The Best Colleges for Network Engineering? 477
viperstyx asks: "Ive come to that time in my life where I have to choose what colleges im going to apply to for my undergraduate degree. I'm very interested in Computer Science but I'm not sure if I want to major in Comp Sci, but I do have a high interest in networks. I hope to work on things like Internet2, or in a large business environment after college. I was hoping to find a college with a major, along the lines of Network Engineering, but I have yet to find one." What colleges have the best programs to prepare prospective networking engineers for the future?
You also... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You also... (Score:3, Funny)
I have always considered myself a heterosexual male but after looking at the choices I have made in life thus far I have to wonder what the hell I was thinking.
Re:You also... (Score:4, Funny)
What the guys say...
The 500 Rule
"Either they weigh 500lbs or there are 500 other guys around them"
What the girls say...
"The odds are good, but the goods are odd"
Colorado Technical (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Colorado Technical (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Colorado Technical (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not about the school... (Score:5, Insightful)
Get networking... with humans.
Re:It's not about the school... (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably the best thing you can do is be born wealthy and connected. Failing that, get in early to the IEEE, or ACM clubs at whatever university you do go to- those are way good ways to make professional connections as an undergrad.
Don't just attend the meetings, meet the speakers when they come to campus. Talk to them, research the topics before so you can ask them intelligent questions. Be agressive but not rude... the professionals who go campus to campus generally have a personal commitment to making a difference.
Beyond that, I'd say the best way to get in to any really cool research project is to go ahead and get that doctorate degree in the feild you are seeking. Bachelors degrees won't matter much at that point... so you have 4 years (or 6.5 in my case) to worry about what school to go to...
Re:It's not about the school... (Score:4, Insightful)
When you choose a school, you're number one consideration should be the people at the school. Going to a school where everyone simply shows up for their classes and then goes home is not that great, regardless of what is actually taught in the classroom. You want to be somewhere where a large portion of the students are active in an ACM or IEEE chapter, where people outside the school are coming to give colloquia, where there are a number of seminars each week, etc. If you do this, then you have a good chance of knowing a number of people running interesting projects and will get to choose among them.
Re:It's not about the school... (Score:4, Interesting)
You are only partially correct, but partially wrong as well. Going to an unknown school and building a network of morons is not nearly as good as going to a good school and building a network of brilliant hard-working people.
Hmmm... yes. How could I disagree? I have only one caveat. It's often hard to tell the morons from the guys who will one day be running Internet22 in first year. It gets a little clearer in upper year but even then your classmates are only part of the picture.
Go to conferences. Take jobs at great companies for possibly lousy pay. Then again, never take a joe job - always take intern positions that will push you & challenge you. Keep in touch with your bosses. Actually try to get to know those "old people" you work with.
My networking has improved a lot over the years (mostly due to how bad it was in the first place). I missed a lot of opportunities as a student mostly because I had no idea what I wanted to do. If you know you want to work on computer networks, then start meeting the right people today.
And yes, if you get into a top-tier school, that never hurt either. All the top schools are equally good. Apply to Waterloo [uwaterloo.ca] up here in Canada!
the school is the network (Score:4, Informative)
All you need is expereince (Score:5, Insightful)
I would agree. (Score:5, Informative)
Moreover, I think technology is becoming extremely competitive. Better to try a field like nursing or maybe look for something in biotech.
In any case, if you want to do something in technology, be prepared to study hard and keep learning, tech is one of those fields requiring constant reeducation to maintain an edge.
Re:I would agree. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I would agree. (Score:4, Insightful)
Close. People should study math or physics. You get enough exposure to technology in those majors that you can pick up whatever new technologies it is that you will need in any typical job situation. And with the math and logic skills that you will develop companies will actually want to hire you.
Of course your coding might be loose and ugly, but it is >alot easier for companies to teach good coding practices than higher level mathematics.
Re:I would agree. (Score:4, Interesting)
If you can get past the resumes into the interview phase, you normally can blow most everyone else out of the water using your analytical skills.
