I was looking into UPenn, Columbia, and Brown (in that preference order). Are these the good Ivies for for computer science, I am also looking more strongly into non-Ivies like CMU, RPI, WPI, Stevens, UIUC, Michigan.
I would put Cornell maybe at the top, at worst #2, Harvard and Princeton ahead of Columbia and Brown. CMU and Michigan would be better than any ivy in CS.
1 Like
There is no great Ivy for CS, but you would get a great education at any.
CS is a very marketable major; there is high demand for good instruction in every state and at most major universities. Iâd expect to find a decent CS department at any of the 8 Ivies or at any state flagship.Youâd be fortunate to be admitted to any of them at a net price your family can afford.
By number of faculty:
CMU,
Gatech,
MIT,
âŠ
Michigan, UIUC,
âŠ
Columbia,
âŠ
Cornell,
âŠ
Princeton, Penn, Brown, JHU, RPI, Harvard, Yale,
âŠ
Dartmouth
If youâre doing computer science, prestige isnât going to matter. Most employers are small to midsize companies and itâs more cost effective to recruit locally and regionally. Chasing after rankings is going to get you a list of rejections or acceptances to a bunch of schools you canât afford. Unless your parents are wealthy, itâs not worth the cost for such a marketable degree.
@coolguy40
I agree and disagree. Prestige does matter but not as much as you would think. So it is definitely worth it to apply to ivies, MIT, etc and see if you can get in. But if the cost of attendance is 70k a year, then I donât think it would be worth it. Remember, a recruiter gets thousands of applications, and they only spend like less than 10 seconds on your resume. The strength of ivies isnât necessary just the name itself, but also the alumni network. What I said so far is mostly for big companies. If you are targeting startups, then it may be different.
Thank you for your help everyone. I decided to apply to UPenn, Columbia and Duke through Questbridge and the non-Ivy schools on my list through non-restrictive early action or regular decision.
1 Like
@nystudent37 Any reason Brown fell off? Itâs actually a great CS school in terms of teaching, probably the best of the ivies IMO, and is still solid in research.
1 Like
Duke for Computer Science? It is a great university and I admire many undergraduate programs at Duke, though CS is not one of them.
Brown fell off because it did not seem as strong in CS as UPenn or Columbia, which also recieve the largest endowments for their tech programs. However I can definitely reconsider, as I can apply to up to 12 member schools ED through the program. One thing I do like about Brown is their flexible scheduling but their strong liberal arts focus and the strong political activism among students and professors kind of turn me away, although I will admit Iâm no expert on the elite schools. Can I ask why you believe it is the best Ivy/elite school?
I put Duke on because I believe it is a great school I would fit in with, the many opportunities in the Research Triangle, and the high ranking of their CS program. Is their a problem with the CS program there? I understand rankings and overviews of the school donât tell the whole picture and would like to know the downside to attending there.
The teaching program is quite unique in their approach and they have very strong PL research that aids into that.
This essayâs first part details the intro approach (with a footnote at the bottom discussing Brown specifically):
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/Thoughts/Developing_Developers.html
WPI also uses a version of this approach, so if you like the program there, Brown again makes sense.
Professionally their outcomes are great as youâd expect:
https://www.brown.edu/campus-life/support/careerlab/post_grad_data/concentration/COMP
Donât ignore fit of course. I was curious if it fell off for reasons other than fit, hence the question for clarification.
While both of the others you chose are solid choices, again, no Ivies are really âknownâ for CS, and in my experience the two that are more âknownâ (in industry at least), Cornell and Brown, are missing. People have different opinions of course. I was watching this thread and didnât want to discourage but was curious why you were looking at Ivies specifically at all, especially if you arenât looking for a liberal arts focus which is typically found more at Ivies than the schools you listed in your first post.
Generally, I would put little stock into CS rankings as they struggle to highlight anything beyond either research output or reputation, both of which are barely important at all beyond academia. It takes a lot to really look into CS department differences, and even when you do, youâll find many are quite similar.
Note: Iâm biased in that the approach above is used at my school, but Iâve also helped teach it for years and have had discussions about it with students at Brown and Waterloo in particular as well as those from other schools. Itâs one of the few differentiators of CS programs in my experience beyond faculty size and class offerings.
Cornell.
https://tech.cornell.edu/campus/
Depends what you define âbest ivy league university for computer science majorâ.
** Honestly, at this tier of schools, recruiters donât even differentiate. Like 99+% of applicants anyway are probably not from students in these schools so your interview skill should be the most important overall.
