Wondering about comparisons between Aggie Computer Science department vs UT. I have a child debating between the two before long. I'm not sure I'm up on the field:

Any advice?

My thoughts/wonderings:

• Child should/could consult placement center for each to try to obtain avg starting salaries, offer statistics.
• Is one dept better for a one speciallization or other, e.g. networking, video, storage, security, etc?
• Any anecdotal evidence of either department (or comparisons between the two)?
• Does one provide more degree plan tailoring to facilitate specialization ?
• Programming language specializations? Motivated by recent news that I heard that Java is about to become a pay to use language.
• Reputation of professors (their English fluency)?

Carnegie Mellon, if you don't mind being asked "is that in the Ivy League" the rest of your life.

HECUBUS said:

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Carnegie Mellon, if you don't mind being asked "is that in the Ivy League" the rest of your life.

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This

Wish I had done CS for undergrad instead of business

I'm in my second year of CS at A&M, I've never been in another school's CS department so I can't really compare it to anything, but I'm unimpressed so far. It's not bad, but could be better. All of my favorite professors so far have been in other departments (mostly math).

HECUBUS said:

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Carnegie Mellon, if you don't mind being asked "is that in the Ivy League" the rest of your life.

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Also incredibly hard to get into. A definite step above both UT and TAMU in exclusivity and reputation. But this is not to say that UT and A&M are bad.

I know a lot more about the A&M CS department than the UT one. There are some very good professors at A&M, there are some not so great ones. The upperclassmen can tell your student who. You asked about languages - CS departments don't care about specific languages. They believe if you know how to program, you can teach yourself any language (I agree with them on this.)

CS at both A&M and UT is hard to get into (tho not Carnegie Mellon level) - this is a very popular major in the past few years. Job placement from A&M seems good - but it depends what you want to do. The connections with the flashy names in Silicon Valley are not as strong as at Stanford, but my impression is that Microsoft is happy with what A&M produces. (But there is a lot of interesting stuff going on in this field that isn't on the west coast.)

Do you think the common freshman engineering curriculum has affected your CS experience? As a very interested Aggie CS graduate, I worry it is much better suited for eventual CE, EE, ME, etc. students than for CS.

One other thing to consider about the CS programs at A&M and UT is that they are in different colleges. CS at A&M is in the College of Engineering, while CS at UT is in the College of Natural Sciences, based on how the two programs started.

My experience with graduates from both programs is that it seems to color the emphasis of the program, with the A&M degree tending to be more practical and the UT degree tending to be more theoretical. I'd recommend that a prospective CS student look at both to find the best fit based on their personality and future plans.

swood said:

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Do you think the common freshman engineering curriculum has affected your CS experience? As a very interested Aggie CS graduate, I worry it is much better suited for eventual CE, EE, ME, etc. students than for CS.

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I'm not a traditional student, so I actually didn't have to do the common engineering year. But my opinion is that it's not beneficial for CS majors.

Redd83,

Hmm, I graduated from the CS department in 2006 and had a different experience than what you are having. Back then, CS majors didn't have to do the regular common entry engineering classes (at the time they were: ENGR 101/102/201/202/110/210 - I believe they were called). Is Dr. Salih Yurttas still teaching?

Michigan's CS is an excellent program

That's why I went to b school. Picked up SQL and now learning R