And i know this from experience, having a degree in physics, while spending several years in networks/system adminstration. My current job? I'm in grad school... in economics. Solely because of my analytical background. A Physics/Math type major certainly gives you the most versitility of any college degree. You just need to sell yourself.
Re:I would agree. (Score:4, Interesting)
Well that's the tough part. And few interviewers will actually test your analytical skills in any meaningful way.
I think it's a common mistake to equate "these skills will allow me to skillfully perform the job" with "these skills will get me the job in the first place."
You need more than experiance, you need to know it (Score:2, Insightful)
I am currently in my last semester at UW-Stout in the Telecom Sys program, at least here I can vouch for getting hands on real world experiance on a variety of networking gear and protocols, a mix of old an
Re:All you need is expereince (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with the experience thing, though I don't think the actual hardware is important; my lab when I was studying for my CCIE was 5 2500s and a 4000 used as a frame switch. And that was Feb 2000. I leased some time to learn ISDN and I got it, but I didn't have the expensive toys to study on. (I was working in the field; I was doing ATM at the time. Both of these helped ENORMOUSLY. I was lucky in that the company I'm with hired me with a CS degree and no certs and I made the time around the work hours to study.)
More important, however, is understanding the theory. And that is what I look for when I'm interviewing; not if you know the command on whatever piece of hardware, but if you know what you're trying to do and can show me that you know where to find it in a reasonable timeframe. I don't care if you can rote memorize commands, or know every IEEE protocol by heart.
It's in this theory and understanding area that, in truth, is where I see the college degree coming in useful. Mine (Manchester, UK) I've never used. But I do networking and security, and neither of those was a focus for that. It also took me 10 years in the field to realise that the theory was the important part.
The degree also opens a lot of doors from HR people again, though I don't think I'd specialise early either. You could look for somewhere with a Cisco Academy and hopefully get the best of both worlds; the 'cisco cert' and a degree that hopefully shows that you know theory.
Re:All you need is expereince (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd love to agree with you, but I've seen too many cases of realworld experience being looked over for the guys with degrees. Too many managers are impressed by degrees and certifications over experience and will hire the degree guy or elevate him above the others because that's what they are.
I just finished wa
Re:All you need is expereince (Score:5, Informative)
I got to work underneath a very bright person (lead network engineer), who in my humble opinion provided me with a lot more useful information than a lot of the teachers did when I was a student there. I got to work with a large campus lan that used VLAN's, 802.11b (when it was $700 for a cisco base station), and even Internet2.
Basically, I highly recommend getting a job at a University in the NOC or IT operations, as what the jobs lack in pay is made up with copious amounts of resources and experience.
Re:All you need is expereince (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:All you need is expereince (Score:3, Interesting)
Every CCNA complains they cannot get a job with it.
So they becomes CCNPs
Event CCNP complains they cannot get a job with it.
So they aspire to become lab rat CCIEs.
There is massive oversupply in these realms. www.cisco.com/go/netpro - is cisco;s own message boards. Read what people say on the certification forums
Re:All you need is expereince (Score:3, Insightful)
If you actually checked out what some CCIE's have to say on Cisco's forum, you might be more inclined to see things my way - when I see CCIEs with reputable posting history on there claiming that they know CCIEs that are/were unemployed, I tend to believe them.
I never belittle anyone looking to get into the industry, but I always wa
Rochester Institute of Technology? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Rochester Institute of Technology? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Rochester Institute of Technology? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Rochester Institute of Technology? (Score:3, Insightful)
(btw, what's up Adam? went to high school with you
Re:Rochester Institute of Technology? (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:Rochester Institute of Technology? (Score:3, Informative)
I would recommend RIT for its academics. It is definitely not a party school, but you can still have a good time here. It is all about meeting the right people.
RIT now has the largest unified "school of computing". IT, Software Engineering, and Computer Science now have their own building and college. You can definitely find something that tickles your fancy regarding computers here.
