

Ask HN: College name vs. education - mkaminsky11

I’m going to be applying to colleges soon (for computer science), and I’ve met people who insist that the name (Harvard, Yale, etc.) is more important than the quality of education (UC Berkley, Carnegie Mellon).<p>In your experience, which one is weighed more heavily?
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needacig
Name matters far more than quality of education, which is hard (or currently
impossible) to measure, and usually gleaned through your interviews. In fact,
name is a proxy for the quality of education. This is true not just at
companies, but in graduate programs. I've seen people in evaluating positions
openly discriminate on the basis of school.

Also, you give Harvard and Yale as examples of the "good name" schools and UC
Berkeley and CMU as examples of "quality education" schools, but it's not that
simple. In my experience, schools with smaller programs tend to offer far
better educational experiences than schools with very large programs. In this
sense, Harvard is more likely to give you a better undergraduate education
that UC Berkeley, where huge class sizes make for a very different classroom
experience, and you will find it more difficult to get to know your professors
than at a smaller school. If I were choosing, I would look for a school that
had a good name, modest CS class sizes, high quality peers, and where
undergraduates had many opportunities to work closely with faculty. The class
size and faculty interaction is where schools like UC Berkeley lose out.

~~~
needacig
Also I agree with other commenters who point out that in CS, several schools
outside the Ivy league are considered good names: MIT, Stanford, CMU, UC
Berkeley, Caltech, UIUC, in that order. With the Ivy leagues I'd rank it
somewhat like this:

\- MIT

\- Harvard, Princeton, Stanford

\- CMU

\- UC Berkeley, Yale, Caltech

\- UIUC, rest of Ivy leagues

~~~
FlyingLawnmower
Out of curiosity: where does Georgia Tech fall on your list?

~~~
needacig
Oh, I forgot about that. Probably at least by UIUC if not a little higher
actually.

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throwaway19935
The top schools for computer science are: MIT, Stanford, U.C. Berkeley and
Carnegie Mellon. In the programming world, these schools both have the biggest
"names" and provide their students with a top-notch education. (But Berkeley
is pretty big, so you might get a slightly better education elsewhere.)

Several state schools also have fantastic computer science programs. These
are: University of Washington, UT Austin, University of Illinois Urbana-
Champaign, and Georgia Tech. Glancing at the U.S. News CS rankings, it looks
like Wisconsin, UCLA, Michigan, UCSD, and Maryland are also up there.

Some of the Ivy League schools also have very good computer science
departments: Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Penn, Brown, Cornell. Don't go to
Yale for CS. Not sure about Dartmouth.

Caltech is also obviously really good.

If you want to do programming post-graduation, you'd be fine going to any of
the schools I listed above. Google, Facebook, etc. recruit from all of them,
and I'm sure they'd look good on a resume for a startup. If you go to a school
not listed above, you'd probably have a little bit more difficulty getting an
interview (though this would get to be less of a problem with time, after you
have actual work experience).

If you want to go to graduate school for computer science, make sure you go
somewhere where there are lots of good researchers so that you can get
involved with research as an undergrad (any of the schools above would do).

Here's where it gets tricky. All of the schools I listed above have prestige
in the CS world. However, in the general business world (i.e. not tech
companies), and in finance, it's Ivy League schools that have prestige. So, if
you want to go into traditional finance or management consulting, you'd be
better off going to Yale than Carnegie Mellon. This is what people are talking
about when they say that the "name" matters.

TLDR; if you're sure you want to do programming, go to a top CS school (public
or private). If you think you might want to do finance or consulting instead,
go to an Ivy.

(Source: I'm a CS student at Princeton.)

~~~
throwaway19935
Another thing to think about: At MIT or CMU, almost all of your friends would
also be STEM majors. At an Ivy or Stanford, your social circle would include
people with a broader range of personalities.

Also: admissions at Ivies and Stanford work very differently from admissions
at MIT, CMU, and Berkeley. The latter set of schools are more meritocratic --
you get in if you have high grades, high test scores, etc. (Although it takes
a lot more than high grades and test scores to get into MIT.) The Ivies care a
lot about extracurriculars, athletics, and essays. So, if you're, like, a
world champion debater, that would go far at Harvard, but not so much at MIT.

~~~
eghad
In terms of CMU, I'd say your first point is short-sighted. Because of the
relatively large Design/Art, Architecture, and Business programs, the generic
freshman orientation/prereqs, a surprisingly inclusive Greek presence, and the
small social scene there's plenty of opportunity for mixing with different
people.

In fact, I'd go so far in saying that meeting people outside of your typified
social circle isn't institution dependent, rather an individual preference (so
I wouldn't be surprised if your generalization isn't applicable to MIT
either).

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subject4056
Big companies recruit where they know they will find talent (especially for
internships). Unfortunately this means name matters more than content.
Regional firms also like to hire from the biggest-name school in their
vicinity.

That said, CMU, Cal and a handful of other schools with noted CS programs are
bigger names in the west coast tech world than most of the Ivy League.

Source: Six years working at different jobs with people from the same seven
schools.

~~~
mkaminsky11
Ah, I see. which "seven schools" specifically?

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subject4056
Stanford, MIT, CMU, UIUC, UC Berkely

UCLA, USC, and UC San Diego all make the list, but those are to some extent
peculiar to my experiences in California. The last few are probably a
different grab bag depending where in the country you want to end up.

I can't speak properly to how things are done abroad, but my understanding
from other fields is that name recognition matters even more.

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raincom
Sure, you want to study computer science today, but who knows after three
years. If you do get into HYP, just go to HYP, instead of UCBerkely, CMU, MIT.

Undergrad from HYP can open doors in fields you may like: IB, PE, HF,
Consulting, etc, in the case you lose interest in being a programmer. You can
become a programmer even after an HYP education.

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brudgers
My standard advice:

Decide where you want to live. Manhattan, NY is very.different from Manhattan,
KS...so to speak. People who are well suited for one are not for the other.

Second piece of advice that's becoming one of my standards;

Decide if you will be happier as a big fish in a little pond or a little fish
in a big pond. Being below average at MIT is way above average on an absolute
scale but for some people it will be utterly miserable to the point they won't
thrive.

The big name schools May open doors when you graduate, but in the long run its
about what you can do.

Good luck.

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MichaelCrawford
Nobody seems to care that I attended Caltech.

I actually graduated from UC Santa Cruz; in my actual experience, the classes
at UCSC did me quite a lot more good in my career than the ones I took at
Caltech. However my degree was in Physics, but the classes that really made a
difference to me were psychology, social psychology and anthropology.

In the work world, you see, it helps a great deal to understand other people.

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PaulHoule
The awful truth is that names matter a lot, even if you want to go into
academia, and even for the undergrad school you go to.

~~~
needacig
I'd say _especially_ if you want to go into academia.

Source: I've witnessed graduate admissions committees at a top school at work.

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akhilcacharya
I'm quickly regretting my decision to be where I am.

~~~
iends
Why do you regret NCSU? Undergrad or Grad?

Make the most of your opportunities. Plenty of people I know from NCSU went to
grad school at top institutions or to work at Google, MSFT, etc

~~~
akhilcacharya
Undergrad.

Its a great school for ECE, but I'm not convinced anymore that its as good for
CS. We have a lot of very smart people but..I don't see a lot of innovation
coming from here. This might be the case at most CS schools in general, but
its disheartening when I read about the opportunities and developments at
MIT/Stanford/CMU on a daily basis.

