The comments suggesting Wash U's CS program has (too much of) an academic slant have a point but also miss it entirely. In my experience, the academic is certa

The comments suggesting Wash U's CS program has (too much of) an academic slant have a point but also miss it entirely. In my experience, the academic is certainly emphasized over the pragmatic (for example, lots of talk about algorithmic complexity but zero mention of testing or version-control). That isn't in-and-of itself a problem, it's just a mistake in the order-of-operations. I needed a lot of real experience to motivate the academic in me. In college, you couldn't pay me to read cutting edge CS literature because I was sure the academics were never going to teach me anything practical. Fast-forward five years and I'm bored of what I was doing and interested in the same hard problems academics are. (Of course, I'm coming to worse but occasionally good-enough solutions.) It'll be good for Saint Louis and Wash U to have an injection of that context earlier because it might motivate the academic side of CS early enough for students with a couple of years left to give more of a shit.