-Spyky
Re:Rochester Institute of Technology? (Score:4, Informative)
Graduate School (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Graduate School (Score:5, Interesting)
That said, you can specialize in a specific field while still in the University requirement. As the parent to this post has said, you do this in graduate school. However, graduate school doesn't give you specialization that may be good for the job market. On the contrary, it may make you overspecialized, such that you've gone so far into theory that you no longer have any idea how stuff actually works in the real world. Going the full academic route is really on a good idea if you really care more for the field than you care for money.
Notice: I am am currently working on my PhD, but not in the field of Computer Science, or anything really computer related (I'm actually somewhere between a social science and philosophy). While I do not have first hand experience with graduate studies in Computer Science, I do have experience with graduate school in general, and while the concepts learned are different, the culture and process seems to be similar across all subjects. Your experiences may vary.
Re:Graduate School (Score:2)
It sounds like this might be a pathetic attempt by a geek to say that he is interested in ethiiii, arrhhuuuuuuhh, ethicuuaaa, esics, um, something about being well behaved.
Re:Graduate School (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are going to a University for the sole purpose of getting a well paying job, you're probably going to be surprised. Universities don't train you to be good workers, they are supposed to teach you to think and be relatively well balanced intellectually.
In other words, education is not simply job training. But most undergrads are getting mostly the latter. People need to realize that a university's primary responsibility is to its graduate students. They are not optimized for undergraduates. The best undergraduate experience comes from colleges, which generally do not have graduate schools.
This is borne out by the observation that graduates of small, high-quality liberal arts colleges outperform graduates of universities in almost all fields including science and engineering. To rub salt in the wound, many of these schools aren't very selective, taking B or C students and turning out top-notch competitors for spots in grad schools and the job market. (For more information, start here [amazon.com] but be sure to do more research.)
This is not hard to understand when you realize that a genuine, broad education isn't meant to teach you stuff, but to make you smarter -- in exactly the way that learning assembly language or lambda calculus makes you a better coder even if you don't use it or even like it. For me, humanities courses were what really forced me to think faster, harder, and deeper than I imagined possible. NOTE WELL: this never happened with computer science because I was already good at that. The result is that today I'm a well-paid kernel developer and my friends who went to a techy college are unemployed Javaheads.
--
Dum de dum.
Re:Graduate School (Score:5, Insightful)
It definitely helps to have a CS degree under your belt. Many companies consider this a more rigorous degree. As an engineer, I also visit campuses to recruit for my company, and individuals with networking type technical degrees with all the certs like CCNA, MCSE, DVDA, etc. are all over the place. We hire for these types of positions, but look a lot more seriously at someone with a CS degree. I'm sure you are one of the ones who actually knows how to think, but many companies think a CS degree is a better indicator of problem solving skills and believe the curriculum is more rigorous.
If you find the right prof in college, you won't have trouble specializing in any niche of CS, including networking. Don't limit yourself to one single aspect of computers this early.
Re:Graduate School (Score:3, Funny)
My friend got that certification. She said it was a pain in the ass.
Re:Graduate School (Score:4, Insightful)
College Degree in Networking? (Score:2, Flamebait)
The whole point of computer 'science' is to make operating, programming, and using computers productively be easy and transparent. It is not to create layers and layers of code, interfaces, and protocols that add massive plateaus of complexity to what is already a discipline wroght w
Re:College Degree in Networking? (Score:4, Insightful)
The trouble with Slashdot is that sometimes there's a lack of awareness of the gap between the tool-users and the tool-makers - the former, probably due to something of an inferiority complex, are pretty unaware of the realities of the latter.
Re:College Degree in Networking? (Score:3, Insightful)
What's more transparent, a series of easy to edit text files with names that correspond to the program they control, or storing all information for all programs in one giant binary file?
UNIX is something that you don't seem to understand.
Re:Graduate School (Score:3, Insightful)
And as someone else mentioned, a broader degree will introduce you to more fields, in case you change your mind about networking.
Re:Graduate School (Score:3, Informative)
Or study EE/CompEng (for example at Stanford you can major in EE with sub-specialization of computer software, or major in CS with sub-specialization of computer hardware -- they are very similar in terms of courses but the theory-classes you take will be different).
