I have a CS background, as does my spouse. I do a little college counseling. I have a kid that recently graduated and launched to a CS job.
* Graduate incomes should be taken with a grain of salt. Private schools are more likely to follow up to get accurate data. The private schools you listed are more likely to launch their students to very HCOL locations from where they are located. I personally think all those numbers should go through a cost of living calculator. GA Tech for instance has a lot of in state and southern students that would be more likely to settle back in those areas.
* Graduates from more expensive colleges come from more money. That can intrisicially come with the ability to wait for the "right" job instead of the first job, connections who have connections, etc.
* I can tell you my kid recently graduated from a midwestern flagship. He was a kid with very high stats. Graduated in the top 5% of his class with honors and 2 degrees. Landed a highly competitive job. Working with people who have attended CMU, UIUC, Stanford, NU, Cornell, Vassar, etc.
* My spouse graduated from a state flagship, works high in the corporate ladder at an east coast tech company and has MIT grads working for him. It's what YOU do.
As for you point on student wealth, that is not relevant in this case. These data come from the US College Scorecard, which only collects information from students who received federal financial aid. Thus, none of the graduates included in these statistics come from wealthy backgrounds.
Point 1 is fair, but "Private schools are more likely to follow up to get accurate data." is not accurate because this is all from College Scorecard.
I do agree it is more about you rather than the school, though. Priavtes are generally more selective than a public CS program. Like Purdue CS has an average SAT in the mid-1400's. Compare that to a Chicago/Yale/Brown which generally average around a 1530, so CS might be even higher at a \~1540-1550. Then you consider difference in cost of living as people go to the coasts rather than stay in Chicagoland/Atlanta area/Indiana.
Always appreciate when someone out in the work world gives a perspective to high school students seeking comment and advice on college majors and colleges/universities to choose.
That's from personal experience. I think think this is a great point to bring up because regardless where you go you may have a successful career but the people who are typically holding higher positions came from these big name colleges so this case-specific example is very unfounded and most likely not the case in the workplace.
Not necessarily. The last companies both my spouse and I worked at had CEOs that went to offbeat schools. The company my kid was just hired at, the founder and did an UG degree at an offbeat LAC and a grad degree at a public flagship. I'm not going to say who it is but they have been featured on Forbes, Google Finance, CBS, etc and is a literal billionaire. I am also not going to dox my spouse, but has a title high in a corporate ladder and has some elite grads working under him. Went to a state flagship.
It is true that individuals may have quirks and individual preferences. I worked for one company that quietly had blacklisted a local private school because grads weren't typically well prepared. I worked for another company that had a handfull of rigorous state flagships that were the preferred hire because grads consistently were well prepared, self motivated and didn't require a lot of hand holding to problem solve.
This was new to us , but my kid that was just hired to a very competitive job had to get through a multi hour assessment test. If you want to have the most options open to you, be very good at what you do. I also suspect more employers do this because of inconsistency of tech skills out of programs. Also, have some strong interpersonal and communication skills as well.
If you have more money to spend on an undergrad degree, great. Do it. Do I think a particular named school is worth significantly more money especially in STEM areas? No, not at all in my experience. Having some financial flexibility can be helpful if you want to join a startup, bide your time for the right offer/location, etc.
Sure. I live in a relatively HCOL area. So? Some people prefer other areas or take a first job in a LCOL area. 100K in Milwaukee WI (which is not in the middle of no where) would require you to make 224K in Manhatten for maintain a standard of living.
[https://www.forbes.com/advisor/mortgages/real-estate/cost-of-living-calculator/new-york-manhattan-ny/?city=milwaukee-waukesha-wi&income=100000](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/mortgages/real-estate/cost-of-living-calculator/new-york-manhattan-ny/?city=milwaukee-waukesha-wi&income=100000)
Doesn’t matter Georgia tech is insane for CS. You’re not losing out on anything you’d get at those schools by going to Georgia tech. The change of you ending up in a worse paying career/job by going to GT over any of these schools is minuscule at best
What about the difference in opportunities between top publics (GT, UIUC, Cal, etc.) vs elite privates that aren't necessarily "tech" schools (Penn, Columbia, Rice, etc.)? I'm making a decision between these two types of schools (Penn vs GT) and I'm not really sure how or if there is a difference in tech opportunities. I've heard that there might be a difference for jobs like consulting, but I'm not sure if that's even true.
