<p>How do the LACs rank for Computer Science? Most of the rankings (e.g. The</a> Best Schools for Computer Science Majors - 20 Top Colleges & University CS Programs Ranked For 2009) that I've seen refer only to large colleges. I guess HMC would be one of the best, but aside from that?</p>
<p>Few liberal arts college have the resources or the ambition to fund a big CS program. The ones who do often try to make CS a liberal arts major by focusing on theory instead of applications. Most liberal arts colleges stay as far away from pre-professional majors as possible, and CS is inherently pre-professional (in contrast to philosophy or history or sociology or physics). Of course that doesn’t answer your question.</p>
<p>It might help us to know which general area of CS you are interested in (theoretical computer science and algorithms, computer architecture, software engineering, graphics, robotics, networks & databases…), and how selective the colleges may be.</p>
<p>Well I’m not really sure what subfield of CS I am most interested in – they all look pretty interesting to me. I have some notion of what I might want for a career though – industrial research or ‘Advanced Development’ (as described in [Academia</a> vs Industry: an Updated Opinion : Good Math, Bad Math](<a href=“http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2009/12/academia_vs_industry_an_update.php]Academia”>http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2009/12/academia_vs_industry_an_update.php)). Do you think I should follow up with an MSc in CS if I want to land such a position in, say, Google?</p>
<p>As for the college – I’m actually most interested in Amherst, but I’d like to see how the other LACs around that tier compare as well.</p>
<p>Swarthmore is very strong on the engineering side of computer science, robotics and artificial intelligence. A friend of mine keeps raving about William’s CS program, but I don’t have any personal experience with it. Caltech isn’t exactly a liberal arts college, but it has less than 1,000 students and a breath-taking 3:1 student-faculty ratio!</p>