Also, at the grad level, consider programs in Distributed Systems [stanford.edu] in addition to networking.
ObPlug: Stanford has some excellent higher-division CS and EE classes in computer networks, and distributed systems. Stanford's MS prog
Come to Michigan... (Score:2, Interesting)
Hope you're in-state though, 'cuz Michigan is the most expensive public university in the nation. And for some reason we're proud of this. Sheesh.
I know of a few great ones... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I know of a few great ones... (Score:2)
D.I.T! D.I.T!
Go Fighting HANUMANs!!
CMU (Score:4, Funny)
Re:CMU (Score:2)
We actually do have a Inormation Networking Institute [cmu.edu], but it's a grad program and I haven't exactly heard the best things about it from true CS / ECE grads.
Re:CMU (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously though, at least half the INI curriculum is business-focused, so if you are looking to work in the "real world" it might be good. If you want to focus on more academic pursuits a pure technical degree would probably be better.
More CMU opinion (Score:5, Interesting)
(Note that I picked up a bachelor's in CS there and liked it quite a bit.)
I found that the school tends to be a bit racially cliquish. There are a phenomenal number of students from wealthy families overseas that attend, and a (surprisingly, to me at least) number of recent immigrants. I never really ran into any bad spirits (with the possible exception of a Saudi student who seemed quite put-upon immediately after September 11th), but Indians tended to hang out with other Indians, Chinese with other Chinese, etc. It *is* a neat way to pick up other culture -- I'm not a huge fan of travel or picking up other cultures other than my monthly National Geographic, but I really enjoyed some of what I learned about folks there.
CMU has a few *extremely* highly-rated schools. For example, their computer science program and their drama programs are both extremely good. This may *sound* really nice. However, it also has drawbacks. When you are going to university with these people, they are really, really, really good. They not infrequently have done decent work in their major. You can't just decide to pick up a drama double major if you're a typical computer science major, because (a) you would probably never be accepted, and (b) if you did get in, you would be decidedly out of your depth unless you had serious prior experience. CMU is a pretty awful place to be if you don't know, for Pretty Darn Certain what you want to do. Changing majors is generally a pain in the ass. (Note that drama is a particularly nasty case -- there are a very few classes for out of majors that generally have a waiting list many times the size of the class). All this *does* mean that you can generally get a very good education in the field you choose, but it is difficult to seriously explore other things.
CMU is not what you would call a party school. It is next to U Pitt, and, in any event, you can find friends on any campus, but I'd call it socially toned down.
CMU (at least CS and ECE) has a decidedly non-Windows bias, which is quite refreshing if you like working on UNIX systems. This takes root in a number of issues (Microsoft hiring a number of professors away, political issues, etc).
CMU is notable for a lot of different research. I'd say that their computer vision stuff is extremely prominent, as is their robotics works. There are some good language people there. Speech synthesis and recognition is big. The philosophy department has a strong AI/symbolic logic slant, which can be very good if you're into that, and bad if you like classical philosophy. They have networking work, but I don't see the network folks being as prominent as at some other universities. There (at least a while ago) was a significant project working on ad-hoc wireless networking. This is a pretty incomplete list. If you take CS up at CMU, be *sure* to take Professor Steven Rudich's Great Ideas In Computer Science class. It is, without compare, the finest class I've ever taken. It gives your brain a *throrough* workout, is a huge amount of fun, and is inspiring as all hell. Prof. Rudich also gives great assignments -- basically, he gives all the information required to figure some past significant idea in computer science out, then gives you the problem as an assignment. It feels *great* when you do it. I wish to God that more profs gave assignments like this. I and other people have even gone back to sit in on lectures he's given for classes we've already taken.
CMU has awful parking. A car will cause you a good deal of grief. Even in university terms, CMU has bad parking.