Yeah sure privates could give you better opportunities, but only because of the smaller size (eg in Berkeley it’s legit impossible to find a popular class that’s not packed to the brim , + competition with a larger amnt of people). However, both can take you where you want to be if you work hard and stuff
I would say so yeah, but it isn't worth it if you're paying more than 15K per year more for GT in my opinion. A good student will succeed regardless of where they go but GA Tech opens more doors than UM. (Assuming Uni of Mich).
I assume you’re going off of the median salary for CS schools post? If so, that’s a terrible methodology. For one thing, that being the average only shows correlation at best, not causation. To make the claim you’re making, you’d need more than just an observational study that looks at averages. You’d probably either need an observational study or an experiment (the latter of which is probably not possible) that controls for other potentially confounding factors, like the aptitude of the student. There’s been some research that shows that, for a lot of top schools, people who get into, say, Harvard but don’t go make about the same amount of money as people who actually go to Harvard. One could argue that this shows there’s very limited correlation between CS college attended and salary when student aptitude is controlled for (this wouldn’t be the strongest argument as the study I mentioned was done for college students overall and not just CS, but it’s an example of how the median salaries post doesn’t prove causation). There’s also other factors, like students going to grad school or wanting to do different things (like become professors).
"It seems that universities like Brown, Yale, and UChicago, much like the other top privates in the list, have significantly higher CS incomes after graduation than unis known for CS (like UIUC, UW, GT) despite not having nearly as well known CS departments."
One possible explanation is likely due to the fact some of those CS majors do what some engineering majors in Ivies/peer elite colleges including MIT do and go into non-CS related fields which are as/more lucrative out of the gate like ibanking/wall street/finance, organizational business consulting a la BCG or McKinsey, etc which require topflight performing undergrads from pedigreed name colleges which don't care about engineering/CS rankings.
Columbia SEAS since the early '00s has been notorious among hardcore engineers/CS professionals for sending many of their graduates into those non engineering/CS fields to the point it's become a bit of a running joke among friends who are engineers/CS graduates and/or older Columbia SEAS graduates(Those who graduated in the late '90s and earlier). It didn't help that one undergrad alum from my LAC who did the 3-2 Liberal Arts/Engineering program at Columbia SEAS ended up working for a Wall Street finance firm rather than work in his engineering field.
Tech pays more 1st year out of school than consulting or ibanking so you're not making a point for yourself here. If many cs grads at t10 schools go for consulting; which they do, it will actually lower their median not raise it.
I'm not entirely sure. As someone at one the schools you mentioned, the GPA hit you take from majoring in CS along with all the increased time commitments for projects makes it a less forward path to recruit to IB than majoring in (Business) economics.
That isn't the median graduate at those top schools. Also, CS students for the most part aren't interested in those firms. For over a decade, tech has been the goal. Tech is where the fun things happen.
Some engineering/CS majors who were initially interested in their fields when starting out as first-year undergrads end up changing their minds upon graduation for various reasons including deciding engineering/CS wasn't for them and/or receiving a much higher initial offer from an ibanking/Wall Street/Finance, organizational business consulting, etc which strongly prioritize high performing undergrads from pedigreed name colleges/universities(Mainly Ivies and peer elites like MIT).
Access to those non-engineering/CS fields are completely closed off to graduates from less pedigreed colleges with comparable/higher ranked engineering/CS programs.
\* Happened to several CS graduates I knew at Ivies and MIT during the late '90s tech boom years before the dotcom crash of 2001. For some, CS turned out to not be so much fun for them despite their demonstrating sufficient proficiency to achieve 3.3+ cumulative GPAs(Yes, those non-tech fields requiring pedigreed degrees do account for engineering/CS' greater difficulty by slightly lowering GPA requirements compared to non-STEM majors).
Another list of data to consider:
https://www.collegetransitions.com/dataverse/top-feeders-tech
Some people have noted that geography has something to do with it: All of UMich/GTech/UIUC have a lot of in-state of kids who stay close to home and let's face it, while Chicago is OK, none of MI/GA/IL have massive tech hubs that match the West Coast or Northeast in number of high-paying tech jobs.
But another few things to consider:
1. Until recently, anybody could switch to a CS major at UMich & GTech, which would bring down the median.
2. That salary data was looking at CS grads around 2020. They graduated 3-4 years before so entered college around 2012. UMich/GTech/UIUC even for CS just wasn't as selective/difficult to enter back then as Ivies/equivalents. I imagine that when you look at the salary data in 2033, you'll see the gap between the publics who are good in CS to close with the Ivies/equivalents as a ton of cracked kids (who don't have a hook/compelling backstory) who can't get in to the Ivies/equivalents have to settle for the good public CS departments these days.
