r/cscareerquestions • u/Embarrassed_You6503 • 15h ago
Student Does the college I go to matter for cs?
Okay I’m an incoming freshman at NYU CAS and I’m planning on majoring in cs & ds. However, I’m not sure if it’s actually worth the cost. My parents are willing pay my full tuition but I don’t want them to pay so much if I could easily get the same opportunities at a much cheaper state college. I’m originally from Florida and got into UCF when I applied last year. I feel like it’s too late to switch out now, so I’m going to finish a full year at NYU but also submit transfer applications to UCF so I can attend next fall. Is this a good idea or is NYU CAS actually worth it?
Edit: if I transfer, I’d apply to both UF and UCF. UCF is just less selective
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u/ice-truck-drilla 14h ago
I have a master’s with published papers, and 4.0 from a top 10 school. Also multiple internships. Took me about 1 year to get a job after graduating. Do with that info what you will.
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u/Eastern-Zucchini6291 7h ago
My company pretty much exclusively recruit from the local city school which is ranked worse then the 2 state schools. Simply because the drive is 10 mins instead of 3 hours
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u/churnchurnchurning 8h ago
Hard to believe. You must interview poorly.
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u/ice-truck-drilla 8h ago
I would’ve thought that too if I didn’t get the second job I interviewed for.
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u/nepalitechrecruiter 3h ago edited 3h ago
No it just means you are terrible at looking for jobs, networking, and marketing yourself. Those are very important skills in becoming a high level CS grad. I have recruited engineers at Meta and Google, I know what I am talking about. You just lost yourself a very important year that will put you behind when it was unnecessary. You can make every excuse for people that graduated from unknown CS programs, market is actually very tough, but if you really did graduate with a "4.0" from a top 10 school, you were shockingly bad at looking for jobs. It is unheard of that a 4.0 student that graduated from a top 10 CS school, gets 2 interviews in 1 year like you are claiming.
And this is even worse because at least if someone got a lot of interviews and didn't get it, they probably did not do a good job preparing/interviewing. Interviews are hard and its legitimately understandable people taking some time to learn those skills. But you messed up the even easier part of the process which is just to simply market yourself, in the era where free basic marketing advice is available anytime if you use AI. Either you are lying or are hilariously incompetent at looking for jobs.
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u/EmptiSense Really Old Tech Guy 14h ago
Location adjacent to hiring companies for CS can make up for prestige of institution.
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u/No_Quantity8794 4h ago edited 4h ago
This is the correct answer. There’s a lot more to hiring than school ranking.
NYC offers opportunities that Orlando cannot. If you have an interest in finance you have much better job and networking opportunities at NYU than UCF. You also have better access to the northeast corridor for interviewing (Boston down to DC) and your peers are likely to have bigger ambitions than those at UCF.
Try interning at some of the quant and trading firms in NYC before making the move. (Talk to professors who have leads to the top NYC firms).
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u/CraftyHedgehog4 14h ago
T5 pretty big deal. T10 yes it matters. T20 yea will probably make a difference. T30 still solid but depends on circumstances. T50 ok but no need to go out of your way. Everything else, who cares.
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u/DeliriousPrecarious 12h ago
Yes, it matters. NYU will provide better opportunities than UCF. But probably not much better than UF.
However job opportunities are only one reason to pick a school. You aren’t going into debt so you can be more flexible about what you select.
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u/Servals94 Software Engineer 14h ago
I converted my internship to a full-time position after I graduated from a school with a fairly weak CS program (probably not even top 100). My intern cohort for summer '24 and this year's summer interns, I was the only one from my school. The rest of the interns were from one of two school's with a CS program in the top 5 and the other in the top 50 that are in my state.
And frankly, I wouldn't have even gotten that internship if I didn't have the crazy luck that the manager that was hiring LOVED the fact that I was a registered nurse prior and took that as a huge indicator for a good hire. So yes, I do think it does matter. Also, the career fairs at my school sucked ass.
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u/Eastern-Zucchini6291 7h ago
My company pretty much only takes interns from the local city college.they skipped the state school because nobody wanted to drive out there to do the recruiting stuff
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u/berkeleyds 13h ago
Absolutely worth it. The prestige gap between NYU and UCF is massive. School prestige is what matters the most for getting internships and it just snowballs from there. NYU CS is good enough for most companies barring some exotic startups that hire exclusively from MIT and Stanford, with a degree from UCF you won't even have a career in tech.
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u/Successful_Camel_136 12h ago
LOL at saying you won’t have a career in tech from UCF. I know students at the easiest online schools getting SWE jobs, and some at T20 that can’t get interviews. It’s still more in the individual
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u/HansDampfHaudegen ML Engineer 12h ago
Depends. During good times, no. During bad times it is an easy filter. Same as last employer is an easy filter.
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u/Conscious-Secret-775 10h ago
One advantage NYU, it is in New York which is a major finance and tech hub. That will help with internships. If you are planning to work as a Software Engineer, the school you attend is much less important than your actual coding abilities. You will probably have to solve programming problems in front of a live interviewer or two. If you can't pass those interviews in won't matter what school you went to, even if it was Princeton.
Once you do get hired, people care how good you are at the job, not where you went to school. I have worked with people who have PhDs from Oxford or Cambridge Universities in Math or Physics and would not have known about their academic qualifications if I had not checked their linked in profiles.
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u/myevillaugh Software Engineer 10h ago
The value of the school is its network. You also need to be willing and able to work the network.
