So I am an international student and have admits from XXXXXX(LA) as well as XXXXXX University for their MS in Computer Science programs. The tuition for both is almost the same which is why I am confused about which one to choose. Factors I'm looking at:
- How easy it is to get my living expenses sorted: I've heard ISU has an ample amount of on campus jobs, but am unclear about XXX. If I'm gonna live in LA I'm sure there will be good amount of off-campus jobs but since it's illegal to work off campus on a student visa, I wanna know how risky would it be to do those jobs? I've seen many of my friends who have worked such jobs with no problems(atleast in IL and TX) but I don't know the ground situation in LA.
- Job opportunities after graduation : How relevant is the location of the university in finding a job afterwards. I've heard that after Covid, job hunting has gone more online and location of your university doesn't matter much now. How true is that really? Does CA still have an edge over IND in finding a tech job after graduation?
Hmm my opinion is it probably doesn't matter which college you go to. I don't think anyone doing recruiting would know the difference between the two schools, they would just see you have a MS. Go to whichever is cheaper and you would be less stressed at.
My alternate opinion is, if you are just planning to do regular software engineering career, you probably won't need a masters degree anyways. I have a BS in Physics, and i was able to start a software engineering career without too much difficulty.
I don’t think anyone doing recruiting would know the difference between the two schools
Yeah I agree on that point, just wanted to know if being in California might open more doors than Indiana.
On your alternate opinion, I'm doing this Master's primarily to get out of my country with good career prospects since long term it isn't safe for people with my background here.
I'm a midwesterner, i would probably choose indiana over california, just based on living expense alone. I also am easily annoyed by the tech-bro culture, so I'd stay away from california in that respect too.
On your alternate opinion, I’m doing this Master’s primarily to get out of my country with good career prospects since long term it isn’t safe for people with my background here.
That's a good enough reason for me.
@crime @TheOwlReturns @makotech222 @NewAcctWhoDis @jwsmrz @tubulartrash @American_Badass @layla @buh @kota
I saw y'all in the other programmers thread and would like your input on the second point of my post.
Sup bud - Are there any specific fields you're looking to work in? CS covers such a wide spectrum of disciplines.
I'm a Canadian so I can't offer too much insight on location specific gigs, but it seems extremely common for tech companies all across North America to broadly disregard location; whether because of the new shift to work-from-home or simply having candidates relocate for the gig, where you're applying from location-wise doesn't really matter (imo)
Personally I've also seen that it's easier to get hired in places that in theory have less of a tech industry - Maybe the gold rush is over now but it seems like everyone was scrambling to relocate to work in California the past 10 years, while places like Indiana might have less overall jobs but more demand (Could totally be wrong on this, but I've seen similar location analogs in Canada)
So yeah imo ultimately it comes down to weather and vibe. School is school and it's not as if two CS courses in a similar tier of university will be crazy different (Tho again, not American, could be way wrong)
Hey comrade, I'm interested mostly in Web Dev.
where you’re applying from location-wise doesn’t really matter
Yeah that seems to be the general sentiment I've observed as well but since I'm not there I had no idea what's closer to reality. Would you say it doesn't matter even if one is freshly graduated?
Do you mean in the sense that it's harder to find a job if you're freshly graduated or will the location matter if you're freshly graduated? Either way I think it doesn't change too much
Personally I don't have any education beyond high school, I'm just a nerd who gradually learned on my own and found a role - I've been doing dev work for almost a decade now.
I think the one big edge from a formal education would be the potential of placements / co-ops, and also making friends ("""networking"""); Some guy you smoked weed with in your dorm might be a hiring manager / senior dev at a company you want to work at in 5 or 10 years.
Recent CS grads I've worked with are always really cute when they're fresh out of school because generally they have a fuckton of theoretical knowledge and arcane programming knowledge but naturally little work experience! So a way to stand out from the pack would be to work on some cool independent projects if you find that fun, maybe find some summer jobs / internships
edit: Also just do other things that aren't coding and be a complete person. So many CS students I've worked with are basically devoid of personality and are just coding robots. Being a chill person to work with and someone your team can joke with is way more important than being some kind of 10xer rockstar machine learning blockchain buzzword ninja 1337 hacker. Have fun in school cause im sort of jealous of people who had that experience in a weird way
Do you mean in the sense that it’s harder to find a job if you’re freshly graduated or will the location matter if you’re freshly graduated?
The latter.
And yeah, the potential “”“networking”“” is one of the factors I'm considering but idk how much weight it holds in the job search especially as a CS grad.
So a way to stand out from the pack would be to work on some cool independent projects if you find that fun, maybe find some summer jobs / internships.
