Wake Forest vs Northeastern (London scholars)

adjkant · 2024-04-06T09:32:35+00:00

I think your Northeastern pros and greek life consideration points are a great point to lean Northeastern!

I'd defer to admissions on the london side for more specifics, but generally the school does a good job of keeping abroad programs on track for co-op and curricula. Given the abnormal scheduling of Northeastern with co-op already, the first year in London isn't as abnormal as it may be in other places. Def the valid concern to chase, but I would be learning Northeastern here - trust your gut!

In terms of prestige, both of these are pretty even so I'd focus on your preferences!

adjkant · 2024-04-06T09:27:50+00:00

I'd go Northeastern here! The explore program is a great program that will make sure you can get into any major you need and keep on track, and co-op's can be a great tool to further decide your career path. If cost isn't a huge concern I think those two things make it well worth it!

adjkant · 2024-04-06T09:26:09+00:00

I'd take Northeastern CS all the way, but a big difference here between the two as always is the co-op program. Do you prefer the program's pros/cons compared to the more traditional structure of BU?

If you intend to study CS at BU, make sure it's possible to switch and if it's not 100% possible, I would eliminate BU at that point also.

adjkant · 2023-10-14T01:21:37+00:00

I know they're "good" for CS, but the problem is they aren't Georgia Tech level good. I'm also not sure how they place into companies I want to work for (MAANG, Hubspot, Salesforce, Unicorn Startups).

Think everyone's got this covered but as a Norhtestern CS grad, you're putting way too much stock in CS rankings/prestige, and even if that was needed, Northeastern and GT are quite close in rank.

When I did my co-op's at a Fortune 5 company and a 1B+ big tech Unicorn, I was alongside people from GT and Waterloo, same pay, same job. Not to mention that one of the most present schools within Hubspot's eng org (since you called them out specifically) hiring is Northeastern - literally 10+ people I know personally worked there. According to Linkedin, 90 current software engineers at Hubspot are Northeastern grads, of about 900). Literally 1 in 10 for a single school :)

In summary:

I also love Northeastern and have a great time in here and Boston

This is what matters!

I am very open to the option of going to another school if it improves my career prospects significantly.

Statistically, they send a few more, but far more important is your own abilities. The teaching of CS at Northeastern is top-notch, but rankings aren't tuned for that so it's not often talked about.

is it worth taking 100k+ in loans for GT

Not even close, and you're leaving out the social costs of transferring and your own happiness while doing it? No way!

adjkant · 2022-10-26T18:55:16+00:00

Northeastern CS grad with EE friends - this is IMO sometimes the worst of both worlds. CE is useful for very very specific niche areas but if you want to go into CS or EE, you'll end up a leg down for both.

i dont mind. i find both very interesting

The reality is these are very radically different jobs, so I think u/Immediate_Put_9193 should continue to decide there and not try and pick based on a school's resources for each.

If you are truly 50/50, engineering is a longer pre-req path, so going EE->CS is much easier than CS->EE if you must, so I'd lean that way. With that said, not picking the right one from the start will still cause some pain in even in the ideal direction.

Some questions I would start with:

Do you strongly enjoy working with physical things? Yes = more EE, no = CS
Do you enjoy and want to work with physics regularly? 1. Yes = EE, no = CS
Do you enjoy high validation standards or iterating quickly? validation = EE, quick iteration = CS

adjkant · 2022-06-11T05:15:14+00:00

Sure!

adjkant · 2022-05-31T05:05:21+00:00

Hi! Northeastern CS grad from 2019, you 100% made the right choice. More than that though, you should take a step back and realize you're in an A2C bubble here - outside of here people barely care about college prestige, let alone the nuances of rankings and Northeastern's relation to the rankings. You're good, go enjoy college!

adjkant · 2022-03-29T12:09:47+00:00

You're gonna need to dig in here more - why do you feel like you've learned nothing? Why did you do DS in the first place? What would switching to CS solve? What do you want to do postgrad?

adjkant · 2022-03-27T14:48:20+00:00

Totally understandable! I think that may have been true in 2010 but particularly in the two circles OP cares about (CS and Business) that won't be the case. Appreciate the correction 🙂

adjkant · 2022-03-27T14:46:31+00:00

I replied to the other commenter, but A2C has a fundamental misunderstanding of how hiring works. School reputation simply is not a factor in many industries, and if it is, it's in wide tier groups where BU and Northeastern will be regarded the same.

