Well, college admissions have been brutal this year, but CS programs especially so. Even seniors with a perfect GPA, upper-level undergraduate math classes, a couple of undergraduate level CS courses, all 5’s on the hardest science APs, and top SAT scores have been declined or waitlisted for CS programs.
I’m not sure how the US is supposed to stay ahead in Tech if kids can’t even go to college and there’s a bias against those who don’t… We’re losing an entire generation of the smartest kids because there’s not enough spots…
And this isn’t even counting Covid loss causing many of the other kids to fall behind.
I’ve been told boot camp is not appropriate for kids with this level of education - more for people who’ve never programmed before - by someone who taught in bootcamps.
These are kids who could be doing research level work during undergraduate.
Sorry I wasn’t clear at all. What I’m trying to say is CS is hot so of course it’s tough to get into the best programs. It was like trying to get to the top business programs like 10-15 years ago. It was always full and nearly impossible to transfer in later.
I’m not entirely sure how you can do college later if you can’t get in now. Right now, I’m trying to find programs that accept people for CS Master’s degrees without having a Bachelors at all… I only know one person who went that route and that was 30 years ago in NM.
And I was told boot camp was not appropriate for these kids. They can learn on the job… if they can get hired… But there’s going to be a bias against them when people find out they didn’t make it in anywhere. People are going to wonder what’s wrong with them.
This is a real mess. Many CS programs admit as low as 3% White/Asian males. That’s a lot of kids not to be getting trained. Probably more kids than there are bootcamp spots as well.
I’m guessing this has a lot to do with the archaic tenure system. There’s no way to have nimble growth…
I know small sample size but my friend did her boot camp at App Academy and all her peers are doing pretty damn well. They got jobs at Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, and a few other smaller places but small sample size.
My 2 cents.
Ive hired people who did not have CS majors. In some cases these folks spent their initial years at non silicon valley software firms or taking bridge courses (like insight data science) before getting jobs at valley firms.
I wouldn’t get disheartened by the intake stats. Above mentioned folks had an undergrad music degree, a physics degree, a statistics degree.
There are many big state schools that have decent CS programs. Besides UC, many CSU’s have decent CS programs. Schools like CalPoly, San Jose State and SF State. I have nothing against bootcamps, but some things can only be learned in a “proper” academic setting. I mean things like algorithms, data structures, compilers etc.
Manch, the UCs are full for CS. Of the three he applied directly to - two declined and one waitlisted. My kid checked the box for “others can offer admission” but we haven’t had any other offers. In theory, he falls under the UC guarantee - he has a perfect GPA and gets the full amount of grade bump that he can earn, so his GPA is 4.26 or so. We’ll see if he gets any offers from the rest of the UCs. Nothing yet.
Agree - bootcamps don’t offer the level of classes that he’d like. He should be taking compilers and machine learning classes.
I think I personally would if they showed learning and interest. I’ll admit this might not align with my employer’s hiring practices.( This would be an exception to intern hiring, university feeder programs,etc)
Welcome to admissions without test scores required and woke acceptance criteria. I’m curious if they’ll dramatically decrease graduation requirements or fail out people.
Likely reduce the graduation requirements. Failing people looks bad on the US News WR college reviews.
I’ve already heard from profs at two different colleges that they’ve been asked to reduce # of classes to make their USNWR stats look better or make their classes less math-heavy to accommodate students who aren’t comfortable with the math.
It’s not making the profs happy. But if they only knew that the students who could do the math were being rejected… They should be livid. (Well, ok - one of them does know and is livid). Most profs have no clue what admissions is doing.
But isn’t this situation a bit different here? CS is like THE major right now. Good grades, high SAT/ACT, AP scores, etc. That’s great but there are 10s of 1000s of students with similar background from CA, USA, and around the world competing for a spot. He applied to 3 UC’s only (and I’m assuming the top ones for CS).
I’m sorry @Terri . I mean no offense. I truly empathize with you and wish you the best.
