Re:Liberal Arts Has Its Place (Score 3, Insightful)

I have to say that this poster has hit the nail on the head. Having spent four years at a L.A. undergrad state college in central new york near a lake then a year and a half at a very highly regarded engineering school in western new york to get my masters degree I can relate to both situations a bit. If your a very social person I would look harder at the L.A. school, the social scene at a tech school can be very bleak, mostly becuase people are doing so much work, and many but not all people are a bit socially awkward. Also you will not get to meet the wide range of people at a tech school that you will at a LA school, its just no comparision. As for what you "know" when you walk out of the school is going to be dependent on you. In my experience I walked out of that little CS department from that state school and knew just as much, many times more then my graduate counter parts who spent four years at that highly regarded tech school. Most of what you learn depends greatly on how bad you want to learn and how good your professors are. Do your research and you can easily get high quality professors at a LA school. Also since the CS dept is often smaller you get to build stronger relationships with the professors and have more one on one time. The original poster is also correct though in the fact that once you get that degree from that big tech school you will get moved to the front of the line for jobs. I have often got phone calls and emails from people hiring saying "Hey I saw you went to $%# , I think you would fit great in our group! Would you like to come and talk about a position?" That being said though, all of people i graduated from undergrad with have pretty good jobs as well. The big name school only gets your foot in the door, after that your on your own. I wouldn't give my four years of undergrad back for anything, I would like to forget the year and a half I spent at $%#. College is supossed to be the best four years of your life, and it should be, don't forget that.