The CS major isn’t designed to be an SWE major, so expecting every class to be directly applicable to an SWE career is unreasonable. However, each class in the CS core is useful for developing technical skills for SWE: CS 2110 - Data Structures & OOP CS 2800 - Proofs and logical reasoning for thinking about algorithms, probability CS 3110 - Functional Programming paradigms are very common in SWE, architecting projects CS 3410 - systems-level programming CS 4820 - Algorithms/Leetcode CS 4410 - systems-level programming, networking, synchronization & parallalism. If you take CS4414 instead, you also learn C++ and Linux, which are widely used. More on reddit.com

Opinion: unless you have access to department-level data and can view trends in academic performance you do not get a say in whether or not a program should be gatekept, 'weeded out,' rigor adjusted, etc. If you do not have this data you could hand-wave allude to it by looking at post-grad performance of the major as this data gets published to the public. Cornell CS grads still get good jobs and get into good grad programs at the usual rates. I find it very unlikely there is some sudden new issue of poorly-abled CS students. CS has been 'hot' for like a decade now. Anyways: While this is expected and completely normal what’s not normal is that an alarming number of people are simply not aware of the basics of coding. It is essentially impossible to entirely cheat through the entire CS major. Exams carry a significant enough portion of the grade for most courses and projects aren't exactly super leniently graded. Most of the 4000+ level courses are pretty hard, and frankly, Cornell does not really give students a lot of time to, 'get good' at programming. Besides 2300 and 3300 if they're still the same, and that 5000 level 'Software Engineering' class, many of the projects/assignments are basically some shell to fill-in where the relevant theory being learned at the time needs to go. As such you end up with lots of people who have lots of CS theory (or maybe a C/C- understanding) without a ton of practical programming experience. Projects and self-learning exist to fill this gap, but the semester is busy enough that I don't blame students who aren't grinding out full-stack web apps or knowing the best way to do OOP, etc. Additionally, like u/public_menace_2702 mentions, a ton of the CS projects have a needless layer of ambiguity and obtuseness because our program is supposed to be hard (or something). An alarming number of people who attend my office hours straight up just expect me to give them the code which in my opinion is very concerning. A couple of days ago, a girl during my office hours demanded answers from me since the assignment was due that night. I also do believe that there has to be some kind of restriction. Due to the large influx, a lot of TAs including myself feel overwhelmed and there are just way too many people trying to get their code fixed during office hours, which is not how it is supposed to be. People going to office hours are more than likely going to be stuck . Students with a good grasp of the concepts, or maybe with a good grasp of concept but poor programming habits, probably aren't going to camp your office hours or show up last minute the day an assignment is due. This does not give you a good sampling for the overall quality of the CS population. A second point you somewhat make is office hours availability. Cornell has been trash at good office hours staffing for years. The issue is not a sudden influx of cheater-kids-who-cant-program, rather, that Cornell has allowed an expansion of the CS program without proper addition of staffing resources. imo this whole post just seems like a shitty gatekeep of how cs should be more exclusive and that lots of kids don't deserve to be in it. newsflash: a lot of the kids who started off as CS are also just in it for the money -- if a student was accepted to cornell they 99% are able to graduate from the program given fair resourcing and work ethic More on reddit.com

Cornell is consistently rated in the top three in the US for CS. Not sure if that includes undergrad. The 4xxx and 5xxx level courses are usually taught by very impressive professors who have or are making big contributions to the field. Start schmoozing and getting involved in research. Personally I don't find AI interesting but I had a friend who went straight to Microsoft for AI after graduating. A lot of Cornell's upper level CS courses shine in the project opportunities. You have access to some incredibly bright TA's and peers. Meet them and you'll be set with your network in a few years. More on reddit.com

Once you reach this level of resources and selectivity, there is essentially no objective difference in educational quality at the undergraduate level. That doesn't mean there aren't subjective differences. Does one school specialize in something you would prefer over the other? Offer especially strong connections to some companies the other doesn't? Are there courses at one that aren't offered at the other? More on reddit.com