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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Tell me about the CS program at William and Mary. Is it direct admit? Is W&M a cut throat school? Do kids enjoy the town? Do companies recruit from there? Do seniors have multiple job offers before they graduate like VT or UVA or even GMU CS grads do? Please share everything you know (positive or negative). How is racial diversity there? [/quote]

I didn't even know W&M had a CS program. I thought it was a liberal arts school.[/quote]

Liberal Arts includes mathematics.  Computer Science in large part arose out of mathematics departments.  Alan Turing's undergraduate degree from Cambridge and PhD from Princeton were awarded by the Mathematics departments.  So most liberal arts schools have had computer sciences classes for many decades and independent computer science departments splitting off from mathematics for a long, long time.[/quote]

DH and I met at a SLAC, where he got a CS degree (and I did English to law school, because cliche). Fast forward and he is chief software architect for two companies under the same business. He credits his successful career and rapid advancement to attending a SLAC. He’s had to do the work over the years to stay on top of the technical aspects of the job, new languages,, advances in the field.  But he says that most programmers/CS grads are terrible communicators and often aren’t great at apply information to real world scenarios that require considering multiple variables, many of which are not technical.  He believes that his ability to analyze complex problems that are a mixture of technical and real world applications and especially his ability to write and speak clearly and coherently and form a clear argument that makes complex issues understandable in team meetings and to his boss has helped his career enormously. [/quote]

^^^ this

- an IT manager[/quote]
most very success CS folks [b]did not go to LACs.[/b] You might be thinking of IT workers or developers turned BSAs that don't require heavy programming knowledge.  I agree that most common type developers aren't good at the non technical part of the job, but if you are trying to hire low level developers as BSAs, then that's your problem.  I have seen this time and again in my 20 years in the private sector, including a long stint at a FAANG.

The best SWE think creatively and outside the box.    Look at all the famous SWE, like Brin, Paige, etc..[b] they did not go to LACs.[/b][/quote]

Some do, some don't.  You can't generalize.

A CS degree will be value add in one's career over time regardless whether it's at a LAC or not.

Everyone doesn't graduate from MIT or Cal Tech.

[/quote]

The CS grads from LACs tend to do very well. There are just relatively few of them because the total number of LAC graduates is far tinier than university graduates, and the total number of CS grads from LACs even smaller.  So by numbers alone, it's just highly unlikely that any one LAC grad is going to be on your radar of famous leaders.   But their outcomes are very impressive. [/quote]

Just 4% of the total college graduates in the country attend liberal arts colleges, but they are over-represented in many professional areas--as CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, in PhD programs, as tenured professors, as lawyers, doctors etc.

William and Mary, despite sharing many qualities with liberal arts colleges, is considered a research university because it does have a small number of graduate programs.  It sort of doesn't fit neatly in any category.

[/quote]

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