[Novalug] Teaching Computers Science

[Beartooth]

On Wed, 26 Sep 2007, Bonnie Dalzell wrote:

>
> The most important part of college is learning how to learn 
> which means going to a college that is not just an extension of 
> high school. For serious CS you have schools like 
> Carnegie-Mellon, MIT, Stanford, etc. People who go to schools 
> of that class get the learning experience to do original and 
> innovative work. People who take classes in some local junior 
> college in a specific computer language may find their skills 
> as code hackers obselete or offshored to pakistan in a few 
> years.
>
> Several years ago I convinced the computer entranced daughter 
> of a friend of mine here in Baltimore to go ahead and apply to 
> Carnegie-Mellon and MIT in addition to applying to local 
> colleges with CS programs. She got into MIT with a full 
> scholarship and went on to get a masters in CS from MIT also. 
> So reaching high is worth it.

 	Small, probably superfluous detail for most here : if the 
big name places (with their tuitions that have to be expressed in 
scientific notation) really want you, they'll tailor their 
scholarship offer accordingly.

 	So if you apply to Virginia Tech and C-M or MIT, say, you 
don't compare your possibly in-state tuition here with their 
nominal one there, but rather the actual cost after allowing for 
scholarships in each case.

 	At least, they used to do it that way -- so you might end 
up with a degree and *less* debt from MIT than from Tech.

-- 
Beartooth Squirrelslayer
Work is for people who can't hunt.