I was wondering, has anyone here got any advice on good courses/places to go? I tend to prefer more practical programming to theory, though quite frankly both interest me.
Visit. Talk to faculty. Talk to students. Consider the community in which the university is located. Decide if it is some place worth living for four years or so. As much as possible, don't make your decision based on what you imagine the university experience to be, e.g. without a deep experience in computing theory at the university level, choosing a programming focus over it is mostly a guess...or at least hopefully it is since university should broaden a person's perspective rather than confirm it.
Good luck.
And yet you're asking about a Computer Science. Why? You should be looking for a Software Engineering course instead.
Plus the few courses I've seen in Software Engineering are a lot less diverse than those in CS.