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Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

For CS, internships, part time jobs, industrial speakers, everything, depends on being in a hot area. If you are in a cornfield, then you have none of that, even getting faculty can be challenging. The best schools for CS are in hot tech areas for good reason.

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I'm not sure I agree with any of those points. As someone who went to school in a cornfield, I had no trouble landing an internship in NYC. My school also had its own on-campus engineering internships. The faculty was also quite good, since it was a teaching school, as opposed to a research institute.

If I look at some of the top CS programs, some are in hot tech areas, but others are almost responsible for local jobs directly. Specifically, UIUC is in the middle of nowhere. I'm not sure there would be a lot of innovative technology development in Pittsburgh without CMU either.

Finally, I'm going to school for a masters online, and it definitely seems like one path forward. I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything learning remotely.

UPitt is in Pittsburgh as well, a top 70 university, not just CMU.

Which online master are you doing?

I'm a little over halfway through Georgia Tech's OMS CS program and really enjoying it. I would recommend it highly.

Cool! How much time do you need to spend there every week on average? I was told by one of my Udacity nanodegree mentors that the workload was enormous and (some) exams very tough. Good luck! ;-)

- UIUC is in the middle of nowhere.

- CMU is in Pittsburgh which isn't really a tech hotbed.

- University of Michigan is an Ann Arbor which is basically just a college town.

- University of Wisconsin is in Madison which isn't a hot area either.

All are great CS schools.

Pittsburg is a city.

U Wisc and U Mich aren't top schools.

They're better than Harvard? [0] I think top 20 would be considered top schools.

[0] https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-sch...

Harvard is not a top CS school either. Do you mean MIT?

Pittsburgh has an -h at the end.

Except in California.

Ancestor context is the one in Pennsylvania (CMU <-> Carnegie Mellon University).

Oof, madison is pretty "hot" these days.

In what sense?

being very expensive

- Cornell is in Ithaca, NY (upstate NY, middle of nowhere)

UIUC is in a cornfield. Highly ranked CS school. No problem with internships or speakers. We always had a great job fair.

UIUC relies heavily on international students who have no idea its in a cornfield before they attend. On top of that, they have a theory focus.

This is an outlying cornfield though (along with a few others). I think they succeed despite their location.

OK so exactly what local businesses would you intern at - its not like Cambridge (UK) where there are huge numbers of startup's and business.

Why do you need to intern somewhere locally?

A good majority of my coursemates ended up travelling to London (or indeed Cambridge) to take up internships during my time at Warwick - there was no need to be shackled to finding somewhere in Coventry!

Its easier for the uni to build relationships locale and the OP was talking about being several hundred miles at minimum away.

I worked for a professor (in the sociology department, modeling knowledge networks) as an undergrad, getting paid 2x minimum wage as a junior while taking courses. Doing actual programming and CS work (python, websites, databases). As many hours as I wanted, and he was always looking for more help.

For full-time (salaried) internships, I got them at major companies and lived there for a semester, then came back to UIUC.

Cambridge has a lot going on actually, it is the main place Microsoft does R&D in the UK. Oxford is maybe more startup free.

UTAustin has just joined Georgia Tech and UIUC in offering online MS degrees in CS for $8-22k. Undergrad is still problem though.

UIUC despite being in a cornfield area is the largest supplier of swengs in Silicon Valley. Even early-to-midsize Microsoft was mainly populated by UIUC grads and some well-known companies like YouTube, Tesla, AMD, Oracle etc. have their roots there.

I worked at Microsoft for almost 10 years and never met anyone from UIUC. Amazon has a lot of their grads, however.

I went to UIUC and worked at Microsoft for almost 10 years. I'm sure searching on LinkedIn will find plenty of people who have done the same.

Sure, MSR is also a bit different from MS.

I did not work for MSR.

Except Israel moved their entire Comsec to Beer Sheva in the middle of nowhere.

Technion doesn't count? I thought they were regarded as their national MIT when I visited Haifa some time ago.

You have some good points not sure why you got marked down here

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