Hello fellow Developers, PMs and all, I have a question for y'all that's been a very hot topic of discussion between me and my friend. How important is the university one's graduated? The answer would be in two domains one is the search of the very first job, the other is the afterwards in your career. To make it more solid let's say we have three choices; Bellevue Community College (has 4 year Computer Science Bachelor's program), University of Washington(UW), and Berkeley. Consider everything, living cost, networking, internship and job opportunities, student loans, etc. I just want to know that if you are an international student who has no money and have to earn every penny you spend, have no scholarship opportunities. So would going with a cheap option Bellevue CC is such a big difference or bad idea giving that you will miss a big university on your resume and intership and job opportunities.
For a CS major to become a SWE, it doesn't matter where you go as long as you have some relative internship under your belt. I came from a CC and then transferred to a 4 year college. I landed one summer internship and then after that (senior year), Google, Airbnb, Amazon, etc contacted me to interview. Me getting offers from those companies are a different story. 😅 It's just that target school students become more noticable when applying. The interview process is the same (Leetcode). Just do side projects, do some web development for your college, etc and you'll be okay.
If u are international u want to go where job hunt is the easiest
Yeah the student is international and can support himself only if he stays in BC for 4 years. If he transfers it's too much money that he cannot afford. Is such a bad idea to stay, do some more projects, networking to close the gap. Maybe work really hard to get internships. He has a great network of engineers here in Seattle who can reference him and help him.
I see. At the end it's about getting a job. Education at top school will be better for sure but if student can get interviews them maybe it won't matter
I mean of course going to UW is ideal but if it's too big of a financial struggle, i think it would make sense to finish all 4 years at BC and do some extra work on resume.
Going to a great school will put you in contact with a lot of smart people and help expand your network. People dont clamor to get into Harvard/MIT/Berkeley for the classes. In fact you can literally get a Harvard introductory "education" online by through edx, and Berkeley CS class pages are open to the public. You can google search for every single class and the material will be posted on there, and as people say a degree becomes supplanted later in life by companies you work at. But it gives you a huge head start in networking and professional growth as you meet other high performers in your cohort so you know how well you could be doing, and it's always cool to say that I've had dinner with a gold medalist Olympian or have played pickup basketball with some D1 athletes. If you network with people in the same field as you really intimately like through research or even just as friends who join the same student organization that's the strongest possible connection to have right there. Tldr: going to a prestigious university isnt for education nor just the prestige, but for the people you meet. You dont see Zuckerberg or Bezos or Gates bragging about their degree. It's who you end up meeting and drives you that makes you successful
BC for undergrad and if you want the big name university do a MS while working
Only university that matters nowadays is university of LEETCODE.COM
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not that much difference between UW and Berkeley. Going to BC only makes sense if you intend to transfer to UW or Berkeley, both of which are great but still second-tier to Stanford and MIT.
Why not just stay at BC if you cannot afford or have to work your ass off to afford UW. Staying at BC and doing projects aiming for internships is really that bad of an idea? We have a great community of engineers here who personally know the student can help him a lot. Like sending reference emails and such
if you can't afford it then you don't have much of a choice obviously. I am not saying the quality of education will be worse at BC, but the pedigree of the uni you studied at does affect how many doors will open up for you, whether for internships or just networking in general.