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hello friends, dunno if this is the right place to ask but I thought I'd give it a shot since I think many of you can help!
+ Show Spoiler [College Advice] +
so I am going to transfer for next year and I am currently doing my college search right now. Of course I am doing much of the school search on my own, but didn't think it'd hurt to ask for any school recommendations that may have flown under my radar or simply some feedback/insight on a particular school's program.
basics about me: changed majors from IR (international relations) at a DC school. attending a city school as a commuter from home right now. ~3.5 GPA when I was IR, ~4.0 here (only 1 semester). I have only taken the intro CS class so far and will be taking OOP C++/Java and some CS related math courses next semester. Not sure about which area I'll go into for sure, but have been leaning towards software engineering or web development. 0 extra curriculars pretty much. took a year break from school due to mental/physical health issues. all good now.
reason for transferring: my city school is pretty mediocre overall and so is the program (quality/pace). when comparing programs 1 year of CS classes here = not even a semester at other schools. and they pretty much only teach coding. also commuting is terrible lol.
schools I'm looking at the moment: Lehigh, SUNY Stonybrook, RPI so far are the ones I'm pretty sure I'm going to apply to. No idea how competitive of an applicant I am but I think these should be around my 'match' schools. Correct me if you think I'm over/underestimating these schools lol. Currently looking for at least 2 more schools to apply to.
I was thinking of adding 1 school in the west coast like Texas A&M, U of AZ, etc? Thought of UC's but apparently most of them have a ridiculous deadline and are pretty much over? Generally east coast schools with non permanent winter (aka Buffalo/Rochester) are what I'm looking for though.
Sorry if this post is out of place you can ignore me then lol. If not I will appreciate any suggestions, insight, help, etc! Even general advice for a newbie CS student would be appreciated!
edit: spoiler'd in case this is not the right thread
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On January 01 2016 08:12 dsyxelic wrote:hello friends, dunno if this is the right place to ask but I thought I'd give it a shot since I think many of you can help! + Show Spoiler [College Advice] +
so I am going to transfer for next year and I am currently doing my college search right now. Of course I am doing much of the school search on my own, but didn't think it'd hurt to ask for any school recommendations that may have flown under my radar or simply some feedback/insight on a particular school's program.
basics about me: changed majors from IR (international relations) at a DC school. attending a city school as a commuter from home right now. ~3.5 GPA when I was IR, ~4.0 here (only 1 semester). I have only taken the intro CS class so far and will be taking OOP C++/Java and some CS related math courses next semester. Not sure about which area I'll go into for sure, but have been leaning towards software engineering or web development. 0 extra curriculars pretty much. took a year break from school due to mental/physical health issues. all good now.
reason for transferring: my city school is pretty mediocre overall and so is the program (quality/pace). when comparing programs 1 year of CS classes here = not even a semester at other schools. and they pretty much only teach coding. also commuting is terrible lol.
schools I'm looking at the moment: Lehigh, SUNY Stonybrook, RPI so far are the ones I'm pretty sure I'm going to apply to. No idea how competitive of an applicant I am but I think these should be around my 'match' schools. Correct me if you think I'm over/underestimating these schools lol. Currently looking for at least 2 more schools to apply to.
I was thinking of adding 1 school in the west coast like Texas A&M, U of AZ, etc? Thought of UC's but apparently most of them have a ridiculous deadline and are pretty much over? Generally east coast schools with non permanent winter (aka Buffalo/Rochester) are what I'm looking for though.
Sorry if this post is out of place you can ignore me then lol. If not I will appreciate any suggestions, insight, help, etc! Even general advice for a newbie CS student would be appreciated!
edit: spoiler'd in case this is not the right thread
Here's my tier list when I'm recruiting. I'm definitely missing some...
+ Show Spoiler [Tier 1 - expensive but worth it:] +
Carnegie Mellon
UC Berkeley
Stanford
Cornell
MIT
CalTech
Princeton
+ Show Spoiler [Tier 2] +
Small schools:
Harvey Mudd
Rose-Hulman
RPI
WPI
Bigger Schools:
UMD
UT
Johns Hopkins
+ Show Spoiler [Tier 3] +
UNC Chapel Hill
Cal Poly SLO
Rochester Poly(and lots of other local *poly's)
Purdue
Rice
UCSB
I recommend applying to a few from each tier. Find a few that you feel are suited to you. Even if the deadline has passed, you can transfer next year.
One thing to keep in mind is that the location of the school matters quite a bit with regards to the job prospects coming out of it. In the east coast, you'll have lots of opportunities in finance, defense, and industrial controls. In the midwest, it's mostly automotive. West coast is mostly tech.
It's hard to know specifically what you want to do coming out of school when you barely have an idea of what CS is going in, but it's much easier to envision yourself working in these industries. So focus on the type of products you want to build and make your choices from there.
