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> Downside is that transferring into competitive top ranked programs is very difficult. What type of “top ranked” program are we talking about here? If parent

> Downside is that transferring into competitive top ranked programs is very difficult. What type of “top ranked” program are we talking about here? If parent is trying to get into MIT after a long educational hiatus, then, ok, maybe it’d be a bit difficult. But if they’re hoping to obtain an EE or CS degree (for example), these programs—in the states—are usually accredited and if their engineering program is not accredited, you shouldn’t even entertain the idea of entering that program. There seems to be this constant myth that comes up when talking about higher education and that is a top ranking = better. Don’t get me wrong, a social science education from Yale or Brown will differ greatly then one at a state school but that is a given. Same goes for the select engineering programs or CS—think Cal, Georgia, MIT, etc.—but something like engineering is a program that has to follow strict course requirements so your end goal is practically the same no matter what your alma mater is.

bradlys 7y ago
Public schools are what I'm talking about - the ones people would actually transfer to. (UCB, UCLA, UW (where I went), UT Austin - all top ranked CS program schools) Private is much worse. You'll probably never get into a top private school unless you're transferring from another top tier institution - most people I saw transferring into such schools were already from other top tier schools. Stanford, for instance, accepted 27 transfer students last year. 27 - that's it. Same story for many other prestigious colleges. The point of going to a top program isn't that it's a better program academically (maybe it is - maybe it isn't). It's about the resume and other things the university offers. Some of the schools help place you in co-op programs, have catered career fairs, and much more. They can set you far apart from other "lower tier" schools and make you stand out in the overwhelming crowd of new grads. It's mostly about signalling more than anything.
- oneplane 7y ago
  Sometimes I wonder if signaliing is the real 'value' they offer that people seem to want to work for, the problem isn't as much the education as it is.. everything else.
  - chii 7y ago
    knowledge is knowledge, no matter where you obtained it. However, the connections you make during college is sometimes quite important, as they are the windows of opportunity that aren't available to the non-connected. E.g., if you have a friend in the same class, then they are more likely to refer you to their company if you are in need of a job (later in life). Or if they are already rich and are investors, you are more likely to be considered to be confounders or business partners.
    - GoblinSlayer 7y ago
      Shouldn't you learn economics instead of CS if you want to run business?
      - pinkfoot 7y ago
        Steve Jobs studied English. Ran multiple companies.
        GoblinSlayer 7y ago
        Consider many people here, who regularly complain about incompetent management.
      - jbc1 7y ago
        If you want to run an already very large business your best bet is to go in to management consulting. In that case what you study is less important than getting top grades at a top school and interviewing like a champ. If you want to run a business that isn't but has the potential to maybe be very large then easiest way to do that is to build your own and CS has a very low bar for entrepreneurial activity. If you just want to run any business then no degree necessary. Just work in food service and treat it like a career. Maybe do a bookkeeping course. You'll get to manage a restaurant eventually.
        GoblinSlayer 7y ago
- CalChris 7y ago
  Stanford's undergraduate enrollment is 7,087. Very very few if any of those 27 transfers were from JCs. Berkeley's undergraduate enrollment is 30,853. About 4,617 JC transfer students were offered admission.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    For California in specific, there are special legal privileges for transfer applications from community colleges to the UC system. That's what you're supposed to do as a community college student, so e.g. it's easier to transfer into a UC from a community college than from a CSU, even though the CSU students are, by design, superior to the community college students.
