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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

As a CS academic for the past three decades, I am intrigued by whether these choices are made with good information. Needless to say, a CS from anywhere is just fine for employability. And both UMD and NEU are good programs. But, UMD is actually a blue-chip CS department that is constantly knocking on the top-10 door for the past three decades. NEU is relatively unknown in CS. It has recently made some advances in publication-oriented rankings (CS rankings). But, reputationally for high-end employers and grad schools it won't hold a candle to UMD. [/quote]

This is a great question. UMD has superb facilities and faculty. However after acceptance, we ruled it out and selected a "lower ranked choice" becasue all those great facilities seemed great for graduate students, not used as much by undergrads. UMD has lots of "extra general education credits" that seemed like the "filler" classes that my child was tired of from the high school years. Also, the class sizes were large and it appeared that getting into needed CS classes was difficult.  Finally, when we talked to students directly we heard several times that they didn't feel safe on campus at night. It also seemed like a heavy emphasis was on sports, greek life, and a party culture. It wasn't one specific thing, but a lot of things together.

We choose a school with smaller class sizes, a more intimate feel, and a more open curriculum so you're not stuck taking classes you don't want. Curious, what about this is considered mis-information? I would like to know. It is hard to get past all the marketing brochures admissions provides and getting past the rankings to figure out what is a good fit. My child is super motivated in CS. I won't list out things accomplished for privacy reasons, but in the end we decided DC was motivated enough to make it work anywhere so the ranking of 10 or 20 places probably didn't really matter.[/quote]

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