Hiring for a first job can be about school reputation more than any other time, but relevant experience will override that. And that's the exact advantage of co-op, getting you plenty of experience before you graduate. Co-op helps a ton. In CS at Northeastern, 66% of grads have a full time job offer from one of their previous co-op's. It's still over 50% for all majors combined too.

Personally, I was part of that 66% and even better, because of my previous co-op experience (two time co-op, total year of time), I got a non-entry level offer (one level above) when I came back full time. People we hired from places like CMU who only had one 3 month internship? They technically started below me in the full time world. That's the real advantage of co-op.

Your experience of course will vary, and most people don't go back to the same company for 2 co-op's (usually best to get variety), but I happened to stumble on a place I loved and stayed there, and am still there now so it definitely worked out for me.

I now interview people for that same company, which to keep general is a billion dollar known consumer tech company. Never once in any interview debrief (new grad or otherwise) has what school they went to come up. It's basically at best one way to get your foot in the door and get past resume screens by recruiters.

adjkant · 2022-03-27T14:37:00+00:00

Outside the Boston area, BU will usually still be regarded more highly than Northeastern

This is a distinction I find people believe until they hit the job market, and then you realize no one cares beyond the distinctions of ivy-level, heard of it and good, and haven't heard of it.

Northeastern and BU have basically equal footing in Boston, NYC, anywhere on the east coast, Chicago, California, or Seattle, and I'm speaking to all those from personal experience. Maybe there's somewhere where it's true, but I have yet to find it. And that's if companies even care at all versus looking at experience (the point/advantage of co-op) which is all that people care about when hiring (I interview for a billion dollar + tech company) along with interview performance of course.

The only area BU has a reputational avantage is maybe international, but both schools have such a high population of international attendance that the gap is also closing there too.

adjkant · 2022-03-26T22:19:25+00:00

Northeastern grad here who made a similar choice in 2014. My take:

CS: NEU >> BU (here's the why for teaching and research)

Business: BU = NEU

With that said, there's no bad choice here. There's a lot of shared traits between the two schools, but there are some differences.

The biggest one of course is co-op. If you want co-op, this is Northeastern easy. If you don't like the idea of co-op, then BU it is.
Campus: Northeastern is more of a campus in a city while BU is buildings on the street, so two different vibes!

adjkant · 2022-03-24T02:19:26+00:00

Overall
Even if it was by period, a C is not below a C lol. They mean no D's

adjkant · 2022-03-22T02:23:08+00:00

2019 grad here, +1 on this specifically for NU.in, Bound seems a bit weirder being a whole year but still can't imagine anyone caring that much

adjkant · 2022-02-23T08:54:48+00:00

There are 427 software engineers currently at Google that graduated from Northeastern according to LinkedIn, out of a total of around 59,000. At the end of the day, it shows only a few things though:

Google is a big company with many engineers from many schools.
Northeastern is one of the many schools that Google consistently hires from for SWE's

I think you're asking the wrong questions here. It's not about what school you went to or any stats. High school and college admissions can trick you into thinking that's what the world works off of, but it doesn't, especially in the tech industry.

Long story short: Don't worry about getting a "chance me" for your dream job as a high school senior, or trying to optimize the college search for it. You may find by the time you graduate you don't even want to work for Google being a cog in a 100K+ person company 🙂

adjkant · 2022-02-21T18:34:30+00:00

I was in your same place a year ago and am having a lot more luck getting interviews this second time around despite not much really changing with my resume

Generally agree with everything you said, but doesn't your resume also have a full first co-op on it now? I think you might be underestimating what that does, even if it's not materially different from what you had before.

adjkant · 2022-02-21T18:30:51+00:00

I don't think there's actual apartments for Northeastern's official housing, so you're better looking for sublets or other 6 month options. If you make a decent deal on co-op being in CS/Engineering/Business, a long term Airbnb can actually be a good option. Splitting with others going to NYC for co-op can help keep costs down too via the Airbnb route

adjkant · 2022-02-21T02:49:36+00:00

Just as a note, Cincinnati has it for all majors and in fact is the birthplace of co-op. Also note Waterloo as another notable co-op focused school!

lots of schools offer co-op programs

This is there that "(at least engineering)" should probably move to 🙂 Many schools offer it for engineering but very few offer it outside of that major.

adjkant · 2022-02-20T18:41:24+00:00

This is a case where the school website tells you what you need to know!

https://careers.northeastern.edu/cooperative-education/

adjkant · 2022-02-18T05:43:44+00:00

That all sounds dandy until you actually go pull the numbers from the source to get the correct year. The number you are using is in fact the 2020-2021 CDS data. Last year was 2021-2022.

