You should take a serious look right now to make sure you're going to a college with a good program for getting a job.

From someone who went through a school with effectively no program, I definitely wished I'd considered this before devoting 4 years and 100k to one particular school.

So here's some actionable questions you can ask your career center right now to see if you're getting your money's worth.

Does the university protect you against exploding offers? An exploding offer is when a company offers you a job offer, but you have to decide immediately or within a short time period (like a day or two). In the "real world" this can make sense because the company may actually need someone immediately. For students though, this practice is a bit scummy, since no company immediately needs an intern. Typically it's just manipulating someone who might not know any better. To prevent this, any college worth it's tuition will require all companies recruiting students to follow some form of [offer guidelines](https://ecs.engineering.illinois.edu/career-resources/offer-...).

If they _don't_ have this sort of guideline, it likely means they don't have any leverage or industry connections. For example, most schools will just blacklist companies from their career fairs that don't follow their guidelines. If the companies don't care, then the career program is pretty bad.

And on that note, does the school have regular career fairs attended by tech companies you've heard of?

In some schools the vast majority of students get their internships or new-grad jobs from career fairs. In others, there won't be a technical career fair. Or if there is, there won't be any CS/programming jobs that show up.

One hack to figure this out is to check if the school is _charging companies_ money for STEM career fairs. For example, San Jose state charges $850 a table the last time I checked. If a school isn't charging, it often means they can't actually get anyone to come. (though obviously YMMV)

Does the school have course offerings for technical interviews? Many, many schools these days are creating classes specifically to help students pass their technical interviews. For example, here's [Boise State's class](https://github.com/BoiseState/CS-HU390).

If the school _doesn't_ have a course like this at some point, it may mean they are disconnected to the real world and have little to no support for you in general. It is not a hard thing for CS professors to setup a class for extra practice with algorithms & data structures.

Do students have access to investment capital or startup support? Many schools have some form of a "student startup" program specifically around CS students. If they don't, there may also be a "college student" specific VC fund nearby, such as [Contrary Capital](https://contrarycap.com/), [Dorm Room Fund](https://www.dormroomfund.com/), or [Rough Draft VC](https://www.roughdraft.vc/).

_You_ may not start a business, but one of your peers might, and that creates a network that can help you get a job in the future. Plus, this opens up opportunities you may not have considered before.

It's important for you that these are heavily associated with the computer science program and not uniquely available to the business students. Some schools only allow biz kids to do these; the money comes from a grant that's only allocated for biz students.

Does the school have access to hackathons? Hackathons may be for you, or they may not be. (I personally dislike them) But you should seek out a place where they exist or you have access to them. They encourage students to actually build things, which is the type of environment you want to be in. You should surround yourself with other people who are actually using their CS skills rather than just passing their classes.

Does the university host a hackathon? If not, is it in the local area? If not, does it sponsor students to go? If not, have _any_ students gone?

You'd be surprised how many schools with a CS program where all of those answers are "no".

In general, you should a baseline goal in your university. There's obvious benefit to learning as much as you can in many different subjects while you have the time. But get a job at the end.