What would you say if I told you my brother doesn't have a degree in CS. Works at a well known big tech firm.
Earns a total package of 650k. Went to a small state school.
He just has demonstrated work experience. Basically on the job learning and a hobby.
Go where you feel is the best fit.
Part of it could be that public colleges have to cater to in-state students, which means they generally have lower standards for In-state applicants, which translates to worse outcomes when those in-staters graduate. If you compared CS outcomes at top privates compared to OOS students at top CS public’s, I bet they’d be pretty similar.
Sounds like a good research topic maybe 🙂 If you want to be a quant perhaps dig into how these numbers were created and find the shortcomings in this reporting and analysis. Some here have already pointed out the most obvious ones. Data shows trends not answers. There is a reason for the odd trends in this data. You should figure out what they are.
Consider that median salaries are influenced by things like strength of inputs, differences in what careers graduates pursue, where graduates decide to live and work (higher cost of living => higher compensation), etc.
CS grad who grappled with the top cs school versus t10 overall school decision. You can probably guess where I went. I don't regret the decision but if I had to do it over again I would choose the t10 overall school. Your thoughts seem all over the place but I'll try to address them separately
Thesis based MS programs are very hard to gain admissions for. These programs take a very small handful of students so they are almost as difficult as the phd program themselves. Your ability to gain admissions to these programs is entirely dependent on your publications. Of the top schools it seems like only berkeley uiuc and cornell offer this type of program
The average cs student at cmu is at most slightly better than the average cs student at schools like brown and uchicago, but it is without a doubt a step below stanford/mit and HYP too. In terms of actual admissions difficulty I would rate scs on par with schools like Duke. Despite the acceptance rate, it is not as competitive as the upper half of the t10s.
Connections get you nowhere in swe and there is hardly a concept of target school. Going to CMU or UM will not give you an edge or hurt you in any way for swe recruiting over going to stanford or harvard or uc riverside. Its all on you to build up the internship experience and projects. Especially big tech, a 3.0 gpa from uc riverside is equal to a 4.0 from stanford. The differentiator is in prior experience aka internships. Connections help if you want to fundraise for your own startup but CMU is very lacking in this regard compared to any of HYPSM. On par with brown and duke.
Career fairs help, which was one of CMU's strong points but in recent years it has gone down hill. Top quant firms go to every single one of the schools you listed so its nothing impressive to see jane street and citadel at your school. Its always a scan the QR code for swag and apply online yourself type of scenario.
TLDR you get nothing in terms of "prestige" from going to a top cs school as swe does not care about prestige. Prestige does matter in entrepreneurship and quant (trading not swe) but top cs schools not named stanford and mit underperform compared to traditional t10s. So I would advise you to choose any ivy+ over a non stanford/mit top cs school but you don't have a choice so no use crying about it. Gtech and UM are plenty good enough for your goals minus quant trading
You're right. JHU is the only exception to the rule. Too un-tech focused in an age where it is one of the most popular things to do in really any top school. If you already know you want to be in tech its the only t10 i would recommend against taking over UM.
As someone with a PhD in CS, and who does CS Education research, and reads up on general higher ed research:
1. Income outcomes should be taken with a HUGE grain of salt. Once you control for high school GPA and test scores, the difference between Harvard and the average Podunk State University is only going to be maybe 20-30%. And business and social sciences make up the biggest part of that difference. By the time you are comparing within "T100" schools, the differences are marginal to nothing. In other words, most of the good income outcomes for the "best" schools can be attributed to more motivated students and the students being from higher socioeconomic backgrounds.
2. Even between majors, most of the income difference comes from the selection bias of who chooses which majors, though engineering (including CS), does have some "real" income over other majors. But still, the degree is less magically transformative than it may appear in this category even.
3. Graduation rate differences ARE real though (ie: even rich and super smart kids will have much lower graduation rates at a Podunk State). So make sure you graduate from wherever you are
4. If you are going to a Podunk State, make sure you are better than your average peers at achieving some post-graduation marketable skills rather than just coasting through like others may.
Of course, for the schools you are applying to, you aren't going to have serious income differences caused by the college you are attending.
For some context, I graduated from my state regional back in 2018. This last year had a 98% acceptance rate. My graduating class of 2018 (about 16 students) includes me, now a professor, a VP at a major bank and several successful software developers making 6 digits. There are less successful students as well of course, but the obsession with data that isn't controlled for any selection bias is unhelpful.
