CMU degree vs. 200k ?

Zsaleem

Zsaleem

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Jan 28, 2009
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I've got an option to spend 4 years at College of Engineering, CMU studying computer science, that would be costing about $200k-$300k in course of 4 years.

If I choose to do my engineering from some local college in my third world country, that would cost about $30k.

I've got about $100k in savings, can definitely churn out more than 100k$ in 4 years of my stay at CMU, but I'm not sure if it's "worth it".

What would you do?

Also have about 300-400k in web assets, but I think I should not count on them, because I don't want to sell them anytime soon.

inb4 : OP is faggot, CMU is gay, lol peasant, peasant lol.
 


Zsaleem said:
I've got an option to spend 4 years at College of Engineering, CMU studying computer science, that would be costing about $200k in course of 4 years.

If I choose to do my engineering from some local college in my third world country, that would cost about $30k.

I've got about $100k in savings, can definitely churn out more than 100k$ in 4 years of my stay at CMU, but I'm not sure if it's "worth it".

What would you do?



inb4 : OP is faggot, CMU is gay, lol peasant, peasant lol.
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I thought you were some 15 year old internet genius or something that earns millions every second?
 
why do you need to get a 'degree' in anything ?

you do not need a degree to know how to program. most of the best programmers I know are 100% self taught and never even completed hs or went to college...

Goto the casino and put 100k on Black. If you win, give me 5% commission. If you lose, go cry in a corner and get back to programming.
 
(O_o) said:
why do you need to get a 'degree' in anything ?

you do not need a degree to know how to program. most of the best programmers I know are 100% self taught and never even completed hs or went to college...

Goto the casino and put 100k on Black. If you win, give me 5% commission. If you lose, go cry in a corner and get back to programming.
Click to expand...

I'm only weighing the degree option because apart from academics, I'll get to network with some bright minds, scholars and scientists.
 
Remember that wickedfire has a lot of people, who, for one reason or another, never graduated.

They need to justify this to themselves.
 
mattseh said:
Remember that wickedfire has a lot of people, who, for one reason or another, never graduated.

They need to justify this to themselves.
Click to expand...

Yes, he should post on a student forum to get a good balance of opinions. (Don't do that)

All in all it depends on your goals in life.

If you want to get a corporate job, and do the typical career ladder stuff, you now pretty much need a degree.

If you want to work for yourself, you can learn everything you need via trial/error and lots of book/blog reading.

If you want to be a doctor, you need to have a degree.

If you want to start a recruitment company, you don't.

If you want to be a senior VP at Goldman Sachs in 10 years, you need a degree.

If you want to start a digital marketing agency, you don't.

If you want to be a lawyer, you need a degree.

If you want to start an online eCommerce biz, you don't.

etc, etc..

You need to clarify what you want to do with your life before you can make the right decision. If you're not sure, then go and do the degree - it'll give you more time to decide and university in itself is a good experience, IMO, and it doesn't close doors. You can start an eCommerce biz with or without a degree, but if you later change your mind and want to work your way up the corporate ladder, it's damn hard to go back to uni when you're 30.
 
Most people here will say to skip college and if you were going to yet another state school and studying history or psychology they might be right but this is CMU... If you have a chance to attend then you should jump on it.
 
If you've saved up $100k and you are still in your teens - I would continue what youre doing and aim to turn it into 1 million.
 
I was faced with a similar decision a couple years ago.

I was offered a full ride scholarship to Johns Hopkins and was accepted into CMU Compsci with absolutely no financial aid. And at the time I was making 4 figures/day (might have something to do with why I got no financial aid...) so I also had the option of not going anywhere.

In the end I chose CMU and took an extended leave of absence after my Freshmen year. And if I had to do it over I would have done the exact same thing.

At the time, although I was making a lot of money it wasn't a long term business that I thought would be around forever. I wasn't looking at it from a job perspective (although if you graduate from CMU with a compsci major you can pretty easily get 6 figures right out of college so it is a great backup). I was looking at it as an ability to have the very best presented to me, to soak up as much knowledge from some of the computer science minds in the world. Or when I have an awesome technical idea, I could walk 5 feet and talk to an incredibly smart person and discuss it with them.

And that's what happened. I came up with several ideas for representing language and sat down with a couple friends and went over how the data structures would work, and that is how the concept of WordAi (which has ambitions far beyond just spinning) was born. At that point I felt like I had more long term plans for long term businesses that I thought could stand the test of time and be built into something really big, and at that point it made sense for me to stop going to college and build out what I had in my head.

But for anyone who wants to work for themselves for the rest of their lives, you shouldn't be looking at college as "well I don't need a degree so I shouldn't do it". I got to take a class taught by Luis von Ahn, watch as one of my professors built a programming language from scratch over the course of the year, started working with MapReduce before it became a big thing (since it originated at Google and CMU directly collaborates with Google), worked with a fellow Freshmen who in a month (because he was bored) build an entire OS from scratch that allowed the user to interface with it using only natural language commands, as well as a ton of other things. As someone who doesn't care about a degree, there is still a lot of value in that.

There is no right or wrong answer, you just need to decide if all of that is worth $50k/year.
 
(O_o) said:
why do you need to get a 'degree' in anything ?

you do not need a degree to know how to program. most of the best programmers I know are 100% self taught and never even completed hs or went to college...

Goto the casino and put 100k on Black. If you win, give me 5% commission. If you lose, go cry in a corner and get back to programming.
Click to expand...

If you look at the successful guys in the business, then you will see that most of them have a degree, plenty of them at the MIT.

Look at the big 15 computer companies from google to apple to facebook. All the founders was on the peak of education - when they skipped the degree, most times after some years at a elite university, then because their student business was already in the millions.

"I do not need a degree" means on this forum nothing else as "i do not need serious (computer science) education".

No wonder why wordpress is the favorite tool in the IM business.
 
mattseh said:
Remember that wickedfire has a lot of people, who, for one reason or another, never graduated.

They need to justify this to themselves.
Click to expand...

^This.

A degree is very valuable, (and a CMU degree may give you better opportunities than a typical college degree) Once you get a degree, the degree and the advantages it brings will never go they last throughout your life.
 
I don't know, if I was in my teens, and had to make a decision between either CMU or hanging out and working from home, I'd jump on CMU in a heart beat.

If it was just a typical college or university, and you have entrepreneurial ambitions, then I'd say don't worry about it. CMU is quite a bit different though. Not just for the education, but the contacts and networking opportunities alone would make it more than worthwhile.
 
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Learn to enjoy fries and cole slaw on your sammiches. This is an easy choice.
 
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