Best recognized college for IT

Sparkicks

Hey im not too sure if this is the propper section for it but at a guess in any other it wouldnt be seen by the right people... anyway im writing out my list of applications for college in a while but im having a hard time choosing which is the best for me...

As far as reputation goes if you were looking at someones CV or asking where they went to college what would be the most impressive and recognized
And secondly if i really want to go somewhere to know my stuff (if possibly different from above) where would be the place to go

if anyone is in/has been /knows information about any of the colleges around ireland atm please by all means id welcome any feedback

Preferably looking for somewhere around dublin/kildare

Creamy Goodness

in my opinon it would be like this

most recognized - DCU.
most practical - DIT.
most theoretical - Trinity / UCD.

theory can only get you so far in IT, there's no point knowing every single nook and cranny if you can't apply it.

i'm in third year of DT228 in DIT kevin street, and it's pretty good. the course has gotten much better since i joined (my first year was too easy, guys were out nearly every day and still aced the exams with 80%+ in all exams) they now to at lot more in first year.

i don't know about the other college but DIT does a 6 month work placement which students have gotten jobs in some big industry names like Sun/oracle/google/ericsson this will put you on top of the pile of CV's when it comes to job time after you've got your piece of paper.

buckfast4me

Dit

zilog_jones

Cremo wrote: »

i don't know about the other college but DIT does a 6 month work placement which students have gotten jobs in some big industry names like Sun/oracle/google/ericsson this will put you on top of the pile of CV's when it comes to job time after you've got your piece of paper.

UL does that for nearly all courses, especially the IT ones. I did 7 months in some small manufacturing business in Limerick - nothing stellar but I got real experience with administration, messing with servers, PBXs, yucky things like MS Exchange, etc. I know people who've done co-op in Intel, Motorola, Logitech, Google etc.

I don't know about UL's reputation, but the ECE (Dept. of Electronics & Computer Engineering) courses have improved greatly in recent years with regards to doing more practical work and projects and stuff. I started in '03 (IT & Telecommunications) and we did nothing in comparison to the stuff they do nowadays - we didn't even get to touch a soldering iron! :mad:

There's feck all students doing these courses now so you'll have no trouble getting into them.

Nutty

ye didnt touch a soldering iron zilog... im in 4th year ITT and our 2nd week in first year we were souldering.... we were the first year of the new course..

we souldered for 2 modules in first year and one in 2nd year mayb even too..

in sayin that we could do with an extra module this year nearly and the department will get alot of feedback off out course we are quiet vocal..

the worst thing they did was mess up our electives.. alot of us wanted to do data mining which tehy said they were offering but didnt manage to get a lecturer so instead we have ended up doing graphics modules...

otherwise for a general IT course i would recommended ITT
for a more programming course id pick computer systems
and i think computer engineering is more hardware based

cronos

Computer Systems in UL is well respected as for our Final Year Project demo day a lot of companies come looking at your projects and offering you their details so you can get interviews with them. Our course however has a massive failure rate due to the complexity involved in it. I would say it was more theroy in lectures and the labs/projects is where practical stuff is learned. I imagine that our course would be most like trinity but perhaps more difficult. (based soley on failure rates as i have never done any of the other courses as i have never been in another university so its impossible to compare)

For example in one of the first year java modules I heard everyone failed it. (I was in third year at the time) You could say that mabey thats because they arent being thought well enough. However that isnt the case here its just common to set the bar very high in our course and if you cant meet the expectation you drop out, get help from the ITC learning center or you repeat.

Just so you know this is coming from a person on a 2.1 not someone who fail's a lot, or dosent turn up or anything like that.

Ginger

I did the same course as above, but my experience was slightly different. Our "failure rate" was more due to drop outs, rather than anything else. You had the usual number of failures in any modules including 1 lecturer who managed to give failing grades to 65% of a 4th year class causing uproar, but that was more due to teaching error rather than student error.