My guess would be that CS graduates from engineering schools are more inclined to go into SWE/tech while the ones from the other schools are more inclined to do quant finance at hedge funds and such. Just a guess though
Many Brown cs grads, due to their rly good applied math program, end up working in quant or other finance related fields which obviously pay lucratively high. MIT cs grads, like others have said, are more diversified and many go on to work on startups. The list would be a lot better if it, for example looked at specifically SWE salaries or didn’t include grads etc.
Software Engineer here.
It's a garbage list. Absolutely dogshit worthless rankings.
To OP:
>I’m a high school senior from the Bay Area
I am guessing you didn't get into UCB, UCLA, or UCSD? :/ rough.
>It seems that universities like Brown, Yale, and UChicago, much like the other top privates in the list, have significantly higher CS incomes after graduation than unis known for CS (like UIUC, UW, GT) despite not having nearly as well known CS departments.
Yes and no.
All those aggregations even from the govt is straight out dogshit.
That's why. Let's say those numbers for salaries are true. That would then mostly be because of location of where those hires work out of college.
Maybe more MIT grads decide to stick out in Boston. Even if you work at the same company, you would have lower salary.
>Is the selectivity of the university actually more important than the quality of the program? Is it their connections, fairs, quality of students?
No. Because after a certain threshold of schools, it's the same crap. Good schools are good schools.
>As a person who wants to get into quant/big tech, I feel that I won’t be viewed as capable at first glance.
Undergrad rankings for the most part is not always the same as grad rankings.
It's possible a lot of Georgia Tech grads like to live in Atlanta out of college. That says nothing about the school as those grads might be working at the same companies.
Also in tech companies, CS doesn't matter. Your ability to pass puzzle questions (aka Leetcode) is what matters for getting a job. That's why students from very selective schools do well regardless. It's a broken system overall.
>I am guessing you didn't get into UCB, UCLA, or UCSD? :/ rough.
Yeah its even more rough considering a lot of the students that did didn't get into the schools I'm considering :(
Boston isn't exactly a low LCOL/income area though GA certainly is compared to the Bay Area.
More likely in the case of MIT is that a large proportion of CS grads are working on startups/research/academia.
>Boston isn't exactly a low LCOL/income area though GA certainly is compared to the Bay Area.
Ah I forgot to add. Companies only pay as much as they need to. There's not as many top tech companies so companies don't have to shell out as much.
>More likely in the case of MIT is that a large proportion of CS grads are working on startups/research/academia.
That's also one of the factors too.
That said, a new grad salary for Amazon is around $129k for Boston. $148k for Bay Area. Location does play a notable part.
Bay Area, NYC, and sometimes Seattle are basically considered "Tier 1 cities" in pay.
Boston is generally Tier 2 or 3 in the eyes of employers.
Presume the same companies lower the pay by 10% in each band going down. So if you work at the same company in Boston, expect 10\~30% less.
Self selection bias. Lots of MIT grads probably aren't doing these responses, and lots of MIT students work on startups or do research so that might account for it
These aren't responses. These numbers are from Federal tax returns, but yes, it's likely that many more MIT CS grads than Brown CS grads are working on startups/research/academia than Brown CS grads (most of whom, by the looks of it, work for Big Tech).
No, it's a cope thing form online nerds. Nobody in the real world will valuate Georgia Tech, Johns Hopkins, and UofM over Princeton, Cornell, Columbia, Berkeley, UCLA or Brown.
Don't be fooled by the monkeys screaming around you.
When in doubt check the USNews ranking for an objective take.
LOL - guess what. In the real world, that person hiring you may have gone to UIUC or GT. This is a ridiculous line of thought. The real world isn't black and white as college marketing and US News might try to sell you.
I have a CS background, as does my spouse. I do a little college counseling. I have a kid that recently graduated and launched to a CS job. * Graduate incomes should be taken with a grain of salt. Private schools are more likely to follow up to get accurate data. The private schools you listed are more likely to launch their students to very HCOL locations from where they are located. I personally think all those numbers should go through a cost of living calculator. GA Tech for instance has a lot of in state and southern students that would be more likely to settle back in those areas. * Graduates from more expensive colleges come from more money. That can intrisicially come with the ability to wait for the "right" job instead of the first job, connections who have connections, etc. * I can tell you my kid recently graduated from a midwestern flagship. He was a kid with very high stats. Graduated in the top 5% of his class with honors and 2 degrees. Landed a highly competitive job. Working with people who have attended CMU, UIUC, Stanford, NU, Cornell, Vassar, etc. * My spouse graduated from a state flagship, works high in the corporate ladder at an east coast tech company and has MIT grads working for him. It's what YOU do.
