If all costs were equal, would you rather your child attend a top public or top private school?

[Anonymous]

For CS, the school name comes into play when trying to land that first job or two. There are many ways to get to the interview stage, not the least of which involves good old fashioned networking, people you know, any connections of any kind. Once you get to the interview stage, it's all on you, doesn't matter where you went to school.

It just so happens that one of the more common CS rankings highly ranks publics due to research at the graduate level. That doesn't mean they are the best choice for every kid for undergrad CS.

[Anonymous]

Employers in the US aren't parsing world rankings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If one had a choice why would anybody choose a school where the vast majority of students come from a single state?

THe best universities in California, Virginia, or Michigan with their best students can’t compete with universities that select best students from all over the world.

Exactly. UVA is over 50% students from NOVA alone! That's crazy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For CS, the school name comes into play when trying to land that first job or two. There are many ways to get to the interview stage, not the least of which involves good old fashioned networking, people you know, any connections of any kind. Once you get to the interview stage, it's all on you, doesn't matter where you went to school.

It just so happens that one of the more common CS rankings highly ranks publics due to research at the graduate level. That doesn't mean they are the best choice for every kid for undergrad CS.

Nice story. Except, you are ignoring the facts. Private schools’ placement in high-level tech firms is significantly higher than state universities’. There are tech firms and then there are consumers of tech. Almost all businesses, including mom and pop shops, are IT consumers. That’s where many state university CS grads go. If you know CMU, Stanford, MIT, Columbia, CalTech who are not in Silicon Valley, they are probably busy in their/friends’ startups.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Top Public. No question.

If you can have the best rotary phone or smartphone at same price, what would you choose. Your response indicates you’d choose the best 1950 rotary phone - only because you don’t know what smartphone is.

To each his own. Some may admire your decision. But that’s not your decision to make. Thank god most sane parents allow kids to choose their school. Most will not choose the 1950 rotary if they can have the latest smartphone.

+1

[Anonymous]

There's plenty of tier lists on this site. The best Public Schools are always last on the list.

[Anonymous]

Top private over top public any day of the week! You’re delusional if you think anyone is going to be more impressed with Berkeley than Harvard.

Wall Street and Silicon Valley are minuscule employment opportunities in the vast world of occupations.

[Anonymous]

99.9% of kids can’t get into HPYSM, so it doesn’t really matter where top publics rate relative to them. When you compare privates rated 10-25 to top publics, they offer no better job or graduate school placement, on average, and cost a lot more. For many smart kids, this is the practical tradeoff. If you are in-state to one if these better publics, it’s a no brainer.

By saying costs don’t matter, this just becomes another ranking thread, which is useless because everyone already knows - more or less - where schools stand. No one cares about the difference between 10-25 or 26-40. When you add cost to the equation, you’re ascertaining value. That’s what most care about.

[Anonymous]

One for undergrad and the other for grad?

[Anonymous]

Doesn't it depend on the kid? If your kid wants a big school and loves STEM, wouldn't Berkeley be an obvious choice over those others? Likewise if your kid wanted to study business and likes being on the east coast, UVA makes so much more sense than Vandy, rice, emory, or wash u.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Doesn't it depend on the kid? If your kid wants a big school and loves STEM, wouldn't Berkeley be an obvious choice over those others? Likewise if your kid wanted to study business and likes being on the east coast, UVA makes so much more sense than Vandy, rice, emory, or wash u.

UVA business is better than Vandy? I don't think so...

[Anonymous]

Have the UVA boosters never heard of financial aid? Is this a foreign concept to them?

[Anonymous]

At this point, Michigan is pretty much like half out of state kids, often from the NY area, who pay full price...in that sense, it is kind of like a private.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Have the UVA boosters never heard of financial aid? Is this a foreign concept to them?

Many in the DMV don’t qualify for aid, yet $75k is still a ton of money to them. Why part with $75k/year if you can get the same for $30k? Common sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Top privates: HYPSM
Top public: Berkeley, Michigan, UCLA, etc
If cost is the same, there is no question about choosing MIT, Harvard and Stanford over any public. For Yale and Princeton, it may depend on the majors. For example, I can see people choose Berkeley over Yale for CS.

Even to major CS, I would choose Yale over Berkeley without a slight hesitation. All undergrad CS courses at the T25 schools are more or less same, and research opportunities are plenty in those resourseful schools for an undergrad. But the overall undergraduate education experience at the two schools is hugely different, and frankly the experience at Yale is way better while you may have hard time even getting to some classes you want. Yes, prestige does play a role in my decision as well if I would pay that much to attend.

No one cares where you go to school for computer science. They really don't care about prestige.

Oh, believe me, as someone who hires CS grads, we DO care where you went for undergrad. We don’t necessarily care if you went to Berkeley (well, we do care, but we may not be able to afford you), but we do care where you went in a given state. In my state, if you went to our top private or our top public STEM, we want to hire you. If you went to any other public in the state, we would prefer not to waste the time teaching you what you didn’t learn in undergrad.

Nope, or you are just a bland recruiter who has never done the work. My spouse went to a school no one has head of and doing very well. Going to a top school does not always mean skill.

Anecdotal evidence is a weak argument. I won't be surprised if there's one CS kid at some podunk public who is smarter and more skilled that all the CS majors at MIT. But a overwhelming majority of those MIT kids will be heads and shoulders above the podunk kids. If you're an employer, where would you ask your recruiter to source resumes from? If you're impressed by someone at a conference, what's the likelyhood they are from podunk public vs MIT?

Keep telling yourself that. Half your mit and Berkeley kids cannot even get a clearance.