Computer science, does the universities matter?

dwrfwrw

8

Does the types of universities you apply to matter for getting certain jobs in this field?

Reply 1

Baleroc

13

Original post by dwrfwrw

Does the types of universities you apply to matter for getting certain jobs in this field?

Depends on the job.

If you want to be a software developer, it literally doesn't matter what university you go to. You could go to the University of Western Blogs Bank of England (I made that up), and you would still get a job as a software developer. All you need is programming skills and a bit of algorithms from a CS degree, and that's all you need.

If you want to do a job that isn't software development, that's an entirely, vastly different, question.

Reply 2

Blue_Cow

22

Original post by dwrfwrw

Does the types of universities you apply to matter for getting certain jobs in this field?

Depends. If you want to get into a bog standard SWE job then no, not really. If you want to get into SWE in high finance/HFTs etc then yeah, it might.

Reply 3

TheAndrew

1

No one is going to be impressed about what uni you went to unless it's Oxford/Cambridge (in terms of UK uni's). Focus on finding the course that is right for you rather than just looking at university rankings. Once you have done that, focus on getting the best classification.

I know some people have said that it does matter for some jobs but it seems to me that a lot more people are doing masters degrees so if you want to be competitive for the top jobs I dont think a bachelors from a top university is going to be enough anyway.

Reply 4

Behemouth

15

Original post by TheAndrew

No one is going to be impressed about what uni you went to unless it's Oxford/Cambridge (in terms of UK uni's). Focus on finding the course that is right for you rather than just looking at university rankings. Once you have done that, focus on getting the best classification.

I know some people have said that it does matter for some jobs but it seems to me that a lot more people are doing masters degrees so if you want to be competitive for the top jobs I dont think a bachelors from a top university is going to be enough anyway.

Thanks for this again, you guys have been really helpful. Yeah, I am interested in the courses that I applied to and that's the important bit I guess. :biggrin:

(edited 1 year ago)

Reply 5

Haribo22

10

Hi, does it matter a lot more if you want to go and do cutting edge research? Say in computational neuroscience.
And you want to go and do a masters or PhD somewhere like UCL- the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit.
Are you able to go somewhere like that as long as you have been to a RG uni, or does it need to be one of the top top unis for CS?

(edited 4 months ago)

Reply 6

vnayak

16

For Computer Science, surely Imperial is at the same standard, if not better, than Oxbridge??

Reply 7

_.cmcguire._

6

The uni matters more for the higher paying tech jobs. For low paying mid companies it won’t particularly matter

Reply 8

Haribo22

10

I was wondering in terms of within academia and research. E.g. if you wanted to do a PhD, or work in a particular UCL research department for example, do they tend to prefer people who graduated from the top unis, or do they care more about if you got a first or upper 2:1, regardless of where it’s from? I’m guessing it probably helps if you went to one of the top few unis for CS, but I wondered how much it matters.