5 ms·

UChicago is an excellent school, right up there with Stanford and the Ivys, and you're forgetting Northwestern, UIUC, Wisconsin - Madison, Michigan - Ann Arbor,

UChicago is an excellent school, right up there with Stanford and the Ivys, and you're forgetting Northwestern, UIUC, Wisconsin - Madison, Michigan - Ann Arbor, Purdue, and plenty others.

CalChris 9y ago
There's a good reason I've never met anyone from the University of Chicago in Silicon Valley. It doesn't have an engineering school. I have met two people from Moscow State University (quite a bit further, no?) in Silicon Valley. It does have an engineering school.
- tptacek 9y ago
  It has a CS program, but it's not a great CS program. Aspiring engineers in Chicago tend to go to Champaign or Madison. UIC has a competent, serious research-university engineering program that is adequate to the region but not a standout on the national scale. (Northwestern, the other top-tier Chicago school, does have an engineering program). We should probably dispense with the notion that regions "need" engineering schools to feed a tech industry. That is probably not generally how it works. Portland has a thriving tech scene, but not many people travel for engineering school in Portland. Boston has world-class engineering schools, and an anemic tech scene.
  - CalChris 9y ago
    My brother got his PhD in physics at Champaign. And of course, Chris Lattner did LLVM at Champaign (and then came to SV). Good school.
    - wolf550e 9y ago
      UIUC has a strong and famous CS department: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Computer_Science,_University_of_Illinois_at_Urbana%E2%80%93Champaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Computer_Science...
  - tptacek 9y ago
    I drove 'wglb to our Matasano reunion (which is amazing) yesterday night and he pointed out to me that UChicago has a seriously excellent theoretical computer science department; it's just not as competitive a applied science program.
- closeparen 9y ago
  There are dozens of us! Dozens! As CS is under physical sciences rather than engineering, we come away with less differential equations experience than those in the engineering tradition, but also much more systems programming. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Lots of people went to big tech companies - we may just have lower risk tolerance/entrepreneurialism than Stanford. The graduate rankings for CS aren’t great, but the CS faculty are teachers first and researchers second; this may be to your advantage as an undergrad who is not eyeing a career in academia. It has 5500 undergraduates, and until the last 5 years or so, less than 100 of them were CS students. So yeah, you won’t see as many of us out in the world as you will graduates of a school with 25k students. It’s also a global institution in a cloister 7 miles/45+ CTA minutes from the nearest part of Chicago that white professionals set foot in (extremely segregated city); its effect on the city as a whole is going to be muted. People come from all over the world and then promptly disperse all over the world.
  - CalChris 9y ago
    I finally visited Chicago a few years ago. I probably can't handle your winters but otherwise, it's a great city, accent on city. My brother made sure he shot baskets on Obama's court. I sail, and unfortunately, we (family thing) got there about two weeks before the boats got put into the water; so no beer can racing for me. I hope Chicago or Saint Louis gets Amazon's second HQ but not at too great a cost.
- pcwalton 9y ago
  I graduated from University of Chicago. I'm here :)

UChicago is an excellent school, right up there with Stanford and the Ivys, and you're forgetting Northwestern, UIUC, Wisconsin - Madison, Michigan - Ann Arbor, Purdue, and plenty others.

CalChris 9y ago

There's a good reason I've never met anyone from the University of Chicago in Silicon Valley. It doesn't have an engineering school. I have met two people from Moscow State University (quite a bit further, no?) in Silicon Valley. It does have an engineering school.

tptacek 9y ago
It has a CS program, but it's not a great CS program. Aspiring engineers in Chicago tend to go to Champaign or Madison. UIC has a competent, serious research-university engineering program that is adequate to the region but not a standout on the national scale. (Northwestern, the other top-tier Chicago school, does have an engineering program). We should probably dispense with the notion that regions "need" engineering schools to feed a tech industry. That is probably not generally how it works. Portland has a thriving tech scene, but not many people travel for engineering school in Portland. Boston has world-class engineering schools, and an anemic tech scene.
- CalChris 9y ago
  My brother got his PhD in physics at Champaign. And of course, Chris Lattner did LLVM at Champaign (and then came to SV). Good school.
  - wolf550e 9y ago
    UIUC has a strong and famous CS department: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Computer_Science,_University_of_Illinois_at_Urbana%E2%80%93Champaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Computer_Science...
- tptacek 9y ago
  I drove 'wglb to our Matasano reunion (which is amazing) yesterday night and he pointed out to me that UChicago has a seriously excellent theoretical computer science department; it's just not as competitive a applied science program.
closeparen 9y ago
There are dozens of us! Dozens! As CS is under physical sciences rather than engineering, we come away with less differential equations experience than those in the engineering tradition, but also much more systems programming. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Lots of people went to big tech companies - we may just have lower risk tolerance/entrepreneurialism than Stanford. The graduate rankings for CS aren’t great, but the CS faculty are teachers first and researchers second; this may be to your advantage as an undergrad who is not eyeing a career in academia. It has 5500 undergraduates, and until the last 5 years or so, less than 100 of them were CS students. So yeah, you won’t see as many of us out in the world as you will graduates of a school with 25k students. It’s also a global institution in a cloister 7 miles/45+ CTA minutes from the nearest part of Chicago that white professionals set foot in (extremely segregated city); its effect on the city as a whole is going to be muted. People come from all over the world and then promptly disperse all over the world.
- CalChris 9y ago
  I finally visited Chicago a few years ago. I probably can't handle your winters but otherwise, it's a great city, accent on city. My brother made sure he shot baskets on Obama's court. I sail, and unfortunately, we (family thing) got there about two weeks before the boats got put into the water; so no beer can racing for me. I hope Chicago or Saint Louis gets Amazon's second HQ but not at too great a cost.
pcwalton 9y ago
I graduated from University of Chicago. I'm here :)