Hi,
My son is senior in high school and started college search. He looked up at USNews an someother resources and got a list of top 100 colleges for computer science ranking. He has a GPA unweighted around 4.03 and weight 5. Don’e have any leadership positions in any club but he is part National, Math and Spanish Honor Society. What colleges would be best for Safety, Target and Reach
Note that USN has not previously ranked undergraduate computer science programs, but will do so this year.
Thank You really appreciate did not realize it.
Do you have any budget limitations? Are you fine with spending $300,000 or a bit more over four years?
What is your home state?
That says that these rankings “will be based solely on the judgments of deans and senior faculty at peer computer science schools and departments.”
Which sounds like the same methodology they use to rank other undergrad programs - business (“, U.S. News surveyed deans and senior faculty members at each of the 504 undergraduate business program”) and engineering (“U.S. News surveyed engineering school deans and faculty members in spring 2019 and asked them to rate each program they were familiar with”),
Programmer here. Rankings are completely and utterly useless when finding an undergraduate in computer science. In fact, after about 3 years experience, employers don’t even ask where you went to school, because it’s not relevant. Computers is an industry based entirely on hands-on experience.
Another common misleading statistic is “higher starting salary.” If the school is on the east/west coast, where most of these “prestigious” schools are, OF COURSE the salaries are higher, because of the cost of living. Here’s how the economics works. When a college graduate applies for a job, he gets an entry-level salary based on the local market, no more, no less. If it goes any higher, the employer can hire an experienced professional to do the job.
I’m a retired programmer with a CS degree. Totally agree with coolguy40. CS rankings for undergrad are worthless.
“these rankings ‘will be based solely on the judgments of deans and senior faculty at peer computer science schools and departments.’”
I would be more interested in the opinions of hiring managers.
However, I agree with @coolguy40 and @simba9.
There’s a persistent misperception that the career path for a CS student is to be a “programmer”. In fact, most top CS students don’t want to be programmers. The hottest field in CS right now is machine learning or related to machine learning. Competitions are so intense that getting into a top graduate program in that field makes getting into Stanford or Harvard, as a undergrad, look like a cakewalk.
Since most other posters are busy arguing about rankings and not answering your question I thought I’d jump in. As others have said, rankings don’t really matter for cs. So where do you go? Where you can get in, and where you can afford. It sounds like your son doesn’t have many ECs. Being in honor societies really isn’t important unless he has spent a lot of time with them volunteering or tutoring. The lack of ECs is going to hurt at more selective schools. He probably should target schools that admit mainly on stats. What state are you in? Your instate publics would be a good place to start.
For a specific suggestion for a reach-type school for CS, look into Carleton.
I don’t think there is enough information here to make suggestions on safety/match/reach schools.
Budget? Home state? Course rigor? What is the mix of As/Bs? A 4.03 UW on what scale? What ECs?
Reach:
Carnegie Mellon
MIT
University of Washington (if OOS)
Match:
Northeastern University
Boston University
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Safety:
Your in state flagship (with a few exceptions) or local state directional college
Silicon valley most wanted tech graduates:
Berkeley, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech
https://www.scribd.com/document/346963694/Hiringsolved-Ideal-Hire-Report-in-Tech
Consistently ranked as Top 5 CS programs:
MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech
Best all around CS schools:
MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech, Penn, UCLA, Princeton, Washington, Cornell, USC, Columbia, UT Austin, UCSD
https://www.ivyachievement.com/computer-science-rankings/
2020 North America CS College Championship Results:
MIT, GT, Harvard, Purdue, NYU
https://nac.icpc.global/history/2020/scoreboard/
Hi, I’m a father of a recent graduate with a BS in Computer Science and a BS Applied Math. Instead of answering your question directly, I’ll tell you our story with our first attempt at finding the perfect school. (I’ve now another in school, different major and soon to be a 3rd, yet another major). I’ve learned much since that first naive attempt 5 years ago.
