2017 Computer Science Admission Rates

Based on the ASEE Engineering & CS admission data.

Using the engineering admission rate, size of CS program and engineering yield, I’ve extrapolated the CS admission rates.

These are the approximate admission rates for CS.

For CS, UCB says their rate is 8, and Purdue says 28. So this is pretty close.



Stanford 3
Columbia 3.7
Princeton 3.9
Yale 4
MIT 4.2
Penn 4.4
Caltech 4.6
Northwestern 5.1
Duke 5.2
Cornell 7.2
UCB 7.3
UCLA 7.4
JHU 7.5
CMU 8.1
Harvey Mudd 9.1
Georgia Tech 11.9
Michigan 12.3
Texas 14.6
UCSD 15.9
UVA 16.8
Maryland 19.2
CWRU 19.5
Minnesota 19.8
Northeastern 21.7
UIUC 25.2
Ohio State 25.5
Stevens 25.8
RPI 26.7
Purdue 28.1
Wisconsin  30.2
WPI 30.2
NC State 30.9
Penn State 32.4
Colorado Mines 32.8
Washington 34.5
UTD 34.6
Pittsburgh 34.8
Virginia Tech 42.8
ASU 42.9
Texas AM 49.5


“Using the engineering admission rate”

uh, hello??
you are attempting to compare colleges, such as Stanford, which does NOT require applicants to designate a particular major on their college application, with colleges that DO admit by major.
I.E. you are comparing apples to oranges…
try comparing like with like and see what the results are. 8-|

It is not obvious how one would would make such an approximation from the available data
It would be interesting to hear your method and rational…

CMU has separate admissions for CS. It is 5%.
So if we use that as a test case, your approximation is off by 62%

https://admission.enrollment.cmu.edu/pages/undergraduate-admission-statistics

Berkeley only publishes EECS admit rates, not CS into their L&S school since you apply after your sophomore year.

CMU’s figures (reply 2) indicate a 9.6% overall acceptance rate this year, well down from the 22.1% posted on the CDS last year. Something I’m missing?

In 2017, the University of Washington CS direct admit rate was 5%. (They used to have a web page with that info, but has been taken down recently because of the new admission mechanism.) Your estimate of 34.5% is way off the mark.

^ Last year, the University of Washington’s CS website stated, “For 2017, over 5,000 freshmen applicants indicated Computer Science or Computer Engineering as their first choice major. Of these applicants, around 150 students were offered direct admission. These admits have an average unweighted GPA of 3.97 and are mostly Washington state residents. Average test scores are: ACT 34, SAT math 764, SAT verbal 758."

As you mentioned, the admission process is changing this year:

https://news.cs.washington.edu/2018/06/05/allen-school-to-expand-direct-to-major-admission-in-computer-science/

https://www.cs.washington.edu/academics/ugrad/admissions/dtm

The link above shows about 42K applications whereas the common data set shows about 21K applicants. Applicants appear to be applying to 2 or more programs within the university.

@Greymeer - Stevens Institute of Technology does not publish separate admission rate statistics for individual majors, such as computer science, EE, etc., It only publishes an overall university-wide admission rate (which was 38% for the most recent admitted class). It also does not admit by major. Students may indicate their interest in a certain major in the application but the only selection they make when applying is the broad decision between engineering, science, and business/technology management. One does not have to select a specific major such as electrical, mechanical, civil, etc. engineering, computer science, et al. until the second year. This is likely true of many of the other schools in your list as well, so how do you determine the CS-specific admission rate from the overall admission rate?

I looked more closely at CMU’s admissions web page.
CMU allows application to two colleges, but only admits to one.

The per college admissions statistics that they publish on their admissions web page must count all applications, which artificially inflates the number of applicants and makes the colleges appear more selective than they really are.

Pretty questionable practice.

Good catch @merc81

https://admission.enrollment.cmu.edu/media/W1siZiIsIjIwMTgvMDcvMzAvODViY3Z1d3FkN18yMDE5X0FwcGxpY2F0aW9uX0Jvb2tsZXRfLnBkZiJdXQ/2019_Application_Booklet_.pdf

@engineer80 - Stevens does supply engineering admissions data to the ASEE. The admissions rate and SAT scores for ASEE reported data and IPEDS reported data are the same while the number of applicants for engineering is less.(6620 vs.8335)

From your experience/knowledge, does that make sense?

http://profiles.asee.org/profiles/7636/screen/19?school_name=Stevens+Institute+of+Technology
https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=stevens&s=all&id=186867#admsns

@Mastodon - This data does not specify admission rates to individual majors such as EE and CS, rather it is an overall rate across all engineering majors. Stevens doesn’t disallow a student from declaring any major, an accepted student can choose any engineering major (if he/she declares engineering to be the broad course of study when applying) or science major (including CS, if science were to be declared). Some students transfer between engineering and science as well. The acceptance rate for engineering would equally apply to all engineering majors since an engineering student can select any of them, but the numbers of students who select computer science may differ substantially from the engineering numbers (since CS is within the science curriculum rather than the engineering curriculum).