+ Show Spoiler +For reasoning behind this strategy, see Conway's Law
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thanks for the info, tier 1 seems completely out of my league but I might apply to cornell for my high reach since my sister goes there and they seem to be fairly transfer friendly out of those schools.
WPI/UT I shall do more research on, at first glance they seem to be the type of schools that fit on my list and have decent transfer rates.
for now I'm going to guess that I would fit in the west coast but I still have no idea so I'll just make sure I have at least 1 or 2 schools from both so that the option will be left open depending on where I get in.
do you know if there are any decent 'tier 4's? I'm more worried about finding schools that I'll be 'safe' in. I would much rather underestimate myself and get into too many lower tier schools than overestimate and only get accepted to 1 or 0 higher tier ones.
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Hyrule19203 Posts
Drexel has a really good compsci program, but tuition is ridiculous.
Lehigh is a party school, btw.
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hm is it extreme? I don't party and have never went to a party school. I generally befriend mostly non partiers too.
drexel location wiise definitely seems good. if they give good aid it might be ok.. are you an alum btw? if so anything you really appreciate from there that you think is hard to find elsewhere?
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Hyrule19203 Posts
I went but didn't graduate. Drexel is huge and has a lot of different colleges, and once you get in if you decide to change your major it's really easy to transfer in-university. There's also the benefit of having a huge selection of classes to fill out your electives and minor(s). Some of the designs they choose for their buildings are dumb (Millenium Tower), and there are weird decisions made mostly to attract more money, and some of the professors are impossible to understand (Nowak who does a few of the required 200 level CS courses), but overall it's really good.
As for Lehigh, I never went there, but everyone I know who did talks more about partying all the time than fun classes or good professors.
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Sorry I'm answering this late but the course you're mentioning is the purely gaming sector based program. The software dev program I mentioned is at a different college, where one of the optional courses can be game dev (get to pick 2 from a list, I'd go for game dev & AI). If I'm misinterpreting your comment I do apologise (English isn't my native language, allow me to use that as an excuse).
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On January 01 2016 08:12 dsyxelic wrote:hello friends, dunno if this is the right place to ask but I thought I'd give it a shot since I think many of you can help! + Show Spoiler [College Advice] +
so I am going to transfer for next year and I am currently doing my college search right now. Of course I am doing much of the school search on my own, but didn't think it'd hurt to ask for any school recommendations that may have flown under my radar or simply some feedback/insight on a particular school's program.
basics about me: changed majors from IR (international relations) at a DC school. attending a city school as a commuter from home right now. ~3.5 GPA when I was IR, ~4.0 here (only 1 semester). I have only taken the intro CS class so far and will be taking OOP C++/Java and some CS related math courses next semester. Not sure about which area I'll go into for sure, but have been leaning towards software engineering or web development. 0 extra curriculars pretty much. took a year break from school due to mental/physical health issues. all good now.
reason for transferring: my city school is pretty mediocre overall and so is the program (quality/pace). when comparing programs 1 year of CS classes here = not even a semester at other schools. and they pretty much only teach coding. also commuting is terrible lol.
schools I'm looking at the moment: Lehigh, SUNY Stonybrook, RPI so far are the ones I'm pretty sure I'm going to apply to. No idea how competitive of an applicant I am but I think these should be around my 'match' schools. Correct me if you think I'm over/underestimating these schools lol. Currently looking for at least 2 more schools to apply to.
I was thinking of adding 1 school in the west coast like Texas A&M, U of AZ, etc? Thought of UC's but apparently most of them have a ridiculous deadline and are pretty much over? Generally east coast schools with non permanent winter (aka Buffalo/Rochester) are what I'm looking for though.
Sorry if this post is out of place you can ignore me then lol. If not I will appreciate any suggestions, insight, help, etc! Even general advice for a newbie CS student would be appreciated!
edit: spoiler'd in case this is not the right thread
Apart from RoyGBiv_13's tiering, I read on quora that Michigan is good too. Top of the tier 2 or bottom of the tier 1 good. Never been there myself though.
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This is the college thread now? 
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Hyrule19203 Posts
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quick python question
so, variables in python seem to be different in python than in java in that there seems to be no limitations on accessing those variables?
so I have to ask, say I have two methods
first one is
def methodOne()
intVariable = 5 + 7
print(intVariable)
def methodTwo()
intVariable = 9 + 13
print(intVariable)
now of course these aren't the real functions, but assuming that for some reason they were, is this bad practice? do python programmers re-use variable names and are just careful about when they do it? or is this a big no-no?
edit: let me explain WHY I am asking this
in my free time I am learning some web design, and right now I am learning to use django (probably a big undertaking, I realize)
and here's what I wrote in my django views:
def frontPage(request):
pageContent = get_template('mainpage.html')
html = pageContent.render(Context({pageContent}))
return HttpResponse(html)
def formPage(request):
pageContent = get_template('form.html')
html = pageContent.render(Context({pageContent}))
return HttpResponse(html)
is this a dangerous thing to do?
edit: why do quotes in this thing not keep my formatting? I really don't want to have to read about how to format shit on the stupid forum lol
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code tags will keep your whitespace.