I always look at failure rates after 1st year (or repeat rates in 1st year) mainly because a lot of people get pushed into the courses by parents thinking they will make lots of money rather than the person themselves actually wanted to do the course.

Usually after first year you get a 5-10% failure rate...

ULs comp sys is well respected I have found anyways.

zilog_jones

Ginger wrote: »

I always look at failure rates after 1st year (or repeat rates in 1st year) mainly because a lot of people get pushed into the courses by parents thinking they will make lots of money rather than the person themselves actually wanted to do the course.

I think this is much less the case these days. When I started IT&T in '03, there were over 100 people in the 4th year, and 17 in my year. I believe Comp Sys went into similar decline. I knew someone my age who really wanted to do computing courses but were actually forced by her parents to do business instead - people really did not have high hopes for the IT industry at the time. Entry points for my year was 295!

Less than 10 students are in the current first year of Applied Computing & Network Technoligies (the replacement for IT&T). It seems it's just people who really have an interest in the courses themselves in them nowadays, and maybe a small minority of people who think it'd be a good idea but don't really have an interest and end up having a hard time.

in sayin that we could do with an extra module this year nearly and the department will get alot of feedback off out course we are quiet vocal..

Yeah I think our problem was that we weren't really vocal at all - we didn't even have a class rep! We never complained about the mind-numbingly boring lectures, complete lack of labs for some modules, etc. I think I heard about how you got screwed around with the elective module - either that or the exact same thing happened to one of the years ahead of me...

Ginger

I started in 97, there was a lot of buzz around then for computer courses, the points were about 390 and requiring a certain level in maths as well...

I would say he has to have all changed, i think I saw the points at 270 one for comp sys!

Oh well..

zilog_jones

Yeah I think it was around 270 in 2003, back when people were very skeptical about the industry. But even back then when I was filling out my CAO form people were predicting there'd be a huge deficit in computery graduates in a few years time, but no one listened to them.

The CSIS building must be like a ghost town now!

cronos

Ginger wrote: »

I started in 97, there was a lot of buzz around then for computer courses, the points were about 390 and requiring a certain level in maths as well...

I would say he has to have all changed, i think I saw the points at 270 one for comp sys!

Oh well..

A yes good aul 2003 thats when i started comp sys. Thats exactly what the points were I believe. I got 400 points myself though. Doing this course with 270 points is suicide. Unless you didnt really pay much attention to the leaving cert but had good science skills (pay close attention to the fact i didnt say just maths, as its the type of learning you encounter in LC science subjects that you will meet in the degree).

Nutty

as a current ITT(dummy year for ACNT) 4th year we currently have 17 students i think with the 3 years below us all having under 10 from what i make out...

ya we got totally screwed with electives this year alot of us wanted to do datamining adn teh department couldnt come up trumps with a lecturer so we've been given a graphicsmodule instead

deco05ie

Whats to stop people doing there first 3 years in an easy college and then just switching over for there 4th year just to say they got there degree from some better I.T

cronos

deco05ie wrote: »

Whats to stop people doing there first 3 years in an easy college and then just switching over for there 4th year just to say they got there degree from some better I.T

I dont know if its that easy to switch from one course to another. Also if you have been taking it easy for the first 3 years you will be in for a big shock when you switch to a hard college for the hardest year of the course.

There could be other bad reasons that I cant think of also.

rom

Cremo wrote: »

in my opinon it would be like this

most recognized - DCU.
most practical - DIT.
most theoretical - Trinity / UCD.

theory can only get you so far in IT, there's no point knowing every single nook and cranny if you can't apply it.

i'm in third year of DT228 in DIT kevin street, and it's pretty good. the course has gotten much better since i joined (my first year was too easy, guys were out nearly every day and still aced the exams with 80%+ in all exams) they now to at lot more in first year.

i don't know about the other college but DIT does a 6 month work placement which students have gotten jobs in some big industry names like Sun/oracle/google/ericsson this will put you on top of the pile of CV's when it comes to job time after you've got your piece of paper.

How about outside of dublin ?