Here are some tips for selecting schools, based on an analysis comparing each school to all others across dozens of factors:
Fastest Response From Schools
- Request Info: For the fastest information for prospective students, look at the Spotlight schools on this page.
Student Body
- Part-Time: For schools emphasizing part-time studies, consider University of South Dakota, Black Hills State, Lake Area Technical Institute, and Mount Marty College.
- Diverse: For a diverse student body, consider Sisseton Wahpeton College and Sinte Gleska University.
- Adult Learners: For lots of adult learners, consider Kilian Community College.
School Setting
- Out of State: For geographic diversity, take note of Augustana, University of Sioux Falls, The School of Mines, and South Dakota State.
- Dorms: For a residential campus environment, take note of Augustana, University of Sioux Falls, Northern State, and South Dakota State.
Excellence
- SAT: For students with high SAT scores, look at The School of Mines and University of South Dakota.
- Class Size: For small class sizes, look at The School of Mines, Augustana, Sinte Gleska University, and Sisseton Wahpeton College.
Student/Alumnus Reviews of Schools for This Career and State
Colorado Technical University • Sioux Falls, SD
Studying Information Technology (completion in )
• 10/2/2011
"People tend to think more highly of me because I went to CTU since it is a private school. The truth is you pay way to much for too little of an education, but having a degree did help me get a couple of jobs."
Ratings are on a 1-10 scale
| Characteristic | Rating | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Would Recommend? | no | I would tell them to go to STI. It is way cheaper and you will get the same quality (if not better) of education. |
| Program Reputation | 6 | My school is primarily known for its Criminal Justice degree programs. IT/Computer Science was taught by regular "John Does" off of the street. Many students did not like their professors. |
| Program Quality | 5 | The area of study was very intriguing to me, however my school seemed reluctant to work with me on several issues I had during my time enrolled there. I didn't really like some of the classes I was forced to take as well. |
| Instruction | 5 | I learned a lot in school, but most of it was about old outdated technology. A lot of the skills I use at work I was specifically trained for at work. |
| Hands-On vs. Bookish | Any material related to my field is dry, but some classes were worse than others because of a lack of hands on learning material. The only hands on stuff I did my entire program was make an ethernet cable, install an OS on a virtual machine, and do some programming. | |
| Schedule Flexibility | 9 | Colorado Tech has many options for attending its classes. You can take any class in the day or night, and you can take a lot of them online if you can't make it to class when the course is offered. Also, if a class isn't being taught during a semester, you have the option of taking it online through Colorado Springs. |
| Academic Facilities | 5 | The laptop they gave me when I first started was a piece of junk. They wouldn't put the software that you needed for some of the courses on it either and I would have to come into school outside of my class schedule to do homework. They had a library as well but it was small. |
| Social Life | 4 | The school had no athletics. They were a bit lacking on the social events, but they would get pizza and pop for all the students at least once a semester. I did meet a few interesting people, but I did not make one good, lasting friendship in school. |
| Placement Services | 1 | I tried a couple times to get a job with my school's help, but it almost seemed like they were unwilling or unable to help me. I created and submitted a resume to one of the faculty members in charge of helping students find jobs and didn't hear from her for a few weeks, so I located her before one of my classes. She had completely forgotten about me and started scrambling through her papers trying to show me jobs that I wasn't interested in and even jobs that weren't in my field of study. They did have a job bulletin board for the students to look at, but all of the jobs on it were for either the nursing or criminal justice students. |
| Alumni Network | 1 | I receive an email about once or twice a year letting me know that these groups existed. I never learned the benefits of joining one of these groups. |
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