My son, had stats very similar to what you listed, plus a high 1400s SAT score. Very rigorous transcript at a very very good PA public school. He too wanted to get into the best CS school he could and did what most do, look at the rankings. We visited many (he didn’t look at the biggies MIT, CMU, Stanford, or Cal Berk) because he didn’t believe they were worth the cost difference. He got that info from CC and Reddit and has always been a good one on not trying to spend all of our money. As a side note, he didn’t take any refresher/test prep courses either because he felt that they kind of un-levealed the playing field and was almost akin to cheating, he’s weird that way.
So he put together a list of the next level
Here is what he came up with:
High Reach: Ga Tech, UMich
Reach: UIUC
High Match: UMD, McGill
Safety: RIT and Taylor University
He applied EA to all of them. Was waitlisted by Ga Tech, and accepted everywhere else. He was eventually accepted off the waitlist at Ga Tech. So was accepted everywhere he applied.
He was offered a spot in the Honors College at UMD along with a Presidential Scholarship. McGill, RIT, and Taylor also offered some money (RIT and Taylor quite a bit, McGill not so much, but the lower tuition cost in Canada offset that quite a bit.)
Side note on RIT. If you can handle living on a commuter looking campus, the program impressed me. I felt as a hiring manager I’d have no problem recruiting out of there and while not as sexy an option as the others listed, if I were in my son’s shoes I’d have given it more thought.
He chose UMD and when he got there found out pretty quickly that at the undergrad level there really isn’t much difference between the programs at schools. He also found out that about half the class at UMD was also accepted to the honors college and a couple other facts that made him dislike the whole process.
We are originally from Indiana, but moved to PA when he was a Junior in HS. However, many of his friends went to Purdue and really loved it. He didn’t consider it because he read somewhere that Purdue’s CS is more hardware based. Again after starting, he realized that was really non-material at the undergrad level. Many times after starting at UMD he had stated he wished he would have went to Purdue. I also believe he didn’t want to go there because I went there, but he never really said that.
In the heart of COVID-19 pandemic he graduated with a decent GPA somewhere north of a 3.6 and had two job offers to choose from. Both making quite a bit of money and his classmates/apartment mates with similar majors (6 in the house in total) all secured similar jobs. So now that he looks back at his disdain for UMD he’s a little softer towards it and actually occasionally speaks fondly of it.
The moral of the story for CS and other related technical majors like engineering. Go to an established school, state flagship, whatever/where ever you feel comfortable. If you like taking classes from researchers (my son really didn’t) then pick a big research school. If you like taking classes from teachers, pick a smaller school. I’d look at the job fair scene. I’d look to see if there is a specific CS one. But, at the end of the day, I believe like others have said, you learn more when you first start the job (and internships) in CS then what you learn in school. School is kind of a barrier you have to show you can get through. I also don’t think that there is a strong material difference between any Undergraduate program in “chose your” ranking system in CS between #1-#100. Sure if getting a PhD is desired, maybe one of the big 4 I listed might give you a slight advantage, but that is about it.
I also believe you should maybe go to school where you maybe want to live. Many internships at UMD where in the beltway. Internships often lead to full time jobs and you’ll find many of the class will stay in the area of the school after graduation. So if your son likes the NE, look for schools in the NE. If he likes the West Coast, look at the West Coast, etc.
Sorry checking the messages late. We live in New Hampshire. We cannot afford 300K.
@BrianBoiler Really appreciate and thanks for the details. I understood what you meant and thanks again.
@momofsenior1 . Sorry using this for the first time and did not provide many details my bad. My son took so far 9 AP’s and maintained A and A+ and 4 more AP’s now. 300K is too much but to be frank we did not do the math yet. 3.89/4.0 unweighted and 5.03/5.4 weighted. He dont have many EC’s. He volunteers at old age home and soup kitchens.
Really appreciate all of you for your time. @ucbalumnus @RichInPitt @coolguy40 @simba @DadTwoGirls.