[johnswamps]

Disclaimer: I am a PhD student at Stanford. Why do you say the opportunities to do research as an undergrad at Stanford aren't great? The CS department has the CURIS program (http://curis.stanford.edu/) which pays for Stanford students to do research with faculty during the summer. A few dozen students do this program every summer. We had a few students work with us last summer and it was a great experience.

[endtime]

Ah, I hadn't heard of that. I was thinking more about RAships during the year, though, which I had the impression are of limited availability even to master's students (I've gone the CA route instead, so no firsthand experience). In any case, I didn't mean to be misleading - thanks for correcting me.

[hga]

MIT has a school wide UROP program (http://web.mit.edu/urop/) that generally grants credits during the school year and wages in January and summer, with the attractive bonus that a professor doesn't have to pay the stiff overhead usually required on the latter.

I would expect that as ramchip notes informal arrangements can be done most anywhere, although getting paid in any way other than experience may not be.

One maybe not so minor note: according to one school that is ABET accredited, only 210 in the US have ABET accredited CS programs. E.g. my home town 4 year public college doesn't have one, I'd have to go to a larger regional one 70 miles away.