| Looking for ideas ... |
| One kid's reach is another kid's safety. What sort of student is your DC? |
| George Mason |
| penn state |
| University of Maryland Baltimore County. Bonus: Good computer science program (with lots of interest from large local employers, including Northrop, NSA, etc.) |
yes, umbc is very strong in cs. downside - i hear it is a bit sink or swim. stonybrook university (it's part of SUNY) is also extremely strong in cs/applied math. lots of access to nyc employers and quant funds. |
| Looking for something just a notch or two down from the killer programs like Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, CalTech, Harvey Mudd. |
| Case Western |
We hire quite a few UMBC grads, but I never hear from them that it was particularly hard. UMCP is night and day harder from what I'm able to tell. It does give a more than solid CS education and isn't particularly hard to get into. |
| UMBC is wonderful. |
Competitive: Berekeley, Cornell, Duke ... very good but easier to get into Illinois and UMCP. |
berkeley eecs is at the level of stanford, cmu, mit, harvey mudd. it is brutally hard to get into and even harder to get out of with a decent grade. |
+1. Berkeley is ranked number 1 or number 2 in the country for CS/Engineering along with MIT & Stanford although said to be more rigorous than Stanford/MIT. |
| OP is looking for a safety school. Cal is not a safety school for STEM. As noted, it's probably top 10 in the country. |
| Every large public university has a solid computer science program. The curriculum isn't that varied between school. They're all good enough to get their graduates solid entry level jobs in their regions. Every school also has a few students who luck out and jump start a start up and get local venture and angel money. It's harder for their grads to move to the Bay Area, but that's not where most of the jobs are. |