What are top 25 colleges for CS Undergraduate program
Top 25 based on what criteria?
Internships, job opportunities. Good course work, nice clubs.
Location? Weather? Size? Budget? Big time sports? “typical college experience”" vs. tech focused school?
There are LOTS of great CS programs. When you look at rankings, they use methodologies that may not matter to you. For example, publications are a proxy for the graduate program. What does that matter to an undergrad? Little for CS actually. Other methodologies separate doctoral granting programs from those that don’t. Again, why does that matter to an undergrad? I don’t think it does.
Other intangibles do matter though. that’s why it’s important to define them for yourself.
4 Likes
Usnews has a CS undergrad list. It is a starting point. https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/computer-science-overall
Here is a list without the paywall
https://www.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/tqyzr1/us_news_2022_ranking_of_best_undergraduate/
But @eyemgh is correct. You need to make adjustments. For example I wouldn’t pick Madison over Brown. Last year we picked Rutgers over Madison. I wouldn’t think of picking GT over Princeton . Etc…
1 Like
Although it’s interesting to look at rankings such as US News, you must take these rankings with an enormous bucket of salt, so to speak.
Think about what you actually want out of a CS undergrad school.
Some people are looking for “top feeder schools for great jobs at big name Bay Area companies,” and one of the top schools for this (and one of the hardest to gain admission!) is San Jose State University, all the way at the bottom of the reddit post in the #110 bucket…
If you are looking for a great undergraduate experience and great education, some of the other schools at the bottom of the post would also be top picks.
4 Likes
That Reddit list is a bit outdated. I collected the latest in this post last fall:
Posting this with the caveat that rankings are subjective and there are many other factors that need to be considered.
2 Likes
This thread is no doubt going to become controversial real quick 
1 Like
If you’re going to use any canned ranking system, you should at least know it’s methodology. For the one referenced by @neela1, it uses no objective information whatsoever…none. In fact, it uses one metric, institutional reputation as judged by other institutions. In general those surveys are filled out by random staff and based on the graduate program. HMC is the highest ranked non-doctoral granting program at #25, but I would argue that it’s a top 5 program. I would take that ranking with a HUGE grain of salt. It leaves out, or ranks very low some very strong programs.
7 Likes
Unless a strong doctoral program is one of your requirements 
I guess that’s a possibility, but why would that be a requirement for an undergrad? In general the converse is true, that schools that put a heavy emphasis on their doctoral programs short change the undergrads.
Yeah, it occurs to me now that we need a “popcorn” option in the reaction menu!
7 Likes
Yes, exactly. I have worked with quite a few CS graduates from San Jose State, U.Mass Amherst, and various IITs (in India). I have worked with great CS graduates from U.Michigan, MIT, Stanford, UNC, Rutgers, and quite a few other universities. I see relatively few from some other universities that seem to do well in the rankings, such as Northeastern and Harvard (in spite of having worked in the northeast for more than 40 years).
In practice graduates from a very wide range of universities are going to do well in terms of getting a good job after graduation and going on to have a good career. There will also be very good internships available for students from a wide variety of universities.
Which comes down to what you want in a university.
I think that affordability is also work looking at. It is true that CS majors tend to get good jobs after graduation, which allows them the option of taking on some debt and paying it off when working. However, I do not think that most students need to pay “full private university prices” to get a very good education in computer science.
1 Like
Because you can start taking those classes from freshman year onwards.
Many of the non-doctoral granting programs offer masters degrees. That’s essentially where coursework stops. At some that don’t they teach higher level classes to undergrads. I just don’t buy that as a valid argument. One that might hold water is exposure to higher level research.
Personally I like to know where the grads get jobs and what they get paid. As @DadTwoGirls said, there are lots of routes to the top jobs.
I am a senior and I have applied to 18 colleges for CS. So far these results are out
- UW Bothell (pre major)
- Oregon State University( 15000 WUE scholarship)
- WSU ( 7000 scholarship)
- ASU ( 15000 scholarship)
- MIT (deferred)
- UIUC (rejected)
- GTech(rejected)
- UT Austin (rejected)
Awaited - Purdue
- UW Seattle
11 CMU
12 UT Dallas
13 Stanford
14 Cal Tech
15 UC Irvine
16 UC Davis
17 UCLA
18 UC Berkley
We live in WA and following are my stats
1580 SAT, 3.92 UW GPA and good ECs. Can anyone rank my list from accepted and awaited colleges. Given that I am stem focused and looking for good interships and job opportunities.
3 Likes
Probably best to wait until everything comes in before ranking right? That’s more efficient.
And UW Seattle may be your fixed point in this situation
3 Likes
You need to supply more information on what you want your experience to be like, and what your budget is. Caltech and CMU will be radically different than UW and UCLA. Yet, you will get a good education, and good opportunities at any of them.
2 Likes
I am not hopeful of them after rejections from Georgia tech and UIUC. Which one do you think is better from UW Bothell, OSU, WSU, ASU for a WA resident.
Yes UW Seattle is my first choice but after getting rejection from UIUC and GTech I am apprehensive about getting CS there, I will get general sciences though