
Ask HN: Does enlisting in the Air Force after HS hurt tech career options? - legionof7
I&#x27;m going to be a HS senior in a few weeks and I need to decide whether to enlist in the Air Force softbook program (I would go to basic training after my senior year and be guaranteed one of five jobs). I do dual enrollment so I would already have ~45 college credits so I could immediately become E3 Airman First Class.<p>I know that I can go through Air Force Community College and then get a bachelors through their partnership schools but they aren&#x27;t great schools.<p>If I didn&#x27;t enlist, I&#x27;d probably go into a UC doing compsci or business, continue working on my startup, and make my way into the tech scene.<p>I&#x27;d love any suggestions or opinions you may have, thanks!
======
ThrowawayR2
The point of going to a better quality school is the chance (note, not a
guarantee, just the chance) of getting a higher quality education. Pretty much
any institution will teach the basic CS core adequately but a higher quality
program will give you access to specialized courses like AI, software
security, machine vision, embedded systems, etc. that will give you a broader
set of job options to choose from over the course of your career.

The questions you need to ask yourself are:

1) Is getting deeper and broader CS knowledge important to your future career
plans? The default career for the vast majority of CS graduates is writing web
sites and apps (go and look at the monthly HN "Who's hiring?" posting). For
that, a basic CS education is more than adequate and many would say it's
overkill. If that's the route you think you're going to take, follow SQL2219's
advice and don't worry about school quality.

2) Are you a good enough student and a dedicated enough student to take
advantage of a better quality school? Put bluntly, if you don't put in the
work to absorb the material well to remember and use it later in your career,
having a broader set of classes available to you isn't going to make a
difference.

------
SQL2219
Don't underestimate the huge advantage of graduating with zero student debt,
which currently averages around $40,000 for graduates.

"they aren't great schools" \- by what measure are you using to validate this
statement? Most companies do not care where you got your degree, although you
will run into asshole gatekeepers (HR) that have their own unjustified bias.
The further along you get in your career, the less it matters where you went
to school.

