Posted on 12/29/2016 9:02:04 PM PST by Tai_Chung
My daughter is a senior in high school.
She wants to major in Computer Science and minor in French
She has mostly looked at small (<5,000 students) liberal arts schools.
Can anyone recommend some conservative schools?
ACT = 26
3.26 regular GPA
3.64 weighted GPA
She is also interested in playing the cello in the orchestra.
Rush Street still attracts people, but yes, Wrigleyville ( but NOT really for Lake Forest types ) and Bucktown ( but you’ll still get mugged there ) and perhaps some other spots too. I was just making a general statement.
ITT closed this last year.
No No...I just figured the one person on FR who would know to mention shopping on Mag Mile might be you ;)
Yes, wonderful family times between Thanksgiving and Christmas :)
Computer science is good. But if she’s that talented in the math required may I suggest she majors in Engineering. Engineering harnesses the same skills but is way more valuable in industry AND there is not the competition from Indian talent. And I do mean talent. The Indians put out fabulously talented computer engineers. Mechanical engineers not so much. Manufacturing engineers are also in great demand and is a fun career (I’m a recovering aerospace engineer who now has a CNC manufacturing shop).
One note I had from a German colleague when I started my consulting work in Berlin. “Why would you bother learning a language only 20 million people know when everyone here already speaks English?”
That is an excellent point. If she were to learn Chinese she would be in extremely high demand. In France, most her age will speak excellent English. If she were to get a degree in computer science AND study Chinese. WOW. She’s going to be one successful cookie.
But a student needs to step back and look at the systems rather than learn specific technologies up front; e.g. Hadoop.
The retooling that I have done has been much less painful because I am able to see big pictures. For instance, when HyperCard came out on Macintosh computers in the late 1980’s I learned it inside and out (on my own). It was my first introduction to object level programming and hyperlinking for data management. This was before HTML or the internet. It was before the big object level programming languages arrived. But I was prepared.
Good advice! The math really is fundamental. Electrical engineering provides the best basis for systems engineering with applied mathematics if it is a good program. Anybody who can wrap their brain around Maxwell’s equations in vector form can tackle just about any computer problem.
When I was hired on at Honeywell in their mainframe computer division 40 years ago they wanted people to work on computers, but they did not hire computer science majors. They hired electrical engineers and then trained them as computer scientists by sending them to graduate school.
Haven't lived in Chicago for a long time, but still have friends there and know what college kids, who go to schools in and around Chicago do; okay, well sort of. And also have friends who live in Lake Forest.
I probably should have also mentioned shopping in Wilmette, but oh well.....;^)
I'm so glad that you all had such a great Thanksgiving and Christmas!
I just had another thought. As I mentioned I have a CNC machine shop and fabrication shop.
If she were to study automation, which is related to computers, which seems to be her interest, she will be in demand globally. There are a billion people that can code “hello world” but not that many that can have a PLC sort olices or apples. AND the fact that places like McDonalds and Burger King are going to automate their food prep there is a huge future there. Heck. If she learns to program some ladder logic for packaging equipment I manufacture I’d hire her in a second. And I pay $120 an hour for a programmer who never even went to college... BUT, he know how to make a PLC dance. Manufacturing is all computer based now and is a very enjoyable field. We don’t seat away in filthy coal fired plants anymore. We are surrounded by high tech robots in pristine factories. If she does insist on studying French she will have success working with manufacturing companies in Tolouse but as I said they ALL speak fluent English.
Many envy your daughter. She is going to come of age in the age of Trump and optimism. With her interests in sciences and her success in REAL studies she will be one happy and successful young woman. PM me if you have any questions.
Let me help jog your memory, based on the era you hearken back to:
Lisp, Snobol, APL, raw hexadecimal, raw binary, Algol64, CP/M, Hollerith punch cards (don't forget those metal cylinders you'd wrap a punch card around), pink & yellow paper tape, dot matrix printers w/ fanfold paper, 128 char/min teletypes, modems w/ 2 foam-lined cups shaped to fit a standard phone earpiece & mouthpiece (to annoy someone, you'd tap your fingernails on it while they were typing in a line, causing noise that generated garbage), floppies sized 12" & 8" & 5.25", text-only 80x24 B&W monitors w/ character hiliting for forms, cross assemblers, Rational C, AT&T UNIX Brick, SunOS, AIX, HPUX, ......
