People have suggested some high reaches…so WPI, RPI and RIT are good suggestions for targets. I believe WPI is the largest of those three and the demographics aren’t as skewed towards male.

Anonymous wrote:How are things at the smaller liberal arts colleges, like Williams, Swarthmore or Amherst?

DC goes to Amherst and has signed up for multiple computer science classes with ease. It seems that the department is expanding as of late in order to account for growing enrollment.

Anonymous wrote:In general, privates are better than publics as you can imagine.

tell that to kids at pomona

Anonymous wrote:The better private universities.

Stanford
MIT
Princeton
CMU
Duke
Rice
Northwestern
Hopkins
Penn
Cornell

A lot of publics might be better ranked in CS, but it's a pain and a slog getting a degree with so many 500/1000+ intro classes. Berkeley alone has CS classes with more than 1700 students.

+1

This is the group to aim for, CS and Engineering. Smaller classes, top of the field professors, easy to get research including paid research, professors who care and want to build relationships with undergrads

In general, privates are better than publics as you can imagine.

Anonymous wrote:The better private universities.

Stanford
MIT
Princeton
CMU
Duke
Rice
Northwestern
Hopkins
Penn
Cornell

A lot of publics might be better ranked in CS, but it's a pain and a slog getting a degree with so many 500/1000+ intro classes. Berkeley alone has CS classes with more than 1700 students.

I love how the first answer is majority reach/lottery schools. This is a very unrealistic list for most students.

My son is at WPI which has a huge amount of CS majors but he has been able to get into the classes he wants. You have to be somewhat savvy at crafting your 4 year plan and getting off waitlists and doublecounting grad classes but it is possible to get a 4 year masters if you have some AP credits.

How are things at the smaller liberal arts colleges, like Williams, Swarthmore or Amherst?

WPI, University of Denver, GW, University of Rochester

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The better private universities.

Stanford
MIT
Princeton
CMU
Duke
Rice
Northwestern
Hopkins
Penn
Cornell

A lot of publics might be better ranked in CS, but it's a pain and a slog getting a degree with so many 500/1000+ intro classes. Berkeley alone has CS classes with more than 1700 students.

Of that list with CS issues, Cornell ( https://cornellsun.com/2023/01/31/computer-and-information-science-students-struggle-with-course-enrollment-adding-stress-instead-of-classes/ ), Penn ( https://www.thedp.com/article/2019/03/computer-science-classes-coding-ivy-league-upenn-philadelphia ), Johns Hopkins (https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2017/02/over-500-waitlisted-for-comp-sci-classes ), Duke potentially (https://www.reddit.com/r/duke/comments/n0905v/duke_cs_concerns_is_it_really_as_bad_as_some_say/ ) and Rice potentially ( https://www.reddit.com/r/riceuniversity/comments/4h32r9/how_is_rice_cs/ ).
It has been a nightmare at DC's college, Umich, and I am very pessimistic about colleges ability to change this.

Can you elaborate? DC (rising senior) has never had issues with getting a class he wanted, is on track to graduate this semester with a minor. Several of his friends have already graduated (in 3 years) without issues.

Hey, DC just graduated from Mich! It's not a graduating issue, but likely a fit issue. He chose to go to a university, because he was advanced in computer science and wanted grad-level coursework/PhD (and the support wasn't great also takes forever for office hours in some courses). By his junior year, the courses he was looking to take all were immediately gone with long waitlists, and he felt like he was still scrambling after underclassmen years. It's definitely softening after first year admission restriction changes. By the time he wanted to try out grad school courses, he was met with a lot of resistance and realized it wasn't going to happen.

Anonymous wrote:Georgia Tech.
You now can't major in Computer Science if you're not accepted into the major as a freshman.

(You can transfer into engineering or any other major except CS.)

Realize that this is confusing---what I mean is that you can change your major to anything but computer science. You can come in as a business major and change to engineering but you can never change into computer science. They did this to limit class sizes within the computer science major.

Georgia Tech.
You now can't major in Computer Science if you're not accepted into the major as a freshman.

(You can transfer into engineering or any other major except CS.)

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The better private universities.

Stanford
MIT
Princeton
CMU
Duke
Rice
Northwestern
Hopkins
Penn
Cornell

A lot of publics might be better ranked in CS, but it's a pain and a slog getting a degree with so many 500/1000+ intro classes. Berkeley alone has CS classes with more than 1700 students.

Of that list with CS issues, Cornell ( https://cornellsun.com/2023/01/31/computer-and-information-science-students-struggle-with-course-enrollment-adding-stress-instead-of-classes/ ), Penn ( https://www.thedp.com/article/2019/03/computer-science-classes-coding-ivy-league-upenn-philadelphia ), Johns Hopkins (https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2017/02/over-500-waitlisted-for-comp-sci-classes ), Duke potentially (https://www.reddit.com/r/duke/comments/n0905v/duke_cs_concerns_is_it_really_as_bad_as_some_say/ ) and Rice potentially ( https://www.reddit.com/r/riceuniversity/comments/4h32r9/how_is_rice_cs/ ).
It has been a nightmare at DC's college, Umich, and I am very pessimistic about colleges ability to change this.

Can you elaborate? DC (rising senior) has never had issues with getting a class he wanted, is on track to graduate this semester with a minor. Several of his friends have already graduated (in 3 years) without issues.

Anonymous wrote:The better private universities.

Stanford
MIT
Princeton
CMU
Duke
Rice
Northwestern
Hopkins
Penn
Cornell

A lot of publics might be better ranked in CS, but it's a pain and a slog getting a degree with so many 500/1000+ intro classes. Berkeley alone has CS classes with more than 1700 students.

Of that list with CS issues, Cornell ( https://cornellsun.com/2023/01/31/computer-and-information-science-students-struggle-with-course-enrollment-adding-stress-instead-of-classes/ ), Penn ( https://www.thedp.com/article/2019/03/computer-science-classes-coding-ivy-league-upenn-philadelphia ), Johns Hopkins (https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2017/02/over-500-waitlisted-for-comp-sci-classes ), Duke potentially (https://www.reddit.com/r/duke/comments/n0905v/duke_cs_concerns_is_it_really_as_bad_as_some_say/ ) and Rice potentially ( https://www.reddit.com/r/riceuniversity/comments/4h32r9/how_is_rice_cs/ ).
It has been a nightmare at DC's college, Umich, and I am very pessimistic about colleges ability to change this.

The better private universities.

Stanford
MIT
Princeton
CMU
Duke
Rice
Northwestern
Hopkins
Penn
Cornell

A lot of publics might be better ranked in CS, but it's a pain and a slog getting a degree with so many 500/1000+ intro classes. Berkeley alone has CS classes with more than 1700 students.

DC just wants a school where there isn't 1000 people stuffed in a CS lecture hall and hard-to-get classes from all the majors. Any places come to mind?