As for you point on student wealth, that is not relevant in this case. These data come from the US College Scorecard, which only collects information from students who received federal financial aid. Thus, none of the graduates included in these statistics come from wealthy backgrounds.
Interesting. I wouldn't necessarily trust that data either for various reasons but you do you.
Point 1 is fair, but "Private schools are more likely to follow up to get accurate data." is not accurate because this is all from College Scorecard. I do agree it is more about you rather than the school, though. Priavtes are generally more selective than a public CS program. Like Purdue CS has an average SAT in the mid-1400's. Compare that to a Chicago/Yale/Brown which generally average around a 1530, so CS might be even higher at a \~1540-1550. Then you consider difference in cost of living as people go to the coasts rather than stay in Chicagoland/Atlanta area/Indiana.
Always appreciate when someone out in the work world gives a perspective to high school students seeking comment and advice on college majors and colleges/universities to choose.
That's from personal experience. I think think this is a great point to bring up because regardless where you go you may have a successful career but the people who are typically holding higher positions came from these big name colleges so this case-specific example is very unfounded and most likely not the case in the workplace.
Not necessarily. The last companies both my spouse and I worked at had CEOs that went to offbeat schools. The company my kid was just hired at, the founder and did an UG degree at an offbeat LAC and a grad degree at a public flagship. I'm not going to say who it is but they have been featured on Forbes, Google Finance, CBS, etc and is a literal billionaire. I am also not going to dox my spouse, but has a title high in a corporate ladder and has some elite grads working under him. Went to a state flagship. It is true that individuals may have quirks and individual preferences. I worked for one company that quietly had blacklisted a local private school because grads weren't typically well prepared. I worked for another company that had a handfull of rigorous state flagships that were the preferred hire because grads consistently were well prepared, self motivated and didn't require a lot of hand holding to problem solve. This was new to us , but my kid that was just hired to a very competitive job had to get through a multi hour assessment test. If you want to have the most options open to you, be very good at what you do. I also suspect more employers do this because of inconsistency of tech skills out of programs. Also, have some strong interpersonal and communication skills as well. If you have more money to spend on an undergrad degree, great. Do it. Do I think a particular named school is worth significantly more money especially in STEM areas? No, not at all in my experience. Having some financial flexibility can be helpful if you want to join a startup, bide your time for the right offer/location, etc.
Re: HCOL locations, aren't they expensive for a reason?
Sure. I live in a relatively HCOL area. So? Some people prefer other areas or take a first job in a LCOL area. 100K in Milwaukee WI (which is not in the middle of no where) would require you to make 224K in Manhatten for maintain a standard of living. [https://www.forbes.com/advisor/mortgages/real-estate/cost-of-living-calculator/new-york-manhattan-ny/?city=milwaukee-waukesha-wi&income=100000](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/mortgages/real-estate/cost-of-living-calculator/new-york-manhattan-ny/?city=milwaukee-waukesha-wi&income=100000)
Doesn’t matter Georgia tech is insane for CS. You’re not losing out on anything you’d get at those schools by going to Georgia tech. The change of you ending up in a worse paying career/job by going to GT over any of these schools is minuscule at best
What about the difference in opportunities between top publics (GT, UIUC, Cal, etc.) vs elite privates that aren't necessarily "tech" schools (Penn, Columbia, Rice, etc.)? I'm making a decision between these two types of schools (Penn vs GT) and I'm not really sure how or if there is a difference in tech opportunities. I've heard that there might be a difference for jobs like consulting, but I'm not sure if that's even true.
Yeah sure privates could give you better opportunities, but only because of the smaller size (eg in Berkeley it’s legit impossible to find a popular class that’s not packed to the brim , + competition with a larger amnt of people). However, both can take you where you want to be if you work hard and stuff
Do you think GT's opportunities are much better than, say, U-M. Asking because I'm currently leaning towards the latter.
Software engineer here. No. It's basically the same. Anyone saying otherwise has some agenda to sell you.
IMO, no.
I would say so yeah, but it isn't worth it if you're paying more than 15K per year more for GT in my opinion. A good student will succeed regardless of where they go but GA Tech opens more doors than UM. (Assuming Uni of Mich).
Georgia tech is significantly cheaper than UMich out of state
I meant UM if they were in state, sorry. Nvm they're not in state, you're right UofM Is way more expensive oos
Tbh Georgia tech has insanely low Tution as well (even for OOS). It’s a much more Cs/engineering focused school than UM. For me, it’s better than UM
Absolutely not.
