I
graduated over 25 years ago and I still look back
fondly to my time at Cooper. I still remember my
dad's encouraging words: “This is free; you're applying.” In retrospect,
I have no idea why I even dreamed about applying
to MIT or Georgia Tech, since I couldn't have paid
for them if I did apply and got accepted. Glad
I didn't, so I can pretend that I might have
been accepted. :-) Sure, there was a pretty-serious workload, but
it didn't feel like Cooper was unique. Friends at other
universities at the time spoke of similar experiences. Frankly, if
you learn to handle deadlines in college, you'll be a
lot more useful in your work life, both to yourself
and those who pay you.
Yeah, the social life was
bring-your-own. Fortunately, I had a tight circle of friends outside
school, so I never lacked for activities. There was a
fair share of clubs, but being a 100% commuter school
when I went, the last thing you wanted to do
was stay even later after class and then take the
NYC subway home. If you're considering Cooper and want to
be on the pep squad, you're looking at the wrong
school. We Electrical Engineers thought about having a EE-PROM, but
it never panned out. Yes, that was the type of
people there. Some love it; some don't. You decide.
What
makes Cooper stand out in my mind against most other
universities is the preparation it gave me for the real
world. We had adjunct professors from industry (mostly Bell Labs,
which was still in it's hey-day then) who told us
what was worth remembering in the lessons and what wasn't.
Also, I got a job at the Computer Center, which
brought in a few bucks, but also taught me how
things run in a (pseudo-)production environment. It was less intense
than a corporate data center, but the systems (we had
two; it was the early 80s) had to stay up,
especially when student projects were due. I value this as
much as most of my classes.
I've seen some postings
in recent years bashing Cooper's reputation as a “computer science”
school, because it has no CS degree. This came after
someone at Cooper spoke up about one of the early-2000s
virus outbreaks. First of all, when I went EE's made
more money than CS's, so I made the financial decision
to go EE. That balance shifted literally while I was
at school (sigh...), but Cooper provided (and provides, since I'm
still in contact with the computer folks there) a state-o-the-art
CS education, minus the degree. Most importantly, it teaches you
real-world CS, with less focus on the O(N^2), numerical methods,
etc., stuff that prepares you in no way for real
software development.
Would I do it all again? Absolutely. What
would I change? I guess I would study more (but
probably not; heck, you're only young once and it's NYC
for goodness sake!), since I only graduated with 3.0, which
hurt a bit the first 3 years or so of
my career. Before you label me as not as bright
as I think I am, I attended Manhattan College for
grad school six months after graduating Cooper and pulled a
4.0 for my MEE. So, I guess you could say
Cooper was harder, but you have to factor in the
differences in work ethic of an 18 year old living
at home vs. a 23 year old on his own.
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