[quote name='Telastyn' timestamp='1330371837' post='4917115']
[quote name='Jesse7' timestamp='1330370277' post='4917102']
What you learn in college is largely up to you.

What resources the college has isn't. You have to learn on your own regardless, but there's no need to make your life harder by paying for help that is bad, or isn't well suited to what you want to learn.
[/quote]

yeaah thats what I think too.
[/quote] Don't get me wrong, there are some good schools out there but unless you're thinking MIT or Stanford or some other distinguished school, most state universities are going to be more or less the same. Realistically, the "help" that you will be paying all that $$$ for will be to have some Asian or Indian TA (who knows little English), who is most likely working on finishing their PhD thesis, so they have no time to look at, much less time to debug your code, nor explain why all your homework was wrong. Your professor will also ignore you for the most part because they are too busy trying to publish their papers and make tenure. You'll quickly discover that the students who get As in these classes are the ones that learned this material before they even got there (that's how I did it).

At a low cost state university, you may not have access to a state of the art AI lab nor access to some advanced coursework, but you'll get your homework done fast and so all your free time can be spent doing the things that really matter to you: whether it's spending time with your significant other, or learning more languages, APIs, math, or watching OCW videos, or programming to the wee hours, or reading all the nice books you cleaned out from the library because the other students are too busy partying to even care about their education.

I'm not trying to sound negative--this picture of college is typical for a lot of folks and not too long ago there was some pretty long discussions about this over at the lounge. Best of luck.

It seems to me that think college is just a waste of time. I can't really say much but in my researches I found lot of people that was studying in some good colleges (not top like those on the ivy league) and had plenty of good things to say. Teachers that really wanted to help, good environment to study, etc.
I don't wanna sound rude or anything, but don't you think your vision is that way because you didn't have a good experience in college? If it really was the way you say it is I don't think anyone would spend the amount of money they spend in college.
Anyway, I wanna see more opinions about what you said..

A four year degree in computer science will open up a lot of doors for employment opportunities. If you already know everything that is taught in a CS program but you don't have a degree, yeah, the four years might be a bit of a waste of time. But, the job market is an employers market and when an HR goon has two equally qualified resumes and the only difference between them is a four year degree, guess which one gets called for an interview?
There are companies who don't care whether or not you have a degree. They want to know whether you can do the work and your proof will be your polished demos and clean code.
Personally, I don't think it's a waste of time to get a CS degree, even if you are a hot shot coder. You'll get introduced to things you may not have been exposed to in your own studies and it will help round out your skill sets.

Programming
Assembly level programming
Computer Architecture
Software Engineering
Computer Graphics
Data Structure
Algorithms
Communication Networks
Al and Expert Systems
Human Factors
Mathematics
Physics
Web development
Software development
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This list looks pretty good. I'd also add some instruction on Operating Systems, a class on Network Programming, and maybe databases. (You could teach yourself SQL by using MySQL and the associated tutorials)

At a low cost state university, you may not have access to a state of the art AI lab nor access to some advanced coursework, but you'll get your homework done fast and so all your free time can be spent doing the things that really matter to you...

Let's just be clear about one thing: if he's there on a sports scholarship, then there is quite possible no such thing as free time.

Consider 25+ hours a week of practice out of season, and considerably more than that in season. Not to mention missing classes and exams for away competitions, and having to drop classes because professors refuse to accept the athletic department's dispensation to miss exams...

By the time he has finished with workout, practice, classes and homework, he'll be lucky to have the energy to crack open a beer, let alone fire up visual studio for the next 8 hours.

one of the colleges that I'm trying to go to is Kennesaw State University.. I saw the Computer Science department and it seems to be pretty nice.. what do you think?

That looks pretty comparable to our CS program - I'd say that's a decent bad choice.