what do colleges look for in your educational record if you wanna get into nice programming colleges?

A sterling grade record, plenty of advanced placement classes, high AP scores, and devotion to extracurricular activities. SAT scores are much less important than they used to be, tho they certainly don''t hurt.


Don''t listen to me. I''ve had too much coffee.

In my experience, despite all the rhetoric about "academic standards", what you need to get into college boils down to:

a) Breath. That is, no corpses are accepted. Well...not outside of medical school, anyway.

b) Money. Yours or the governments, colleges aren''t picky, except that you be able to use your breath (see above) to cough it up.

c) A willingness to fill out a *lot* of paperwork.

d) A willingness to wait for them to get around to looking over the paperwork they made you fill out.

Fulfill those requirements, and you''re almost guaranteed.

Outside of maybe...oh...10 colleges...the "competition" to be accepted is actually just so much marketing hype to convince you to fill out the necessary forms *early* instead of the day before classes begin.


DavidRM
Samu Games

quote: Original post by DavidRM
Outside of maybe...oh...10 colleges...the "competition" to be accepted is actually just so much marketing hype to convince you to fill out the necessary forms *early* instead of the day before classes begin.

I''m afraid the numbers don''t bear you out. Pretty much any technical school you can think of has an acceptance rate below 50%, and many have rates below 25%. MIT, CalTech, Rice, Cornell, Stanford, Berkeley... the list goes on and on.

True, many schools nowadays, especially state unis and liberal arts colleges, have been forced to lower their standards. But that''s not to say that getting into a high-ranked college will be anything close to a cakewalk.


Don''t listen to me. I''ve had too much coffee.

quote: Original post by Sneftel
MIT, CalTech, Rice, Cornell, Stanford, Berkeley... the list goes on and on.

Correct me if I''m wrong (I don''t live in the US) but aren''t all of those universities?

In the US there is no difference between the meanings of "college" and "university" it''s only in Europe and (apparently ) Canada that a "university" is considered something higher than a "college." Here we have 4 year colleges and 2 year colleges. The 2 year colleges are "community colleges" and are pretty much irrelevant as far as schools go because their degree isn''t worth anything at this point. All you can do with their "Associate''s" degree is either wipe your ass with it, or transfer to a 4 year college (for about 2 more years if you''re lucky, more if not) to get a Bachelor of Science or Bachelor of Arts degree.

As far as acceptance rate goes, my college (New Jersey Institute of Technology) has a rate of like 46% for males and something a bit over 50% for females (because our male to female ratio is about 5:1).

Um, to get into a good school in an impacted major is very competitive. It is most definitely not just a matter of paperwork for any good to exceptional school. Plan on needing good grades, good test scores, a good entrance essay, and a good looking application (more than just school). Good luck, and don''t let some previous posts let you think getting into "nice programming colleges" is going to be a cake walk.

In actuallity, I think it is at least a bit difficult to get into a state university (or better). However, once you get in and start to see a lot of the incompetant people that got in, you have to wonder if David really might be right.

Ron Frazier
Kronos Software
www.kronos-software.com
Miko & Molly - Coming July 2002

What''s a nice programming college?
DeVry?

For programming, DigiPen Institute of Technology, for Computer Science, Carnegie-Mellon.

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Matthew Calabrese
Realtime 3D Orchestra:
Programmer, Composer,
and 3D Artist/Animator
"I can see the music..."