CMU is in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh's average age is extremely high (expecially given the number of universities in the thing). There are a *lot* of old people there. This means that the city shuts down quite early. 24 hour grocery stores and similar are not common. On the other hand, Pittsburgh also has phenomenal
I think you just answered your own question (Score:2, Informative)
outlook on things (Score:4, Insightful)
-Kilka
Re:outlook on things (Score:2, Insightful)
Learn both (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Learn both (Score:2)
This cannot be understated enough. Sure, you can do it with just the books, but there is absolutely no replacement for the experience. I started on my CCNA a while back, and even though I understood the concepts presented in the material, it made much more sense once I set up a test lab to work with. I didn't just know the stuff. I felt it. Perhaps that's a rather abstract way to look at it, but it's the impression I got.
Do whatever you can to get
A vote for my alma mater (Score:2, Informative)
Experience Counts (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Experience Counts (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree that experience is important in todays business world, but the "bunch of theory that you may have learned from some junior college prof" is just as important. Even if it just gets your foot in the door somewhere.
Is that really a college degree? (Score:5, Insightful)
However, by sheer virtue of the fact that you "made it" through a more in-depth degree such as CS or Computer Engineering, you'll open yourself up to wider options, and possibly a higher pay. These degrees mean that, in addition to the basic knowledge, you're capable of handing large, complicated projects (if you have a good Capstone program at the school you look at) and have good problem-solving skills, things that aren't, necessarily, taught at a trade-school or 2-year level institution.
Of course, I'm biased as I'm about 3 months from finishing my B.S. Comp. Engr, and 1 year, 3 months from finishing my M.S. Electrical Engr (Yay, 5-year program!).
Posted Anonymously to protect the names of the (not so) innocent.
The Necessity of Network Engineers?? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Necessity of Network Engineers?? (Score:3, Insightful)
This comes from a computer engineering/computer science major who still has no clue what he wants to do ultimately. I like both the hardware and software sides, but with my degree I'll have the option
Re:The Necessity of Network Engineers?? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm a successful Network Engineer, by successful I mean six figure salary. At every point in my career thus far i've had calls and emails from many technical recruiters and i've worked with a few to pursue new opportunities. I haven't, nor has anyone I know, ever spoken to a technical recruiter that was concerned with
University of... (Score:5, Funny)
You can do Cisco at most tech colleges... (Score:5, Informative)
You also may want to consider something in telecommunications as that covers a lot of networking as well.
And then you can still apply for work outside of IT.
College First, then Certification (Score:5, Informative)
Re:College First, then Certification (Score:2)
In my opinion, you have to choose one or the other. Think about it -- if you're setting up some NT cluster or whatever, you're not going to be writing code to help you get your work done.
On the other side of the coin, if you're writing code all day you're probably not worried about fixing other people's compu
Websites of interest (Score:2, Informative)
I would definetly suggest checking out US News [usnews.com]. They have an awesome website, in regards to "rankings" of the U.S. top schools and such, and they have them separated by degree and "rankings". While this may not be THE DEFINITIVE answer, it is certainly a step in the right direction. . .
Study CS or CE.... (Score:2)
Cal (Score:4, Insightful)
Communications Engineering (Score:4, Interesting)
We cover everything from distributed network programming, to coding techniques, to circuit design, to protocol implementation, to allocating resources for quality of service. It's great, once you get past all the math and science at the beginning. Introduction to Communications Software was my favourite course ever.
Network Eng as Major? (Score:2, Insightful)
Liberal Arts (Score:2, Flamebait)
Consider spending your time studying as an undergraduate on literature, history, philosophy, political science, mathematics, an investigation of human happiness (Aristotle called this ethics), biology, astronomy or a cogent combination of these and other topics [thomasaquinas.edu].
If it's job preparation you want, it's job preparation you'll get. That's all.
Re:Liberal Arts (Score:2)
Bypass all hope of starting a career in network engineering, and get a degree that will allow you to enjoy your lifetime of unemployment!
After you waste 4 years learning a technical trade that you can't sell, and have nothing rattling around in your head but packets and circuits, you'll wish that you were thinking of flowers and bunnies, and you'll kick yourself for not being able to express your anger in an eloquent manner.
