Best Colleges For Comp Sci and Startups

College Majors Math/Computer Science Majors
1

I’m looking for colleges with strong Comp Sci programs that also have a good startup garage type program.
Here’s what I have so far:
Stanford
USC
UCLA
Any others?

2

I think you have a romanticized image of how startups work. If you want to major in CS and start/join a startup, just go to a good school for CS, and take one course on entrepreneurship on the side.

I noticed all the schools you listed are in California. Is there a particular reason for that? There are tons of good CS programs across the country.

3

I know you can make a startup at pretty much any college. I wasn’t really clear in my post so to clarify I’m talking about colleges that offer programs where they give students some funding, an experienced advisor, and help them make connections. I was really talking more about the support the college would offer to a student created startup, not the startup itself although you did make a good point in that all it really takes is some entrepreneur classes. After all, FB, Instagram, and plenty of other successful startups never had help from a college. The only reason that I only have California schools on the list is because my counselor said all the successfull tech companies were born there. I know that isn’t true so I was hoping that someone could give me some better advice, mainly on other good comp sci schools.

4

MIT, Carnegie-Mellon, Berkeley, Harvard. Of course, all the schools mentioned so far are very difficult to get into.

I agree that if you want to start a tech company, where you went to school isn’t as big of a deal as it used to be.

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, there’s starting to be a backlash against the entrepreneurial culture at Stanford. The term “Stanford A** hole” is becoming more and more used to describe its graduates who are obsessed with start-ups and getting rich. I used to work at Stanford and love the place, but have to admit, even I’m getting tired of the kind of people I see coming out of there.

5

Well, Linkedn has a good compilation ranking for this through their “profile” system thingy (which I think would be in the more “accurate” side as almost everyone uses Linkedn)

https://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/edu/rankings/us/undergraduate-software-engineering-small?trk=edu-cp-rank-cat

  1. Stanford
  2. MIT
  3. Brown
  4. Princeton
  5. UCB
  6. Carnegie Mellon
  7. Harvard
  8. Cornell
  9. Columbia
  10. UVa

That said, I agree to the statement that you are having a bit too romanticized view of start ups… (after all, I attend one of the universities above and I can tell you… my friends and I have absolutely no idea of making a start up)

Also, Silicon Valley is not the only place for start ups. Other major cities include NYC, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta.

6

Most startups are located in Silicon Valley, but you can always move there after college. Also, California is a very big state. USC and UCLA are a 5 hour drive from Silicon Valley, even though they’re in California. At that distance, there’s no difference between being in California vs being in Massachusetts.

There are quite a few schools that offer incubators for student-created startups. I’m at Carnegie Mellon and I know they’re pretty generous with that here. I don’t know about other schools though.

7

Thanks guys that list of colleges is just what I needed. Now I just need to get some scholarships.