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On January 03 2016 06:05 travis wrote:quick python question so, variables in python seem to be different in python than in java in that there seems to be no limitations on accessing those variables? so I have to ask, say I have two methods first one is def methodOne() intVariable = 5 + 7 print(intVariable) def methodTwo() intVariable = 9 + 13 print(intVariable) now of course these aren't the real functions, but assuming that for some reason they were, is this bad practice? do python programmers re-use variable names and are just careful about when they do it? or is this a big no-no? edit: let me explain WHY I am asking this in my free time I am learning some web design, and right now I am learning to use django (probably a big undertaking, I realize) and here's what I wrote in my django views: Show nested quote +
def frontPage(request):
pageContent = get_template('mainpage.html')
html = pageContent.render(Context({pageContent}))
return HttpResponse(html)
def formPage(request):
pageContent = get_template('form.html')
html = pageContent.render(Context({pageContent}))
return HttpResponse(html)
is this a dangerous thing to do? edit: why do quotes in this thing not keep my formatting? I really don't want to have to read about how to format shit on the stupid forum lol
def methodOne()
intVariable = 5 + 7
print(intVariable)
def methodTwo()
intVariable = 9 + 13
print(intVariable)
Your intVariable is local to the function it is declared in, so it's basically two different ones. It's not dangerous unless you have a global variable with the same name. For instance:
x = 1
def f():
x = 2
print(x)
f()
print(x)
What will happen?
It prints 2 followed by 1 and that's because the x in f shadows the x outside.
If you really want to modify the global x, you have to declare it global, like so
def g():
global x
x = 2
print(x)
g()
print(x)
This time it prints 2 followed by 2.
EDIT: Btw, the python style guide writes the following about function names:
Function names should be lowercase, with words separated by underscores as necessary to improve readability.
mixedCase is allowed only in contexts where that's already the prevailing style (e.g. threading.py), to retain backwards compatibility.
https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/#function-names
I would write your code
def method_one()
variable = 5 + 7
print(variable)
def method_two()
variable = 9 + 13
print(variable)
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edit: double post instead of editing
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On January 03 2016 06:05 travis wrote:
quick python question
so, variables in python seem to be different in python than in java in that there seems to be no limitations on accessing those variables?
To expand a little bit on Prillan's point - this is your misunderstanding. Variables in python obey local and global scoping rules just like Java, the place where they differ is accessibility of member variables (eg. they're all public in Python, if I remember correctly from last time I did any OOP in Python).
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Weakly typed languages... :D It's such a habit for me to declare data type that I find it weird not to do it. Also, safety.
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Strongly typed languages make the scope much more explicit, too, which is nice. Scope was one of those things that took me forever to find out exactly how it works, and doesn't seem to get covered much when learning to program.
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On January 03 2016 06:05 travis wrote:quick python question so, variables in python seem to be different in python than in java in that there seems to be no limitations on accessing those variables? so I have to ask, say I have two methods javascript:addUBB_selected('reply_area', 'b') first one is def methodOne() intVariable = 5 + 7 print(intVariable) def methodTwo() intVariable = 9 + 13 print(intVariable) now of course these aren't the real functions, but assuming that for some reason they were, is this bad practice? do python programmers re-use variable names and are just careful about when they do it? or is this a big no-no? edit: let me explain WHY I am asking this in my free time I am learning some web design, and right now I am learning to use django (probably a big undertaking, I realize) and here's what I wrote in my django views: Show nested quote +
def frontPage(request):
pageContent = get_template('mainpage.html')
html = pageContent.render(Context({pageContent}))
return HttpResponse(html)
def formPage(request):
pageContent = get_template('form.html')
html = pageContent.render(Context({pageContent}))
return HttpResponse(html)
is this a dangerous thing to do? edit: why do quotes in this thing not keep my formatting? I really don't want to have to read about how to format shit on the stupid forum lol
The real question is why are you rendering your views like that. Been a while since I've done Django but did the 'render' helper function disappear?
See at: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.9/intro/tutorial03/ or https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.9/topics/http/shortcuts/#render
But echoing everyone else since each variable is scoped to it's function you're fine.
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On January 04 2016 09:10 WarSame wrote:
Strongly typed languages make the scope much more explicit, too, which is nice. Scope was one of those things that took me forever to find out exactly how it works, and doesn't seem to get covered much when learning to program.
More explicit how?
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On January 04 2016 09:08 darkness wrote:
Weakly typed languages... :D It's such a habit for me to declare data type that I find it weird not to do it. Also, safety.
Well, in Python you don't really initialize variables (as you don't have variables in strict sense). It's just names (left hand side) that you assign to specific values (evaluation of right hand side).
You have to think of it a bit differently (opposite) than regular variable declaration. You first get some value and then you assign a name to it for reference purposes. You can rename things as much as you like.
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EPT
