4 ms·

The strange thing, to me, is that I seem to hear this a lot from people I know who go to "top notch" CS schools. Cambridge, Austin, these are supposed to be gr

The strange thing, to me, is that I seem to hear this a lot from people I know who go to "top notch" CS schools. Cambridge, Austin, these are supposed to be great schools! I went to Southern CT State University, which is basically a glorified community college. ("I went to college in New Haven." eyebrows "Oh, Yale, huh?" "No, the New Haven college you HAVENT heard of.") I left in 2002, so maybe things have changed, of course. For a college that felt a lot like a high school with dorms, we had fantastic computer labs. In two of the dorm buildings, there were labs full of Macs and PCs (20 of each in each lab). There were another 3 PC labs in the science building, and another PC lab and Mac lab in the library. In the CS department, there were 2 unix labs, one with about 20 BSD+KDE machines, and the other with 10 SunOS+OpenWindows. There was also the VAX/VMS system that anyone could use from anywhere via telnet, and provided access to all university services (including the ability to ssh into the Unix mainframe.) Though I didn't really appreciate it at the time, the computer science education I got there was fantastic. I've talked to friends and coworkers of mine who have masters degrees from "good" schools and I'm aghast at the gaping holes in the curricula. Many of them never had to compile a program until they entered the work force, had never seen O() notation, and so on. I think the moral of the story is that you should be wary of judging books by their covers: the campus might be beautiful, and the reputation might be sparkling, but take a look inside the buildings before choosing a school.

catz 18y ago
> I went to Southern CT State University, which is basically a glorified community college. ("I went to college in New Haven." eyebrows "Oh, Yale, huh?" "No, the New Haven college you HAVENT heard of.") You do not really appreciate the quality of universities in the USA. Even the university that you view as "second tier" is excellent by world standards. Also - smaller universities that focus on undergraduate education often provide a better education than large research oriented universities.
- IsaacSchlueter 18y ago
  Yes, it often seems that SCSU's only failing as a university was that the landscaping and architecture weren't as nice. The bureaucratic hassles were often pretty annoying, and from what I've heard, they aren't so bad at private schools. But yeah, there are lots of very good, very cheap schools in this country. I have almost no student loan debt to speak of, and I got a great education. Not to mention that you can watch a lot of lectures on youtube and whatnot. The main advantage of a prestigious school seems to be that you get to rub elbows with rich people's kids.
  - catz 18y ago
    > The main advantage of a prestigious school seems to be that you get to rub elbows with rich people's kids. Another advantage is that you can casually mention it repeatedly on HN (casual university name dropping).
    - mst 18y ago
      And be completely ignored by the non-US people who're more interested in clue level than an atlantic-away university. And the non-university people. And all the people who ignored nicknames changing colour. But I'm sure it'll impress everybody else :)
- manvsmachine 18y ago
  Another thing that I have noticed is that, the better the school's reputation, the more likely it is that people will try to BS their way through, knowing the that name on the paper will be enough to get them where they want to go. A lot of students at "second tier" schools recognize that they need to be on top of their shit because nobody's just going to give them the benefit of the doubt.

catz 18y ago

> I went to Southern CT State University, which is basically a glorified community college. ("I went to college in New Haven." eyebrows "Oh, Yale, huh?" "No, the New Haven college you HAVENT heard of.") You do not really appreciate the quality of universities in the USA. Even the university that you view as "second tier" is excellent by world standards. Also - smaller universities that focus on undergraduate education often provide a better education than large research oriented universities.

IsaacSchlueter 18y ago
Yes, it often seems that SCSU's only failing as a university was that the landscaping and architecture weren't as nice. The bureaucratic hassles were often pretty annoying, and from what I've heard, they aren't so bad at private schools. But yeah, there are lots of very good, very cheap schools in this country. I have almost no student loan debt to speak of, and I got a great education. Not to mention that you can watch a lot of lectures on youtube and whatnot. The main advantage of a prestigious school seems to be that you get to rub elbows with rich people's kids.
- catz 18y ago
  > The main advantage of a prestigious school seems to be that you get to rub elbows with rich people's kids. Another advantage is that you can casually mention it repeatedly on HN (casual university name dropping).
  - mst 18y ago
    And be completely ignored by the non-US people who're more interested in clue level than an atlantic-away university. And the non-university people. And all the people who ignored nicknames changing colour. But I'm sure it'll impress everybody else :)
manvsmachine 18y ago
Another thing that I have noticed is that, the better the school's reputation, the more likely it is that people will try to BS their way through, knowing the that name on the paper will be enough to get them where they want to go. A lot of students at "second tier" schools recognize that they need to be on top of their shit because nobody's just going to give them the benefit of the doubt.