course rigor.

Any luck at UMD?

DP.. my kid got rejected to both UIUC and GA Tech, accepted to UMD honors for CS.

Deferred at MIT and UMich.

Very high stats.

Very strange college admissions world.

I'd go with UMD over GA Tech and UIUC. Sure, the latter two are highly ranked, but when you look at the specifics of their programs, I find MD to be stronger since it has fewer 1950s-era electrical engineering and physics requirements that aren't all that helpful for CS. Look GA Tech and UIUC are fine programs but as someone who has worked in the industry for 40 years and has advanced degrees, there are only a handful of programs that I like better than MD. About half of those ranked above it to me aren't really worth the bother.

PP here. Thanks for the feedback.

But, then why is GA Tech and UIUC ranked so much higher than UMD for CS?

Not so much really, by most reckonings UMDCP is ranked around 13th in the US for CS. If you are interested in a specific area like say machine learning, it's around #8 according to csrankings.org. My point is it's not significantly different. I think GA Tech and UIUC are fine but as someone who went through this when I was younger, I'd avoid any school that requires you to study engineering for CS. The most attractive thing about the UMDCP CS program to me is it has a lot of flexibility baked in. So you could study say networking and cybersecurity if that's your thing or avoid that altogether and focus on machine learning and algorithms...

Thanks for the feedback.

Are you saying UIUC and GA tech don't have that kind of flexibility to take networking or machine learning classes?

This is very interesting. More info, please.

Most of these schools have a rigid set of requirements. Subjects like compilers or Operating Systems are typically required, but very few students will ever work in those areas. Now those are fine classes but not useful to everyone. MD has all those courses but allows students greater flexibility. Schools like GA Tech and UIUC I believe, have CS in their engineering schools and impose additional requirements unrelated to modern CS. I haven't looked at the specifics lately and could be mistaken, but I would encourage you to look at these programs more closely. Specifically look at what a 4 year plan would look like.

When I was in CS, I went through an engineering program, and can tell you it just made it a lot less pleasant and there was little benefit. I didn't need to take 12 hours of physics or 12 hours of outdated electrical engineering classes. I would rather have the freedom to pursue areas of interest more deeply. This isn't possible in many programs because of the restrictions.

https://undergrad.cs.umd.edu/general-track-degree-requirements

Dude, can you please stop spewing misinformation!
You keep bringing up GA Tech and UIUC as counterpoints to UMD, but continually misrepresent and feels like you are just making stuff up.
I'll talk about GA Tech, because I am familiar with their program, but given how many times and points you get wrong, I don't have much faith that your other info is accurate.

GA Tech's CS program is NOT in their college of engineering... they have a separate College of Computing. In fact, they've had the CoC since 1988 -- so it was that way, even "back in the day". You are not required to take irrelavant general engineering classes.
And about being forced to take a Compilers class when that is not your area of interest... GA Tech has the concept of Threads, where you pick classes in the couple threads that you are interested in to focus. Don't like compilers, don't go down that thread... like AI, do that one.

Stop spreading lies and disinformation. Maybe you are trying to get less kids to apply there to increase your chances?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When your kid fails out of CS, have them switch to information technology.

or data science

“When your kid fails out” is so obnoxious. Why do you even do that?

I was told this when I went into CS as a female that had not yet taken calculus. A CS degree in 4 years and 21 years experience later, they can all go screw themsleves.

Same here++