University of Wisconsin-Madison

When I was in high school and deciding where to go to school, my strategy was pretty simple -- find a school good in Computer Sciences and go there. Madison is a top-10 school in CS and was about an hour from home in Milwaukee, so it was pretty much a no brainer. The vaunted "experience" of being a badger didn't really play into my decision to go there, but it was just about the best "cherry on top" you could ask for.

Came for CS...

My CS education there lived up to the hype. I completely owe my strong understanding of computing fundamentals to the incredible peers and educators that I was privileged to learn with. I wouldn't be nearly as well-rounded as an engineer today without learning computing from the ground up at UW-Madison (which I have to remind myself sometimes when I'm tempted to think I would have been better off going to a boot camp instead).

Plus, I had the awesome opportunity to lead a Scratch club, where I taught kindegarteners how to code 😀.

...stayed for the rest

Early on, the general education classes required of a CS degree were a formality to me, and a wasteful one at that. Yet, as the semesters passed, I ended up valuing and enjoying these classes even more than my CS ones.

Classes in the liberal arts, literature, writing, science fiction, and so on, ended up being crucial in the way I think today. Being in such a "left-brained" industry such as software can potentially be pretty limiting if you don't expand your horizons past 1's and 0's. I'm lucky UW-Madison pushed me to take this extra classes and gain perspective I probably never would have seeked out otherwise

Overall...

I'm extremely happy with my decision to go to Madison, and loved the city itself. So much so that I stayed for two years after graduation and even decided to get married there even after moving back to Milwaukee. It holds an extremely fond place in my heart.