Georgetown or University of Washington?

[some_dog]

Georgetown or University of Washington?

Which school do you think has more name recognition and prestige? I got into the Masters program for Computational Linguistics for both universities but I'm not sure which one I should go to.

Obviously I recognize that prestige should not be the only factor for deciding which school to attend but it is one of the variables I am having the most trouble quantifying. Other factors include cost and the quality of academics.

Academically, I believe the Georgetown program is a little better. But Georgetown is also more than twice as expensive as UW; something like $80K vs $30K for UW for the total cost of the degree. Unfortunately I haven't been able to scrape up funding from either program so far, so I'll probably have to pay for it on my own. Intuitively, I feel that Georgetown has a bit more name recognition which could be important in looking for a job afterwords.

If I didn't have to care about money it would be Georgetown without a doubt. But that $50K difference is pretty big and I'm not really sure a Georgetown degree is worth that much more than a UW degree. The reason I think "prestige" is so important is because, while I love linguistics, I still want to leave open the possibility that I might not be doing this 15-20 years from now, so I still want my degree to have some value (even if it's only cachet).

What do you guys think? Any thoughts?

[some_dog]

since no replies, just bumping

[BKMD]

For CS and language processing, I think UW definitely is a stronger name. There is a lot of good research coming out of there and I don't think you would have a hard time finding a job. If your interests are more on the linguistics side, then I'm not sure, but I do know they have strictly comp ling people at Washington. For linguistics Georgetown might be better (I honestly have no idea), so I guess it depends what kind of job you are planning to get. Personally I would lean toward the substantial cheaper option since, from my perspective at least, it's a better program.

[psycholinguist]

Georgetown does have a better-known linguistics-department than UW does, but really, I don't think you can go wrong either way. They both sound like really good bets (I know undergrad linguists at both places, and they've all been very happy with their departments), and DC and Seattle are both great cities. (Is climate an important factor for you? Seattle's lovely, but it gets six months of rain in the winter with hardly a single break; DC is also lovely, but its summers are hot and very humid.) Though since you don't know whether your interests might change, I'd be tempted to favour the cheaper option, as BKMD said; that way, you'll be able to put more money aside for a Ph.D. if you decide to go that route. Anyway, good luck!

[some_dog]

Thanks for the replies. I'm still a little undecided but I'm slowly edging towards UW just because it will put me in less debt. However, I do think that academically, if I choose to pursue a PhD, Georgetown might put me in better standing since their department seems to be more theoretical while UW has more of an engineering/industry slant.

On a side note, I wish I had realized the poll option before. That would have been very useful. But it seems silly to start a new topic now. Oh well.

[intextrovert]

Why don't you ask for job placement statistics for each of the programs? That's what really matters, not a nebulous (and subjective) concept of "prestige."

I'd lean very strongly towards UW. If the comparative prestige of the programs is close enough that it's debatable, tripling your debt for it seems very unwise. Especially for a Master's program.

[stefanbehr]

I've recently gotten into both programs, and I have to decide between the two by April 15th. I'm visiting UW soon to help with the decision, but I don't know if I'll make it to DC to visit Georgetown before the deadline. OP, if you get notifications from this thread and if you have a chance, your input would be most helpful.

Does anyone else happen to be in the same situation currently?

By the way, my third option for graduate school is a masters program in CS at the University of Chicago. It's technically marketed as a 'Computer Science Professional Program', but it has the advantage of being flexible enough to allow for taking many awesome (and in my opinion crucial) courses in the computer science department outside of the professional program, while also granting an MS in CS by the program's end. Opinions on that program vs. the two in computational linguistics are also most welcome...