  - turkthrower123 7y ago
    I'm curious where you get your statistics from? Do they break down the transfer students' details, ie, how many of them are US students and how many are from China? The competition against rich Chinese students for getting accepted into Cal has gotten more and more fierce the past 20 years.
    - gamblor956 7y ago
      The UC system schools publish these statistics yearly. Transfers don't include foreign students as they generally aren't eligible for transfers.
      - CalChris 7y ago
        Undergraduate international students are limited at Berkeley: Freshman 869 (admit) Transfer 379 Graduate 1,786 https://internationaloffice.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/student-stats2019.pdf https://internationaloffice.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files...
- devonkim 7y ago
  UW being University of Washington? I transferred into UW CSE from N Seattle Community College as did many others! We had maybe 3.7+ GPAs in community college and intro courses overall. Private like ivy leagues didn’t make sense for me then because tuition assistance was so poor. Unless you’re super highly ranked and can get a ton of merit based scholarships that was a bad idea anyway. However, it’s perfectly reasonable to work hard in undergrad as a researcher and student then make your way into the top tier. James Mickens is a great example of this path. This is obviously not for everyone but neither are private world acclaimed universities.
  - bradlys 7y ago
    Depends on the year. I mean, they take like over 5x the students now than they did when I was there. For the time I was going, they weren't accepting transfer students like myself with anything shy of a 3.9. I think that was the lowest I saw for accepted on the stats website. I had a 4.0 before I moved up to Seattle. I thought it was going to be a done deal but then I got some bad professors and it screwed me over. Quite unfortunate. I don't think people need to get into top private schools. It's just a matter of how hard you want to work after college because you won't have had the same footing as those other folks.
  - docbrown 7y ago
    > Private like ivy leagues didn’t make sense for me then because tuition assistance was so poor. Unless you’re super highly ranked and can get a ton of merit based scholarships that was a bad idea anyway. Another option (depending on the school) is low to no tuition if coming from a lower income family. I want to say it’s Stanford but i may be wrong, that offers free tuition to eligible students whose family income was less than something like $50,000/yr. So there are ways for poor students to get a great ivy league education but like you said, you must also have extremely high rankings in your class to attempt that route.
chrisseaton 7y ago
> and if their engineering program is not accredited, you shouldn’t even entertain the idea of entering that program Did you know that, for example, Stanford’s CS program is not accredited? Do you think people shouldn’t entertain the idea of going to Stanford for CS?! > something like engineering is a program that has to follow strict course requirements From what I know accreditation sets a super low bar because it’s all above that bar. What colleges teach varies massively. You definitely can go to a lower ranked but still accredited college and come out with massive gaps in your knowledge compared to an unaccredited program like Stanford that would push you much more.
commandlinefan 7y ago
> this constant myth that comes up when talking about higher education and that is a top ranking = better I don’t think that any of us think that, but there are people doing the hiring that do think that. There are jobs you can get if you graduated from MIT that you can’t get if you graduated from Idaho State. Mr. Idaho State will find a job, and it will be a good job, but Mr. MIT will find a better one.