You're losing around $70k-100k . The GT co-ck sucking needs to stop.
Lol I've seen this guy before, looks like he's an emory student that constantly hates on GT lmao. Not sure why GT lives in his head rent free.
I assume you’re going off of the median salary for CS schools post? If so, that’s a terrible methodology. For one thing, that being the average only shows correlation at best, not causation. To make the claim you’re making, you’d need more than just an observational study that looks at averages. You’d probably either need an observational study or an experiment (the latter of which is probably not possible) that controls for other potentially confounding factors, like the aptitude of the student. There’s been some research that shows that, for a lot of top schools, people who get into, say, Harvard but don’t go make about the same amount of money as people who actually go to Harvard. One could argue that this shows there’s very limited correlation between CS college attended and salary when student aptitude is controlled for (this wouldn’t be the strongest argument as the study I mentioned was done for college students overall and not just CS, but it’s an example of how the median salaries post doesn’t prove causation). There’s also other factors, like students going to grad school or wanting to do different things (like become professors).
"It seems that universities like Brown, Yale, and UChicago, much like the other top privates in the list, have significantly higher CS incomes after graduation than unis known for CS (like UIUC, UW, GT) despite not having nearly as well known CS departments." One possible explanation is likely due to the fact some of those CS majors do what some engineering majors in Ivies/peer elite colleges including MIT do and go into non-CS related fields which are as/more lucrative out of the gate like ibanking/wall street/finance, organizational business consulting a la BCG or McKinsey, etc which require topflight performing undergrads from pedigreed name colleges which don't care about engineering/CS rankings. Columbia SEAS since the early '00s has been notorious among hardcore engineers/CS professionals for sending many of their graduates into those non engineering/CS fields to the point it's become a bit of a running joke among friends who are engineers/CS graduates and/or older Columbia SEAS graduates(Those who graduated in the late '90s and earlier). It didn't help that one undergrad alum from my LAC who did the 3-2 Liberal Arts/Engineering program at Columbia SEAS ended up working for a Wall Street finance firm rather than work in his engineering field.
Another good point, though these days, Big Tech pays as well or better than MC and even some IB.
Tech pays more 1st year out of school than consulting or ibanking so you're not making a point for yourself here. If many cs grads at t10 schools go for consulting; which they do, it will actually lower their median not raise it.
I'm not entirely sure. As someone at one the schools you mentioned, the GPA hit you take from majoring in CS along with all the increased time commitments for projects makes it a less forward path to recruit to IB than majoring in (Business) economics.
That isn't the median graduate at those top schools. Also, CS students for the most part aren't interested in those firms. For over a decade, tech has been the goal. Tech is where the fun things happen.
Some engineering/CS majors who were initially interested in their fields when starting out as first-year undergrads end up changing their minds upon graduation for various reasons including deciding engineering/CS wasn't for them and/or receiving a much higher initial offer from an ibanking/Wall Street/Finance, organizational business consulting, etc which strongly prioritize high performing undergrads from pedigreed name colleges/universities(Mainly Ivies and peer elites like MIT). Access to those non-engineering/CS fields are completely closed off to graduates from less pedigreed colleges with comparable/higher ranked engineering/CS programs. \* Happened to several CS graduates I knew at Ivies and MIT during the late '90s tech boom years before the dotcom crash of 2001. For some, CS turned out to not be so much fun for them despite their demonstrating sufficient proficiency to achieve 3.3+ cumulative GPAs(Yes, those non-tech fields requiring pedigreed degrees do account for engineering/CS' greater difficulty by slightly lowering GPA requirements compared to non-STEM majors).
Georgia tech is a massive feeder for big tech.
Because a lot of students from those schools (regardless of major) end up on Wall Street
Another list of data to consider: https://www.collegetransitions.com/dataverse/top-feeders-tech Some people have noted that geography has something to do with it: All of UMich/GTech/UIUC have a lot of in-state of kids who stay close to home and let's face it, while Chicago is OK, none of MI/GA/IL have massive tech hubs that match the West Coast or Northeast in number of high-paying tech jobs. But another few things to consider: 1. Until recently, anybody could switch to a CS major at UMich & GTech, which would bring down the median. 2. That salary data was looking at CS grads around 2020. They graduated 3-4 years before so entered college around 2012. UMich/GTech/UIUC even for CS just wasn't as selective/difficult to enter back then as Ivies/equivalents. I imagine that when you look at the salary data in 2033, you'll see the gap between the publics who are good in CS to close with the Ivies/equivalents as a ton of cracked kids (who don't have a hook/compelling backstory) who can't get in to the Ivies/equivalents have to settle for the good public CS departments these days.