Computer Science (Score:2, Informative)
Foundations are important (Score:2, Informative)
This may come across as a conservative approach, but keep in mind that I am an academic and when it comes to education we are expected sometimes to think conservatively. Thus I say to you:
Building strong foundations on the conceptuals and the foundations of computing is extremely important. You need a good grounding in mathematics, logic, and systems. This is something that you'll get if you majored in CS or math. CS is obviously preferrable.
Once you have a good understanding of the underlying princ
Don't do Networking - Get an MIS degree (Score:2)
From someone who is self made so to speak in the computing field, don't get a degree in networking. It is in a way a dead end. Most of what you learn in school will be almost obsolete by the time you graduate. Get a degree is MIS or a related field, technology managment, Information Systems Management , ect. Because while it is fun to be a tech for a while eventually you will want to be the boss and for that you will want a degree that mixes tech and buisness/management.
Indiana University ( 2 to 1.5 fe
CS isn't such a bad idea (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to get into stuff like protocol design, routing architecture and algorithms, and the other "guts" of designing and building high-speed networks, consider a CS or Computer Engineering degree. Besides the obvious courses in networking per se, you will have the opportunity to study algorithms relevant to the area (e.g. minimum spanning tree, network flows, suffix trees and other fast string matching methods for routing tables); hardware design (for building gigabit-and-up routers and other cool network gear); and design of large software systems, including the principles behind distributed systems like the DNS and peer-to-peer networks.
Depending on where you go and what your interests are, you can also bone up on the underlying math (e.g. queueing theory for protocol design) and maybe even some physics/EE (signal propagation, etc).
Yes, you can probably work your way to a strong practical knowledge of how to build a network, and getting your hands dirty is essential to success. However, the point of a CS degree is (1) breadth in computing fundamentals, which I hope I've persuaded you are relevant to networking, and (2) quickly getting up to speed on how to *think* about networks, independent of any particular protocol or hardware standard.
Oh, and speaking of getting hands dirty... if you go to the right place, you might be able to get on board a networking-related research project!
NJIT... (Score:3, Interesting)
Depending upon how good your existing skills in CS are (I'm talking about mostly programming and general computer knowledge), I can recommend NJIT [njit.edu] as a recent (2 weeks ago) BS in CS graduate. If you happen to live somewhere near the NYC metro area, it's not a bad education if you go in with a good background and don't mind teaching yourself when you can't understand the profs (that happens at most tech schools from what I hear). I thought it was rather easy but then again I started really programming in 2nd grade - most of my classmates wouldn't have agreed with me on the ease of the program though.
Price is reasonable and if you have high enough GPA/SAT scores you could apply for the Albert Dorman Honors College [njit.edu] - they paid for almost my entire undergraduate tuition, but I must warn you it is a lot of work.
One bad thing I must say though is the quality of campus life - it fucking sucks. ~85% men here and as for the 10-15% left of women... well, you get the idea. However we are about 10 miles due west of the financial district of NYC, about a 30 minute train ride right to Penn Station and there's *plenty* to do in the city, so it' really up to you.
Northface University (Score:3, Informative)
Isn't youthful enthusiasm great? (Score:2)
--D
ask yourself (Score:5, Insightful)
Because if you want to STUDY or MAKE things, go to a good CS school: MIT, U of I, Purdue, Carnegie Mellon, University of Chicago (shameless plug, plus U of C will teach you more than just computers). Those are just the top schools off the top of my head, and are necessarily the best schools. I'm sure your own local schools might be good enough. My advice is not to look for a "networking school" as that amount of specialization is not what you want from a university education. See below.
However, if you want to USE things, then get yourself to a trade school, community college, or hell, just teach yourself and get the certification. No need to waste all that money learning about theory, writing papers, etc., when you can just study how to build and maintain networks.
Of course, I'm not saying that this is somehow a 'lesser' pursuit; instead you'll learn more specific skills suited to where you want to work: networking.
--Stephen
Re:ask yourself (Score:4, Insightful)
Shameless plug.