I've been itching to start some projects but couldn't due to the university applications process taking my time. About the summer jobs/internships wouldn't it theoretically be easier to find them in CA as compared to IND or has that also gone location independent?
Being a chill person to work with and someone your team can joke with is way more important than being some kind of 10xer rockstar machine learning blockchain buzzword ninja 1337 hacker
Completely agree. I have other interests other than simply being a code monkey but this pays well and me being decently competent at it makes it difficult to pass it up. Still, I feel those other interests add so much more value to my life.
And yeah, the potential “”“networking”“” is one of the factors I’m considering but idk how much weight it holds in the job search especially as a CS grad.
So literally every dev job I've ever had outside of my first role has been because I knew someone at the company and they were like "Hey, we're hiring X role, you should apply". A little light nepotism / insider knowledge as a treat
About the summer jobs/internships wouldn’t it theoretically be easier to find them in CA as compared to IND or has that also gone location independent?
Again I'm not 100% the right person to ask, but remember that tech industries exist everywhere - Indianapolis has almost 1m people, there's going to be jobs, and you're spitting distance from a bunch of other relatively large cities. Plus even if you can't find a local internship it would probably be a fucking rad experience to go to the other side of the country for a bit - and yeah not to mention the growing number of remote gigs
Ofc CA naturally has a leg up if you're looking to do the whole "FAANG" thing, and a HUGE tech industry
I haven't experienced job hunting post (or maybe still mid) pandemic, also I only have a BS, but one thing I can tell you based on pre-pandemic job hunting, is that large corps are much more willing to fly you out to interview, while smaller companies are more likely to only interview people nearby who can travel onsite on their own and don't need to stay at a hotel
Hmmm well I'm not sure how much I can help, but nevertheless: I went to a small community college in the US for computer networking. Shortly after graduating I applied for a visa and left the country. So I'm not sure how great my advice will be lol. I have a pretty substantial list of open source projects and contributions to large projects which is what I list on job apps. My associates degree is at the bottom of my Resume/CV, if I list it at all. I pretty much only got the degree to apply for visas.
In the country where I live now remote jobs are fairly common. Maybe a bit more than the US, but I imagine it's similar. I applied to both remote listings and some non-remote (with the intention of saying I'm not willing to move and would want to work remote and sometimes they're fine with that). For the job I'm at now they did read far enough to notice I had a degree, but that's about it lol. Perhaps if I went to some large school they would've commented on it a bit. They were much more interested in things I'd actually worked on. I'm sure in your case this would be much more important. Honestly, I think this just varies drastically from place to place.
IMO if you go to CSUN you're pretty much guaranteed a job in "Big Tech" if you wanted one. I've heard the least horrible things about Github and they definitely let people work remote (although likely pressure you a bit into going to their offices). That said I'm sure a degree from Indiana would be very similarly valued and if you're okay at interviews (i.e. memorize stupid bullshit beforehand and get a bit lucky) it wont make much difference. For non-big tech companies it depends a lot more. Smaller places tend to be more willing to let you work remote and in general are less cult-like. For non-tech companies the degree and or specific school you went to tends to matter a bit more since they won't always have other engineers interviewing you, but those are both nice schools so I doubt the difference between these two matters much.
Personally, I would rather live just about anywhere other than LA so it'd be an easy pick for me haha
I live in the UK so can't comment about things specific to the US, but I'll say on the second point that the location of the university here really does not matter and job hunting really has become much more online. Most companies I've seen have embraced remote & hybrid working. Though again I'm not sure if it's the same in the US.
living around LA is going to cost $2k a month in living expenses, minimum. i can't believe indiana would be as expensive. you'd also be in the San Fernando Valley, which is a huge collection of suburbs north of LA (there's a significant ridge between SFV and LA). california is cool cuz there's 40 million people there, so there's probably something to do or someone to meet. beaches, mountains, amusement parks, hot sunny weather. but there's also 40 million people there and everything is spread out, so you'll need a car and you'll also spend about 50% of your time in traffic.
which is a huge collection of suburbs north of LA
Technically most of the SFV is within LA city limits
Indiana has tech jobs but probably a lot fewer than CA (I don't know much about the CA job scene though). It possibly puts you close to Chicago which has a good number of jobs. Remote work is an option but not everywhere, and a lot of places don't want someone 100% remote so distance can still be an issue. It increases your options but I wouldn't rely on it completely.
Some/all of this might not apply if you need a work visa, I don't know.
EDIT: I haven't been to grad school and my BS isn't in computer science so I can't help with that aspect.
