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[quote=Anonymous]In my opinion, go for overall university. Most colleges teach content that is very very different from the skills required for real world jobs.

For example, even in a highly practical major like computer science, only a few courses tend to be directly relevant to what a real software engineer does in their day to day. Trust me I was a CS major at a top engineering school and now work in tech.

To a large extent, even more than the education itself, the value a college provides is twofold: (1) branding/stamp of approval, and (2) professional network. In an ideal world also (3) a positive experience for 4 years and pleasant memories shared with friends.

I doubt a CS major at Harvard is learning more useful engineering skills than a CS major at a decent state university (if you believe reports surrounding rampant grade inflation, its possible they're learning less haha).

However, and this is a big however, the Harvard name will open doors everywhere in a way that most other college names can't. Also, the CS major from Harvard will have spent 4 years networking with other ambitious overachievers who will likely be in a position to help them professionally later in life.

I'm giving an extreme example to demonstrate the point but I think the argument still stands. Unless they want to pursue a PhD after undergrad, my opinion is that the overall brand and network are probably more important simply because academia tends to focus on content very divorced from real world careers. [/quote]

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