If you plan on going industry:
- Harvard/Princeton (by a notable margin)
Heck, from what I see from my peers, the average Princeton CS major seems to place better than the average MIT CS grads. It was surprising for me but I am sampling from a very small data so I might be wrong.
I would say placement wise, Harvard places just as well as Stanford (though Stanford dominates in âgettingâ into Google) and Princeton seems to place better than pretty much any other universities for the industry.
I believe if you want to get into Facebook though, Harvard or Stanford would be the best bet out of the rest.
Columbia/Yale/ UPenn
Columbia sends more undergrads per student in CS to Google than MIT. I know it cause I attended Columbia Uni myself.
UPenn has one of the biggest hackathons in the East bro. Everyone knows UPenn CS cause of that.
Yale, just no idea in general.
Cornell
I remember asking a Microsoft recruiter and she said she regards it the same as MIT. So in the eyes of industry, Cornell is just as top as MIT.
Brown
It has always been regarded as a TOP undergrad CS program overall especially in graphics.
Dartmouth
Just no idea in general but I expect it to be just as good.
I hate to admit but prestige plays a part in âeliteâ software industries.
The Ivy League seems to play just as well as schools like Stanford, MIT, UCB (and many even better) per student in CS.
CS is a weird field especially if you want to go to the industry. Most companies that need software engineers donât care about your university prestige so anyone can apply there BUT for those which does, prestige seems to matter more than the actual CS program ranking.
If you live in the East and want to go to Silicon Valley: MIT or any of the Ivy League
If you live in the East and want to work in super selective firms like HRT, JanesStreet: MIT or the top half of Ivy League.
By the way, this was just my limited experience from seeing all my peers. I felt friends who got into Cornell or Brown had much better placements than my friends who got into Duke or Johns Hopkins or Georgia Tech.
And the students in Princeton for CS seemed to just dominate the top elite firms.
That said, the way I am judging these universities are at a horrible criteria cause I am going by % of CS students who got into only more or less Google, Facebook, Bloomberg, Jane Street, Two Sigma, Lyft, Uber, HRT. But just note that certain universities seem to get more recruits at specific companies over others (sometimes by a notable margin). For instance, if you want to get into Google, your best bet is probably Stanford/CMU/Princeton/Harvard/Columbia/MIT. If you want to get into Facebook, probably Harvard/Stanford. etc. etc.
That said, there is no âbest universityâ for CS for undergrad at this level.
Any of these schools above will give top tier education and thatâs what I feel is important in college.
Just do your research and see which school would fit you.
For instance, in Columbia, sport scene is nonexistent. So if you are into football or basketball over reading/conversing the classics, then you might not enjoy your years in Columbia, etc.
Personally though from what I have seen online, I felt that Princeton had the most rigorous approach to CS compared to other top universities.
Very theoretical compared to the rest and it was the only school I was genuinely impressed by during college.
But again, fit matters. If you donât want a theoretical approach as much (mathematical approach), Princeton might not be for you.
Seriously, I feel like collegeconfidential is the only place in which people go crazy over 1 elite school over the other. In the real world, almost everyone didnât graduate from these elite schools hence it doesnât matter much.
As for grad school placement, it has more to do with your GPA and research than anything else in college so donât worry about that as much. They all place well if you do well.
Be careful in that you may be seeing a selection effect (i.e. the most selective universities may have more students who can pass hard technical interviews) rather than an actual preference for the most selective universities. Google seems to recruit very widely among colleges, for example.
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/news/which-colleges-do-facebook-google-and-other-top-employers-recruit suggests that Facebook is the most concentrated in terms of university prestige among âtechâ companies. Since Janes Street, Two Sigma, and HRT are investment firms, it may not be surprising that they favor university prestige, but that does not appear to be representative of âtechâ companies (other than perhaps Facebook).
From the stories my kid told me from them working at FB @ucbalumnus take seems to be completely accurate
I think it is less about prestige than raw talent. These are the same companies, along with others like DE Shaw, that sponsor the highly competitive high school math competitions. Of course, most of these students end up at elite colleges. But if you are USAMO or better and do well at CS in Michigan, they would be happy to hire you.
just my 2 cents. DH graduated from The University of IllinoisâUrbana-Champaign back in the day. He is very active in the high tech field. His internationale employer hires recent grads based on what they can do and not from where they went to school and they are paid at the same rate. Many of the top CS kids from not Ivy schools still end up employed by FaceBook, Google, Intel, Comcal ⊠and the like for the same salary as kids that paid $$$ for more âprestigiousâ colleges.