SMU -— Horrifically high tuition.
“Colorado School of Mines, Golden Colorado. Small but very well regarded in science, technology and engineering. Low key and conservative.”
Used to be VERY hard to get into, though.
Hillsdale?
Liberty University?
I can’t vouch for the computer/technical academics, but Arkansas is in the most lovely, conservative area. Very very wholesome and safe, although I’m sure Fayetteville has most of the usual college town baloney to deal with. The Bentonville/Rogers area is like Mayberry. Overall it’s in a great place and I would love to see my own kids go to U of A eventually.
FWIW, they both attended Ozark Bass Camp over the summer, thru the community music school. Being on campus with big kid string players and even college students blew their little 7 and 9 yr old minds. ;)
Oh one last thing....the economy here has been booming despite 0’s best efforts since we moved here in ‘10.
I went to Oklahoma Baptist University, and I minored in French.
Oklahoma Baptist University
https://www.okbu.edu/
OBU has about 2,000 students in a mid-sized Oklahoma town and is well-known for its academics. The professors are caring and will push you to learn. (Some of them are lethally hard!) It is a very well-rounded education. They will work you!
The foreign languages department is unique, since many of the students are training for missions work. You get a higher level of seriousness when the students aren’t just hoping to someday visit Europe on a vacation. I was preparing to be a missionary to France at the time.
Lisp, raw hexadecimal, raw binary, Algol64, CP/M, pink & yellow paper tape, dot matrix printers w/ fanfold paper, 128 char/min teletypes, modems w/ 2 foam-lined cups shaped to fit a standard phone earpiece & mouthpiece (to annoy someone, you’d tap your fingernails on it while they were typing in a line, causing noise that generated garbage), floppies sized 12” & 8” & 5.25”, text-only 80x24 B&W monitors w/ character hiliting for forms, C,SunOS, AIX, HPUX .
Yup, you jogged some I forgot. Plus some micro controller PIC, some SME Card stuff, ISDN lines, router code, serial interface assembly code.
Awww, memories of Pepsi and Snickers bars at 2:00AM in the morning! Good times :) :)
I once worked 36 ours straight doing FIB to Wells Fargo Bank Unix data connections. Sometimes I miss that tingle you get before you are about to pass out.
I don’t know about colleges, but the fact she understands Mandarin is a very valuable skill. I would encourage her to take Chinese and go to a college with a good Chinese language program—sounds like for her it is mainly learning the characters, which I know is very tough and boring and takes a lot of rote memorization, but for an American to know Chinese is golden in terms of getting a job in international business, finance, etc., or anything else to do with Asia, since China has become so important and yet so few Americans can master the language. Your daughter is already halfway there and she should learn to read and write now while she can, she won’t regret it.
I’ve been around people who speak Japanese most of my life, including my wife and her family, so I understand a lot of that language, but I know it’s too late for me to really know it because even if I learned the hiragana and katakana alphabets, I am too old to memorize the kanji. Not enough brain cells left. That kind of makes me sad. I have been taking Korean for a while; there the problem is the opposite. They use a phonetic alphabet which is easy to learn and extremely logical, but the spoken language is difficult, to me much more difficult than Japanese because linguistically it is harder to speak and it also retains the different levels of formality of speech much more than in Japanese.
Anyway, just my two cents on your daughter mastering Chinese.
http://learn.regent.edu/degree-programs/information-systems-technology/
Regent University near Virginia Beach. Tour the campus and talk with students and staff. You’ll be impressed.
Don’t know much about Monmouth University in particular, but that part of New Jersey (Monmouth County) is quite nice - suburban, reasonably safe, and near the beaches. It’s about 90 minutes from New York City, far enough away that it’s a bit of a different world. And Monmouth County voted majority for Trump.
Agreed...obviously she will need all the basics, but you need to encourage young people to think about macro trends and directions, as well as where the jobs (and good incomes) will be. In my opinion, most colleges fail miserably in that area.
She and Mom and Dad should work this backwards — what turns her on, where does she want to be, what education does she need to get there, THEN what schools should she consider to get her there.
“I like in Kansas City.
Most of the schools she has looked at are out of state.”
I know that CU Boulder has a reputation as the wackadoodle capital of the Rockies, and that reputation is well deserved.
However, they have some good programs in the hard sciences, and if you have inoculated your girl against the sophistries of the left, the broader experience of a large U might be valuable.
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