I took CS courses at BYU and then later again at UNLV. The school DOES matter.
The quality of the courses (and the teachers' expectations) were VERY different. I took a senior capstone class at UNLV with students that still had never written a program of any significance or even knew how to properly design/implement a simple object class, all things that were handled in CS 142 at BYU. I know that this comparison is a bit extreme, but it does highlight differences between schools. While there were a fair number of students who did excel and did learn proper coding methods, those were more the exception than the norm. If you are going to hire directly from a school that is unfamiliar to you, you should ask to seek coursework/projects that they completed/participated in. Also, with increasing availability and quality of open education materials, an individual who is self taught (with portfolio to back it up) is going to be just as good, if not better, than a recent college grad. On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 9:21 AM, Chris Wood <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 9:33 AM, Mac Newbold <[email protected]> wrote: > > I've been involved in a lot of hiring where I work, for both PHP and > other > > development-related positions, and the consensus here is that it matters. > > It's not usually a deal breaker, but we're much more sure of what we're > > getting in a candidate who did his work at the Univ. of Utah, or UVU, or > > Neumont, or BYU, than we are about someone from a school we don't know > > well. In particular, schools that have more of a "job training" feel to > > them like a Univ. of Phoenix, or a Stevens Henager, or ITT Tech, > sometimes > > don't mean as much to us as educational programs where we know they had > > plenty of theory and practiced creative problem solving. > > > > The school you attended also is less of a factor the longer you've been > out > > of school. It means more before or soon after graduation than it does > after > > you've been in the workforce for 5 or 10 years or longer. Then job > > experience speaks a lot more loudly than school background. > > > > My two cents, for what it's worth... > > I would say a big ditto to Mac's comments here. I think he nailed it > on the head. Also, if you have great work experience and no degree it > hurts you less as you get more experience. > > -- > Chris Wood > -=-=-=-=-=-=- > > _______________________________________________ > > UPHPU mailing list > [email protected] > http://uphpu.org/mailman/listinfo/uphpu > IRC: #uphpu on irc.freenode.net > _______________________________________________ UPHPU mailing list [email protected] http://uphpu.org/mailman/listinfo/uphpu IRC: #uphpu on irc.freenode.net