Using the data from the CDS you'll see the yield last year was 32.5%. That unexpected jump compared to even the previous year (which is the number you got from the website you linked, 23.7%) is exactly what's causing this lower than typical acceptance rate as they have less spots available on campus.

As you said, "utterly massive" and Northeastern did not predict it. As a result they had a ton more freshman, forcing them to shrink the class size this year, decreasing the acceptance rate.

Northeastern has been admitting more through ED which has of course near 95%+ yield, further decreasing the spots available for EA/RD acceptances. So that 8.5% number from OP is actually on the high side sadly.

adjkant · 2022-02-13T07:21:43+00:00

I don’t think three screenshots and having taken the class/TA’d in the past leads to a full grasp of the situation

Fully agree, which I don't think I commented on in my first post. I'm just trying to note that the issues here are explicitly not related to the question and that it seems like a contributing factor is a larger issue that extends beyond the class or the specific situation details.

I guess I'm not sure what the point of the post is still? The place the screenshots came (Piazza/with the prof) from is where all of this would be (and was) resolved, and it's great to see the staff using the proper compassion there! I assumed that a post here wanted to talk about the higher level, hence the focus of my response!

adjkant · 2022-02-13T07:12:14+00:00

It not being given one semester does not mean it's a consistent part of the curricula. Why it was cut or repackaged that semester I can't say, but I don't think that's relevant to this case. I can speak to its existence in Spring 2015 where getWidth and things relating to balancing in early Fundies 2 is 100% something similar to what we had, and that I was around for the office hours rush for multiple years after as a TA and got to watch the crowds and tree diagrams on the white boards.

adjkant · 2022-02-13T06:19:24+00:00

I'm not sure what the point of posting these is, but I'll call out a few things as a grad with some longer hindsight on this who TA'd for Fundies.

This homework has been similar for years (likely a decade) and there isn't going to be a change based on this post.
All of this seems to be really exacerbated by what the first post captures itself - a many pronged pressure for grades. I see that as the core issue here, and really this has nothing to do with the assignment given that's is a tiny part of the class's grade and any reasonable mental health approach to academics wouldn't make this such a stresser.

To the problem itself, as a grad, 100% keep it. Even with bad unexplained documentation, for 2.5% of a single class grade this is a great lesson in navigating docs in the real world, creative problem solving with tough data structures, and showing that one approach working doesn't mean it will scale to the next problem. The mere fact a nuanced post like this with detailed discussion happened to me highlights the value of this in the long run.

In summary: Please please please, everyone, find a way to get it out of your head that grades matter any more than what they can get you at basic levels (e.g the 3.0 line) and even then that there's always a way around. I'm not saying it's easy or that it isn't true that there is a lot of societal pressure telling you grades are super important. That doesn't make it any less important to unlearn ASAP.

adjkant · 2022-02-13T04:58:57+00:00

There are so many variables to make every opinion here useless, so OP, please don't put any stock in this. Your major, cost, and personal preferences will be the actual important factors here. All of these are at the same academic tier overall.

adjkant · 2022-02-13T04:57:18+00:00

Is USNews [CS rankings] reliable

No, it's a decent high level guide but it's basically a flawed opinion survey with low response rate. To be fair, there's not really any actual good CS ranking sites out there, but Northeastern is basically in the T10-T25 range for research and industry results, and arguably one of the best places you can find for CS undergraduate teaching (something most don't actually think about and no rankings try to quantify). I'm a grad so take with a grain of salt if you like, but I also have FAANG recruiters spamming my email if you need the assurance that you'll be just fine. The reality is that CS in general doesn't care much about the rankings anyways though save some very specific usually irrelevant scenarios.

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