noe@s.cs.uiuc.edu (03/11/89)
Ordinarily I'd just send mail, but especially when going from internet to uucp-land, this often just doesn't work. I hope the original poster sees this. > I would be interested in hearing what the rest of the world thinks of > Washington University's graduate program in Computer Science. Just a reminder: > Wash. U. is not the same as the University of Washington :-). Or George Washington University, or Washington State University, or ... No, the way you tell Wash. U. apart from these others is by how much it costs. Good luck getting the telephone company to pay for it. > St. Louis University appears to be a wash so the > only other possible option appears to be Wash. U. Was that supposed to be a pun? > So, grad students, professors, knowing undergrads, etc., etc.: what's Wash U's > reputation? > Brian R. Gilstrap Southwestern Bell Telephone Count me as a "knowing undergrad". While I only took a few graduate-level courses there as part of my BS, which I finished in 1982, I think I saw enough that my comments and impressions will have some validity. Naturally, my comments won't be as valuable as any you get from recent (or current) grad students. To fill you in on my background, I wanted to be a grad student at WU but, after pouring every dollar I did have into my undergraduate tuition, I desperately needed to make some money. Since a part of what used to be The Telephone Company seemed eager to employ me and send me to grad school for a year, I ended up getting my MS from Northwestern instead of WU. I am now working on my PhD in CS (what else?) at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I think I can draw some comparisons between grad programs at both NU and UIUC and the one at WU. Most of all, I think WU has one of the most underrated CS programs in the country, undergrad and grad both. I think the primary reason for this is lack of advertising. WUCS is surprisingly small (from my point of view) and for that reason you just don't run into very many people with advanced degrees in CS from WU. And except in a few areas like biomedical computing, WUCS keeps a relatively low research profile in comparison to overrated programs like NU's EEcs. If you look at raw numbers of things like PhDs awarded, total dollars received in research grants, and so forth, WUCS does not appear all that competitive with the big-name CS universities. But what they may lack in quantity they more than make up for in quality. I think the CS grad faculty is among the best. I think WUCS has one of the most focused, coherent curricula I've ever seen. At the time I was there, I think they fell a little short in terms of facilities and resources, but I understand a lot has changed in that respect in the past seven years. My opinion is that WU ranks among the five best graduate CS programs in what I call the midwest. (I'm from St. Louis, so my idea of what is and is not midwest may not be the same as anyone else's. :-) There's one further measure of my opinion of WUCS. While I didn't begin a PhD with the intent of becoming a professor in CS, I'm starting to think about it now. At this time, I would seriously consider the possibility of joining the faculty of only a very few CS departments, should the opportunity eventually arise. Washington University's is one of them. Finally, there's the matter of what I perceive others' opinions about WU to be. For the most part, this is not specific to the CS department. I've run into quite a few people who exhibit the same confusion about WU's name and location. "Never heard of it" is perhaps the most common response I've gotten after answering the question about where I got my bachelor's. Mostly these reactions are from people preoccupied with college basketball or football. But I've never failed to hear positive comments from both people involved in higher education (admissions officers, faculty members, etc.) and those in industry who screen resumes before sending them on to technical management. The people whose opinions really matter know how good a university WU is, with few exceptions. Consider that when thinking about WU's reputation. -- Roger Noe noe@s.cs.uiuc.edu University of Illinois 40:06:39 N. 88:13:41 W. Urbana, IL 61801 USA (217) 333-3496