You go to college not only to learn something, but more importantly to learn how to be someone.
I sent my daughter to Saint Mary’s College at Notre Dame, Indiana (I am a Notre Dame alumnus and my wife is a Saint Mary’s alumna). I’m not sure whether SMC has a computer science program. I am sure that it is a college that will make a positive difference in your daughter’s life.
My daughter was an immature child when she started there in 2002 at age 18. By graduation in 2006, she was a mature young woman exhibiting manners and social graces she did not have four years before. She also developed a work ethic (she got a degree in business administration, and today has a really good job in Chicago while being happily married and the mother of two boys).
Saint Mary’s is not conservative in the way that Hillsdale (about 100 miles east of South Bend) is, but the combination of students from good (not necessarily wealthy) families and the professors and staff there I found to be outstanding. It is a college of around 1,500 undergraduates, across the road from another school with about 8,000 undergraduates with all the facilities you’d ever want in a college campus. South Bend has a regional airport that is on the national network of Delta and United; it also has two different train services to Chicago (Amtrak and the South Shore). Saint Mary’s is just off the Indiana Toll Road. So it is easy to get there.
Saint Mary’s also has outstanding international “year abroad” programs. My daughter spent her sophomore year in Rome (best money I ever spent on anything). They have a program in France. So she could get immersion French language instruction and practice. Everyone should know at least one other language, if only for the personal satisfaction of mastering something difficult and interesting (I can count to 10 in eight languages or so, but I can’t speak any of them).
Texas A&M (conservative for a large school)
New Mexico Tech for computer science. No French, but fairly conservative.
Colorado school of Mines.
Iowa State University (not very conservative but has strong conservative student clubs).
Hi Tai Chung - I also have a senior daughter aspiring comp sci major. We’ve visited more than a dozen schools. My impression is that virtually all of the small liberal arts schools have tiny computer science programs and are extreme far left. An exception on the leftness was Washington and Lee, which we loved. Still smaller comp sci, but it is a growing major there. For the larger schools, I wouldn’t worry too much about the the liberalness. There are plenty of conservative students at a large school and she will find her tribe. Especially in the hard sciences, she will be around students who are outcome based rather than feeling based - natural born conservatives.
Louisiana State University has computer science, computer engineering, French and orchestra. Plus you can practice speaking domestic French in Louisiana. The combination of computer science and French is interesting. There would be jobs with companies that have offices in West Africa. Also valuable working with French company joint venture partners.
My son is in his 3rd year at Hillsdale. Attending college there will change your daughter in a profoundly positive way, you will be amazed.
Please send me a private message if you want to know more. I’m very happy to promote the institution and their philosophy. Hillsdale is everything you’ve heard and more.
Incidentally, I first learned of Hillsdale from FreeRepublic.
Don’t go into “Computer Science”.
Most of that work is done by Indians now, at extremely low rates of pay. Especially, H1B Visa holders will do the work at 1/3rd of what your daughter needs to pay the rent on a cheap apartment.
Go for Math, Statistics and Data Science. Those may last awhile (10 years?) before becoming commoditized offshore.
Warning: they accept NO federal money.
The greatest opportunity for liberal indoctrination is when the child lives on campus to be totally immersed in that culture. Avoid having the child live on campus at all instead of with family - which also cuts the cost of college in half.
My first advice directly to you and your daughter is to look at the curriculum for CS wherever she is considering attending.
Choose a school where they are accepted for their major. Some universities make you apply to the school of XYZ after two year. You might not get in. But worse than that, you aren’t touching your chosen field for 2 years!
Your major should be deeply entrenched in your studies pretty quickly.
Second, I would grade the CS program by whether they are on the leading edge of technology. I wouldn’t send my kid to a school that wasn’t aggressive in machine learning / cognitive computing / artificial intelligence. That is where the next generation of superstars are rising. It is being applied to everything from analytics, to prediction, risk management, computer vision, etc.
Learn the hard things in CS, because that is where you become valuable.