Matt Flahive's Guest Lecture on Mar. 20, 2000
email address: mpf6@cornell.edu

Matt graduated from Wyomissing Area High School in 1998 and is currently attending Cornell University. Cornell is an Ivy League college in Ithaca, New York. He excelled in Basic Programming, Pascal Programming, and C Programming (by independent study). He won the Senior Computer Programming award in his Senior Year and he is currently tie for first place all-time for Wyomissing in the ACSL Classroom Division with a score of 38 out of 40. Here are some general comments that he made in response to questions that were posed by the Wyo computer students during his guest lecture:

Major: Computer Science

Matt placed out of the first level of computer science at Cornell by taking a placement exam in his first week at college. He had the choice of taking the exam in any common language and he chose Pascal which he learned at Wyomissing. While he began as a computer science major, he realized during his freshman year that he enjoyed mechanical engineering more and changed majors. The course, CS 212, which he said is a Cornell computer science "weeder course" helped him realize that computer science was not for him.

At Cornell, Java is used mainly as the computer language in many CS courses however sometimes professors "make up" languages such as Noodlle in order to teach concepts rather than syntax. Therefore, Matt believes that it is important to learn and understand concepts early in one's academic studies of CS.

Since Matt changed his major, he has taken 15 engineering courses and in 6 of those he has done significant programming! For example, working alone, he recently finished a programming assignment in LabView in only 3 hours. The professor had expected groups of three to spend 5 hours each on the assignment!

Matt stresses that you should consider colleges that have good departments in the top 2 or 3 areas that you believe you may eventually major in. Since, he chose Cornell because it is highly ranked in computer science AND it was also highly ranked in engineering. You can check out the Gourman Report to see how strong individual engineering departments are at different colleges and universities.

Matt was interested in the Cornell co-op program which gives eligible students a chance to work for a company while taking college courses. This program allows one to gain important work experience (as well as a salary) and still finish with a Bachelor's degree in four years.

But, instead of accepting a co-op position, Matt decided to take an internship with Heller Industries . They make industrial ovens for circuit manufacture and are located in Florham Park, NJ. Interestingly, he will be staying at St. Elizabeth's College, which is an all-girls school that houses men over the summer.