bradlys 7y ago

Public schools are what I'm talking about - the ones people would actually transfer to. (UCB, UCLA, UW (where I went), UT Austin - all top ranked CS program schools) Private is much worse. You'll probably never get into a top private school unless you're transferring from another top tier institution - most people I saw transferring into such schools were already from other top tier schools. Stanford, for instance, accepted 27 transfer students last year. 27 - that's it. Same story for many other prestigious colleges. The point of going to a top program isn't that it's a better program academically (maybe it is - maybe it isn't). It's about the resume and other things the university offers. Some of the schools help place you in co-op programs, have catered career fairs, and much more. They can set you far apart from other "lower tier" schools and make you stand out in the overwhelming crowd of new grads. It's mostly about signalling more than anything.

oneplane 7y ago
Sometimes I wonder if signaliing is the real 'value' they offer that people seem to want to work for, the problem isn't as much the education as it is.. everything else.
- chii 7y ago
  knowledge is knowledge, no matter where you obtained it. However, the connections you make during college is sometimes quite important, as they are the windows of opportunity that aren't available to the non-connected. E.g., if you have a friend in the same class, then they are more likely to refer you to their company if you are in need of a job (later in life). Or if they are already rich and are investors, you are more likely to be considered to be confounders or business partners.
  - GoblinSlayer 7y ago
    Shouldn't you learn economics instead of CS if you want to run business?
    - pinkfoot 7y ago
      Steve Jobs studied English. Ran multiple companies.
      - GoblinSlayer 7y ago
        Consider many people here, who regularly complain about incompetent management.
    - jbc1 7y ago
      If you want to run an already very large business your best bet is to go in to management consulting. In that case what you study is less important than getting top grades at a top school and interviewing like a champ. If you want to run a business that isn't but has the potential to maybe be very large then easiest way to do that is to build your own and CS has a very low bar for entrepreneurial activity. If you just want to run any business then no degree necessary. Just work in food service and treat it like a career. Maybe do a bookkeeping course. You'll get to manage a restaurant eventually.
      - GoblinSlayer 7y ago
CalChris 7y ago
Stanford's undergraduate enrollment is 7,087. Very very few if any of those 27 transfers were from JCs. Berkeley's undergraduate enrollment is 30,853. About 4,617 JC transfer students were offered admission.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  For California in specific, there are special legal privileges for transfer applications from community colleges to the UC system. That's what you're supposed to do as a community college student, so e.g. it's easier to transfer into a UC from a community college than from a CSU, even though the CSU students are, by design, superior to the community college students.
- turkthrower123 7y ago
  I'm curious where you get your statistics from? Do they break down the transfer students' details, ie, how many of them are US students and how many are from China? The competition against rich Chinese students for getting accepted into Cal has gotten more and more fierce the past 20 years.
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    The UC system schools publish these statistics yearly. Transfers don't include foreign students as they generally aren't eligible for transfers.
    - CalChris 7y ago
      Undergraduate international students are limited at Berkeley: Freshman 869 (admit) Transfer 379 Graduate 1,786 https://internationaloffice.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/student-stats2019.pdf https://internationaloffice.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files...
devonkim 7y ago
UW being University of Washington? I transferred into UW CSE from N Seattle Community College as did many others! We had maybe 3.7+ GPAs in community college and intro courses overall. Private like ivy leagues didn’t make sense for me then because tuition assistance was so poor. Unless you’re super highly ranked and can get a ton of merit based scholarships that was a bad idea anyway. However, it’s perfectly reasonable to work hard in undergrad as a researcher and student then make your way into the top tier. James Mickens is a great example of this path. This is obviously not for everyone but neither are private world acclaimed universities.
- bradlys 7y ago
  Depends on the year. I mean, they take like over 5x the students now than they did when I was there. For the time I was going, they weren't accepting transfer students like myself with anything shy of a 3.9. I think that was the lowest I saw for accepted on the stats website. I had a 4.0 before I moved up to Seattle. I thought it was going to be a done deal but then I got some bad professors and it screwed me over. Quite unfortunate. I don't think people need to get into top private schools. It's just a matter of how hard you want to work after college because you won't have had the same footing as those other folks.
- docbrown 7y ago
  > Private like ivy leagues didn’t make sense for me then because tuition assistance was so poor. Unless you’re super highly ranked and can get a ton of merit based scholarships that was a bad idea anyway. Another option (depending on the school) is low to no tuition if coming from a lower income family. I want to say it’s Stanford but i may be wrong, that offers free tuition to eligible students whose family income was less than something like $50,000/yr. So there are ways for poor students to get a great ivy league education but like you said, you must also have extremely high rankings in your class to attempt that route.

chrisseaton 7y ago

> and if their engineering program is not accredited, you shouldn’t even entertain the idea of entering that program Did you know that, for example, Stanford’s CS program is not accredited? Do you think people shouldn’t entertain the idea of going to Stanford for CS?! > something like engineering is a program that has to follow strict course requirements From what I know accreditation sets a super low bar because it’s all above that bar. What colleges teach varies massively. You definitely can go to a lower ranked but still accredited college and come out with massive gaps in your knowledge compared to an unaccredited program like Stanford that would push you much more.

commandlinefan 7y ago

> this constant myth that comes up when talking about higher education and that is a top ranking = better I don’t think that any of us think that, but there are people doing the hiring that do think that. There are jobs you can get if you graduated from MIT that you can’t get if you graduated from Idaho State. Mr. Idaho State will find a job, and it will be a good job, but Mr. MIT will find a better one.