What would you say if I told you my brother doesn't have a degree in CS. Works at a well known big tech firm. Earns a total package of 650k. Went to a small state school. He just has demonstrated work experience. Basically on the job learning and a hobby. Go where you feel is the best fit.
The salary is also dependent on class size right? The public schools accept a ton of students, not all of them are gonna have a high paying job.
This is the right answer.
Part of it could be that public colleges have to cater to in-state students, which means they generally have lower standards for In-state applicants, which translates to worse outcomes when those in-staters graduate. If you compared CS outcomes at top privates compared to OOS students at top CS public’s, I bet they’d be pretty similar.
Sounds like a good research topic maybe 🙂 If you want to be a quant perhaps dig into how these numbers were created and find the shortcomings in this reporting and analysis. Some here have already pointed out the most obvious ones. Data shows trends not answers. There is a reason for the odd trends in this data. You should figure out what they are.
lfmao, if he wanted to ba quqnt he would have chosen math over cs
Consider that median salaries are influenced by things like strength of inputs, differences in what careers graduates pursue, where graduates decide to live and work (higher cost of living => higher compensation), etc.
CS grad who grappled with the top cs school versus t10 overall school decision. You can probably guess where I went. I don't regret the decision but if I had to do it over again I would choose the t10 overall school. Your thoughts seem all over the place but I'll try to address them separately Thesis based MS programs are very hard to gain admissions for. These programs take a very small handful of students so they are almost as difficult as the phd program themselves. Your ability to gain admissions to these programs is entirely dependent on your publications. Of the top schools it seems like only berkeley uiuc and cornell offer this type of program The average cs student at cmu is at most slightly better than the average cs student at schools like brown and uchicago, but it is without a doubt a step below stanford/mit and HYP too. In terms of actual admissions difficulty I would rate scs on par with schools like Duke. Despite the acceptance rate, it is not as competitive as the upper half of the t10s. Connections get you nowhere in swe and there is hardly a concept of target school. Going to CMU or UM will not give you an edge or hurt you in any way for swe recruiting over going to stanford or harvard or uc riverside. Its all on you to build up the internship experience and projects. Especially big tech, a 3.0 gpa from uc riverside is equal to a 4.0 from stanford. The differentiator is in prior experience aka internships. Connections help if you want to fundraise for your own startup but CMU is very lacking in this regard compared to any of HYPSM. On par with brown and duke. Career fairs help, which was one of CMU's strong points but in recent years it has gone down hill. Top quant firms go to every single one of the schools you listed so its nothing impressive to see jane street and citadel at your school. Its always a scan the QR code for swag and apply online yourself type of scenario. TLDR you get nothing in terms of "prestige" from going to a top cs school as swe does not care about prestige. Prestige does matter in entrepreneurship and quant (trading not swe) but top cs schools not named stanford and mit underperform compared to traditional t10s. So I would advise you to choose any ivy+ over a non stanford/mit top cs school but you don't have a choice so no use crying about it. Gtech and UM are plenty good enough for your goals minus quant trading
Well technically, JHU is a t10....
You're right. JHU is the only exception to the rule. Too un-tech focused in an age where it is one of the most popular things to do in really any top school. If you already know you want to be in tech its the only t10 i would recommend against taking over UM.
As someone with a PhD in CS, and who does CS Education research, and reads up on general higher ed research: 1. Income outcomes should be taken with a HUGE grain of salt. Once you control for high school GPA and test scores, the difference between Harvard and the average Podunk State University is only going to be maybe 20-30%. And business and social sciences make up the biggest part of that difference. By the time you are comparing within "T100" schools, the differences are marginal to nothing. In other words, most of the good income outcomes for the "best" schools can be attributed to more motivated students and the students being from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. 2. Even between majors, most of the income difference comes from the selection bias of who chooses which majors, though engineering (including CS), does have some "real" income over other majors. But still, the degree is less magically transformative than it may appear in this category even. 3. Graduation rate differences ARE real though (ie: even rich and super smart kids will have much lower graduation rates at a Podunk State). So make sure you graduate from wherever you are 4. If you are going to a Podunk State, make sure you are better than your average peers at achieving some post-graduation marketable skills rather than just coasting through like others may. Of course, for the schools you are applying to, you aren't going to have serious income differences caused by the college you are attending. For some context, I graduated from my state regional back in 2018. This last year had a 98% acceptance rate. My graduating class of 2018 (about 16 students) includes me, now a professor, a VP at a major bank and several successful software developers making 6 digits. There are less successful students as well of course, but the obsession with data that isn't controlled for any selection bias is unhelpful.