Shameless University Pimping (Score:2, Informative)
Work while you are in school (Score:2, Interesting)
Penn (Score:2)
Take the usual CS/CE, but... (Score:2)
A General Plan (Score:2)
If you still are interested, then get into Computer Science (or possi
Ignore the certification trolls (Score:5, Informative)
There may not be a specific "Network Engineer" degree at all universities, what you want is to study Electical Engineering, add in some Mathematics (queue theory, statistics), and top it off with Physics (optics, particle physics). All of these elements are required to actually understand what is going on with networks. Specific topics to concentrate on include circuit design, transmission lines, antennas, material science, compiler design, signal processing, queue theory, and statistics, lots of statistics.
If you want to be the guy who actually writes new RFCs to be used by everybody else, gets hired by companies like Cisco to create new routers or protocols, and be the chief designer on world spanning networks, ignore the certificates for now. Concentrate on getting the background information necessary to understand all the aspects of network design, like speed of light limitations, electrical characteristics of transmission lines, radio circuits and complex mathematics. Picking up a cisco certificate will then take a week of your time when you are ready to join the workforce, and you'll know not just the HOW, but the WHY.
There are a ton of CCIEs on the market today, those without university degrees are flipping burgers or repairing PCs. The interesting work, such as creating optical switches or ultra efficient routers, can only be done by people with advanced degrees. The cert holders sit in the NOC at 3 AM, working their way through a never ending stream of trouble tickets, wishing they had a real degree to get a real job.
That said, from my experiences with US university grads, I'd recommend UC Berkeley, Purdue, CalTech, or UoWashington.
the AC
who just let his CCIE expire, because its worthless in todays job market
University of Wisconsin (Score:2)
The University of Wisconsin [wisc.edu] itself is a p
networking is a subset of CS ,EE, and physics (Score:2)
Think ahead (Score:2)
Go to a liberal arts school (Score:2)
what colleges im going to apply to
I'm not going to get into stylistic subtleties here ("what" instead of "which", preposition "to" separated from its object, using "but" twice in the same sentence with differing puncutation). Instead, I'd like to remind you that the first person singular pronoun is always capitalized in English and that contractions contain apo
Proofread the application carefully (Score:2)
I'm going to recommend you avoid the ivey league.
Texas A&M University (Score:3, Informative)
Check out the
VNE [tamu.edu] and this list [nsa.gov]
of schools that the NSA has designated as "CENTERS OF ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE IN INFORMATION ASSURANCE EDUCATION" which also largely have good networking programs. This list of course includes Texas A&M University
IUPUI (Score:5, Informative)
Otherwise, you may also be interested in Purdue's CPT [iupui.edu] program. They offer a Network Engineering Degree. Purdue is perhaps the best engineering/tech university in the midwest, maybe even east of the Mississippi. In fact, maybe even east of California. And unlike IU, their football team doesn't entirely suck.
Plus, Indianapolis has lots of things going for it for someone in the industry. Plenty of large companies that need tech workers (the headquarters of Lilly and Conseco and Thompson Consumer Electronics North America and Simon Property Group - the world's largest mall owner) as well as many regionally strong tech companies.
Yes, I'm a little biased, but for good reason.
P.S. My kids may not be engineers (Score:2, Interesting)
The way things are going, I will not endorse my profression "computer engineering" to my kids.
I will suggest to them that they find their true talents and follow that path. (As I think every parent should.)
The bottom line is that the best among us don't always do the best (by objective measurement). The cliche "nice guys finish last", ain't for nothing.
I am doing ok, in life, but sheesh... I lost my train of though.
Re:P.S. My kids may not be engineers (Score:2, Interesting)
I meant to imply that both my wife and I are smart (per standarized tests)... so you might expect our kids to be smart too.
As fortune would have it, our kids seem to be bright too. Nothing more, nothing less was implied.
Go Dalhousie! (Score:2)
Re:Devry! (Score:3, Funny)
I think it worked.
Then we put all made-up info on the forms he made us fill out!
Good times.
Re:Unpopular advice (Score:3)
While things get simpler and simpler for end users and administrators, the back-end protocols to run all this automated spiffiness don't get any easier. I work in Storage Area Network troubleshooting and I spend my days staring at protocol traces, scrutinizing poorly drawn network diagrams, and poring through dense