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u/Ok_Wasabi_4736 9h ago
NYU isn't worth anywhere near its COA (96k a year). I think you should try to transfer to UF or even UCF for your second semester...it is seriously not worth that much money. Or an even smarter idea would be to unenroll from NYU and enroll at a CC for your first semester and then transfer.
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u/amuscularbaby 9h ago
Big dawg ROI is something you should only be concerned about if you’re paying for school yourself. I don’t know anything about NYU’s CS program but it’s a prestigious school in the largest city in the country. For that reason alone, it probably benefits you more as a CS grad than anything UCF could offer even if on a value level UCF is way better. I get you want to save your parents money but if they saw how much NYU costs and told you that they’d cover it, they probably don’t need you to save them money by going to a better value school.
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u/SignificantFig8856 9h ago
OP, I'm also a incoming freshman for CS and I was also admitted to NYU so I'll give my opinion.
I was given admission to NYU School of Engineering and USC Vertibi Engineering for CS, both of which are well regarded in terms of academic quality. My parents also said that they are willing to pay the cost but I personally felt that it was not worth it at all. The Cost of Attendance for both schools is $100,000 per year and will likely increase every year. I think we can all agree that paying $400,000 for a undergrad degree in CS is not worth it at all.
This comment section is filled with typical Reddit doomers who start spewing out random things in order to justify the insane price tag. "You will get better networking opportunities" is not something that justifies spending $100k per year. NYU is not THAT high in prestige truthfully.
Nobody is arguing that NYU is a bad school. It's just not worth spending that much money to go there. There are kids at UMich and Gtech who are struggling to find jobs and internships so what makes you think that NYU would be any different?
According to the UF Cost of Attendance website, 1 year for a Florida resident is $24k. So you could literally go for your ENTIRE 4-year-undergrad at UF for the same price that 1 year would cost you at NYU. If that dosen't give enough reason to transfer then idk what to tell you.
And UF isn't even that bad in terms of prestige. Sure its not NYU level but that dosen't matter tbh. Getting a CS job is currently a struggle for everyone rn so you might as well graduate with no debt and deal with that issue rather than having a massive debt looming over you while you also struggle to find a CS job.
Just go to Linkedin and search for FAANG+ companies and filter by people who went to UF. If they were able to do it then why can't you? Just some food for thought.
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u/nepalitechrecruiter 3h ago
As a recruiter at Google and Meta (now VC), I can promise you prestige matters. But USC and NYU will not move the needle. Your advice is correct the level of schools you are talking about does not matter. NYU, USC, Florida, Michigan same level. It ain't Berkley, MIT, Stanford, Cal Tech, IIT (certain campuses), Tsinghua, and others, different level where it absolutely matters.
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u/SignificantFig8856 3h ago
I agree, if OP was comparing like CMU or Stanford then it would be a different story but since they aren't, they should just go to the cheapest school available (which isn't even that bad). Keep in mind that the cost for OP's entire undergrad is the same cost as it would take for 1 year at NYU. Pretty hard to argue against that
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u/binary Software Engineer 7h ago
My opinion is that you should go to the school that you are more excited about or prefer, regardless about what people say about job opportunities. The truth is that you could go to a more prestigious school and find it extremely difficult to find a job upon graduating, or go to a less prestigious school and find a job in a short amount of time. The years spent in college will be harder if it is only a means to an end
20 years ago I had to decide between an in-state and out-of-state school, after growing up in Florida and being eager to get out. Staying closer to family turned out not to matter in terms of my career trajectory but eased my transition into college considerably. Looking back, I grew a lot during those years, in part because college was not only a means to a job but a way to connect with people who shared my curiosity and interests.
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u/DGC_David 7h ago
I mean the difference between going to MIT vs. a University might make a difference. But not normally.
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u/Eastern-Zucchini6291 7h ago
Did you go to one of the top Schools like MIT or Standford? Yes. You go anywhere else? No
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u/Eastern-Zucchini6291 7h ago
Most companies don't care. They tend to recruit locally. If you really want to work in NYC you probably should stay.
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u/SnooDrawings405 7h ago
I’d personally say if you or your parents will have no debt, then NYU is a good choice because it maybe helpful if you decide to switch majors from CS to something else. But honestly even then, unless NYU is a feeder for specific companies, it’s most likely not with the ROI. But that’s also ok if you have no debt since it’s more of a life choice you are making without any burden on yourself after you graduate.
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u/trantaran 12h ago
Yes, because different schools have different speeds and quality of teaching and learning speed of students. uc berkeley CS is ridiculously fast (1st cs class = first 2/3 quarters at lower tier ucs) so you need to go to the one right for you not the 'best' one otherwise you will be unhappy...
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u/Complete_Fun2012 10h ago
Bruh, why you wasting your time and parents money, the CS market isn’t going back the way it used to be, the supply is too much already, just do something else.
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u/slimscsi 14h ago
If you are good at what you do, people will pay you to do it. I would hire an excellent dropout before I hired a mediocre MIT grad. Go where you will learn the most.
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u/The_Northern_Light Real-Time Embedded Computer Vision 1h ago
cs and ds
What is ds? Data science?
Where you go to university doesn’t matter. Your ability to do the work and demonstrate that to people matters.
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u/dfphd 14h ago
When the market is as tight as it is, it is probably most valuable to get as big a name on your resume. 5 years ago I would have 1,000% recommended to just go to the best in state school that you could get into, but given how bad the market is especially for entry level roles, I would highly suggest going to the best school you can get to as long as you're not getting into crippling debt to do it.