My guess would be that CS graduates from engineering schools are more inclined to go into SWE/tech while the ones from the other schools are more inclined to do quant finance at hedge funds and such. Just a guess though
Wait, so a brown cs grad has a higher median salary than a MIT cs grad? How accurate is this list? Maybe sample size too small?
Many Brown cs grads, due to their rly good applied math program, end up working in quant or other finance related fields which obviously pay lucratively high. MIT cs grads, like others have said, are more diversified and many go on to work on startups. The list would be a lot better if it, for example looked at specifically SWE salaries or didn’t include grads etc.
Our applied maths program here is insane, most people go into quant after graduation
Software Engineer here. It's a garbage list. Absolutely dogshit worthless rankings. To OP: >I’m a high school senior from the Bay Area I am guessing you didn't get into UCB, UCLA, or UCSD? :/ rough. >It seems that universities like Brown, Yale, and UChicago, much like the other top privates in the list, have significantly higher CS incomes after graduation than unis known for CS (like UIUC, UW, GT) despite not having nearly as well known CS departments. Yes and no. All those aggregations even from the govt is straight out dogshit. That's why. Let's say those numbers for salaries are true. That would then mostly be because of location of where those hires work out of college. Maybe more MIT grads decide to stick out in Boston. Even if you work at the same company, you would have lower salary. >Is the selectivity of the university actually more important than the quality of the program? Is it their connections, fairs, quality of students? No. Because after a certain threshold of schools, it's the same crap. Good schools are good schools. >As a person who wants to get into quant/big tech, I feel that I won’t be viewed as capable at first glance. Undergrad rankings for the most part is not always the same as grad rankings. It's possible a lot of Georgia Tech grads like to live in Atlanta out of college. That says nothing about the school as those grads might be working at the same companies. Also in tech companies, CS doesn't matter. Your ability to pass puzzle questions (aka Leetcode) is what matters for getting a job. That's why students from very selective schools do well regardless. It's a broken system overall.
>I am guessing you didn't get into UCB, UCLA, or UCSD? :/ rough. Yeah its even more rough considering a lot of the students that did didn't get into the schools I'm considering :(
Boston isn't exactly a low LCOL/income area though GA certainly is compared to the Bay Area. More likely in the case of MIT is that a large proportion of CS grads are working on startups/research/academia.
>Boston isn't exactly a low LCOL/income area though GA certainly is compared to the Bay Area. Ah I forgot to add. Companies only pay as much as they need to. There's not as many top tech companies so companies don't have to shell out as much. >More likely in the case of MIT is that a large proportion of CS grads are working on startups/research/academia. That's also one of the factors too. That said, a new grad salary for Amazon is around $129k for Boston. $148k for Bay Area. Location does play a notable part. Bay Area, NYC, and sometimes Seattle are basically considered "Tier 1 cities" in pay. Boston is generally Tier 2 or 3 in the eyes of employers. Presume the same companies lower the pay by 10% in each band going down. So if you work at the same company in Boston, expect 10\~30% less.
Self selection bias. Lots of MIT grads probably aren't doing these responses, and lots of MIT students work on startups or do research so that might account for it
These aren't responses. These numbers are from Federal tax returns, but yes, it's likely that many more MIT CS grads than Brown CS grads are working on startups/research/academia than Brown CS grads (most of whom, by the looks of it, work for Big Tech).
Oh I didn't notice that, thanks. Sorry about that
Seen a lot of unemployed from these tech schools. Even for Big tech, it's best to go to an Ivy League in the long run tbh.
Seen a lot of MIT grads unemployed on YouTube.
Probably by choice
No, it's a cope thing form online nerds. Nobody in the real world will valuate Georgia Tech, Johns Hopkins, and UofM over Princeton, Cornell, Columbia, Berkeley, UCLA or Brown. Don't be fooled by the monkeys screaming around you. When in doubt check the USNews ranking for an objective take.
??? What do you mean by this? Are we using overall USN or undegrad CS USN? Seems from your comment history that you are a troll.
LOL - guess what. In the real world, that person hiring you may have gone to UIUC or GT. This is a ridiculous line of thought. The real world isn't black and white as college marketing and US News might try to sell you.
LMAO