In general, if you're doing an MS in Comp Sci, it probably won't matter so much between either of those schools because they aren't tech ivies either of them. LA has more stuff to do and it's probably easier to sneak a job during your program. There's not particularly good public transit in LA but there are transit options to leave the city if you want to. I'm not even sure you can live in Terre Haute, IN without a car. There's also not going to be much to do. That said, Terre Haute cost of living would probably be half or less than half the cost of living in LA (I'm speculating, but I would imagine it's pretty drastic).
Living expenses: I can't attest to this, unfortunately. No experience with illegal work. Cost of living is sure to be lower in Indiana, but I couldn't say much beyond that.
Finding job after: When I hired on at my first job as an intern, it was in a college town. I didn't attend this college, but after hiring, my boss assumed I had. So, he had no idea what University I attended. I'd say this usually boils down more to connections, people you know at some place that can get your resume to someone. My experience.
Job hunting is mostly online, though attending in person will give you the luxury of also being able to attend local career fairs. As for which school, I would take a long hard look at the curriculum and the faculty. Check out your professors and see if any of them have research projects that might interest you/what campus or school affiliated groups might you join/etc.
As for the location, I have never been to Indiana or California and I don't know anyone who personally has lived in either city, though I would say that Indiana might be MUCH cheaper to live in and you won't need to worry about extreme drought or other extreme weather.
I think the faculty at Indiana are superior to the ones at CSUN so that's one point to Indiana. But since most of the coursework in a Master's would be self study idk how much weight that advantage holds.
Agreed on Indiana being very cheap which is why I'm heavily considering it.
It's all about who you know, and the folks out in LA know more people than the ones in Indiana. However, like others have said, check what professors specifically you might be dealing with.
The professors at Indiana seem decent, the department Chair actually took my interview and he seemed great. I've heard good stuff about the other professors there as well. I've heard mixed stuff about professors at CSUN.
the folks out in LA know more people than the ones in Indiana
This. I just don't want to be jobless in Indiana after my degree thinking what could have happened if I had chosen CSUN instead.
If you're hearing g good things, that might imply good connections. Try to see who they've worked with, who's telling you they're good.
Look at how those students are doing then. Doesn't mean you'll do well necessarily, but should give an idea of how the professors will prepare you and the connections you'll make
Well I spoke to two dudes who recently graduated and they're both jobless lol. But I have seen other profiles who are employed. On the other hand, many of the CSUN profiles I saw were working in FAANG tier companies hence my hesitance.
Could go either way then. I don't have any more advice or opinions worth sharing.
If you’re doing a master’s, you’ll probably be interacting more closely with professors than you did in undergrad. If you intend to get involved in research with professors, I recommend checking out the websites of some professors at these schools. You might find someone doing work that really interests you, which could influence your decision
Less oriented towards research tbh and more towards landing a decent job after finishing the degree, but I get your point about professors doing work that might pique my interest.
Consider work culture:
Indianapolis corporate work culture is 9am-5pm with most major holidays off -- like most of the American Midwest.
California tech worker culture can involve a lot of toxic overtime and abusive overworking. Lots of fresh grads from both the CSU and UC systems end up working for California's tech giants because of networking/connections made at university; however, what most of them don't know is that when you turn 35 at Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, CA the sequence from Logan's Run plays out as the ageism is very real for those who can't work 60+ hour weeks on the regular.
Midwest work culture sounds great.
what most of them don’t know is that when you turn 35
Wouldn't most of them have transitioned to less demanding well paid jobs elsewhere by that point or am I wrong? But yeah I get your point about the toxic work culture perpetuated in the Valley.
Really hard to say with covid — there's a shitload of remote work which shouldn't be too hard to find, but some companies will still prefer candidates who are in state(s) they're already established in for tax/finance reasons. In that way, there are probably more hypothetical companies willing to hire you in CA vs Indiana - but that probably doesn't matter too much since there are a ton of companies willing to hire anyone remotely anywhere in the states.
Good luck!
Thanks!
there are a ton of companies willing to hire anyone remotely anywhere in the states.
Even someone who just graduated with little to no experience?
I'd say tentatively yes - I'd browse for remote-only entry-level jobs on some sites like angellist, Glassdoor, or builtin. They won't be entirely representative of everything that's available, but should give you a good idea of what might be available.
You've crystallized all the points I was concerned about.
Cost of living differences, especially with the shorter Masters’ duration, will be wiped out by your much higher signing bonus, salary, and stock in a year or two. The point of a Masters’ in CS is pretty much solely to optimize for jobs.
This pretty much sums it up. Thanks for your input comrade. Making this post was worth it after all.
Location shouldn't matter for getting a job. But if cost of living is important then Indiana would be cheaper. If weather is important then LA.
