<p>I don't really go in for rankings that much but I find Tufts CS ranking (#70 in USNWR) a little troubling. Basically I just want to make sure grads have good recruiting or grad school options after graduation, and students have good internship opportunities during the summers.</p>
<p>Other than the ranking, I would say it looks like a great program and Tufts is a great match for my Daughter.</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>Hi ormdad,</p>
<p>It appears that you are referring to USNWR’s ranking of graduate (not undergrad) programs. This ranking is based purely on the results of a survey of senior academic administrators, which is one of the more questionable components of their more popular undergrad college ranking methodology. A more credible ranking of Phd programs is provided by the National Research Council (NRC). They use a more data driven methodology and they present results as a statistical distribution. A non profit organization called Phds.org has also created a website that allows you to change the weighting of the various elements in the NRC database and customize the rankings to match your preferences.</p>
<p>In the NRC ranking Tufts Comp Sci Phd program is ranked in the range of 23-61 or 24-46 depending on the statistical method used. The research component ranking (which is partially dependent on the size of the program) is 54-107, the student component is 1-6 and the diversity component is 7-34.</p>
<p>Using the Phd.org ranking engine Tufts’ rank is #43 using the default weightings, #25 if you skew the weightings for “small programs” and at #2 if you skew the weightings for “more female faculty and students”.</p>
<p>NRC ranking overview</p>
<p><a href=“NRC Rankings Overview: Computer Sciences”>http://chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-/124721/</a></p>
<p>Default rank</p>
<p><a href=“http://phds.org/rankings/computer-science”>http://phds.org/rankings/computer-science</a></p>
<p>Smaller programs rank</p>
<p><a href=“http://phds.org/rankings/computer-science”>http://phds.org/rankings/computer-science</a></p>
<p>More Females rank</p>
<p><a href=“http://phds.org/rankings/computer-science”>http://phds.org/rankings/computer-science</a></p>
<p>Probably more relevant at the undergrad level is the fact that their is a strong focus on teaching.
The person who teaches the intro comp sci course (Ben Hescott) won an international teaching award from the IEEE (only a handful of professors in the US have won this award) and one EE/computer engineering professor (Karen Panetta) won a Presidential Award for mentoring women in STEM. Another award was received for the course in Game Design. One of the areas of research is teaching kindergartners to program, so there is a belief that they should be able to teach anybody to program.</p>
<p>Based on data from the head of the department, the average starting salary from a couple of years ago was $90K, the highest salary was $130K and some people were getting $35K signing bonuses. Electrical/computer engineers averaged $95K. Graduates/lnterns are placed at the big name companies (which have development groups in and around MIT/Kendall Sq. and along the Red Line) as well as at start-ups. Due to Tufts location (right on the Red Line) it is pretty common to have internships during the school year as well as the summers.</p>
<p>Based on Payscale data, Tufts Engineers have the fourth highest mid career salaries in the country-slightly higher than the other schools on the Red Line (MIT and Harvard). </p>
<p>Thanks for the info @Mastadon.</p>
<p>Can’t speak directly to the question, but the Intro to Comp Sci Prof. Hescott teaches is highly-regarded amongst the student body:
<a href=“http://admissions.tufts.edu/blogs/jumbo-talk/post/15-best-courses-at-tufts/”>http://admissions.tufts.edu/blogs/jumbo-talk/post/15-best-courses-at-tufts/</a></p>
<p>My son says Hescott was the best prof he had at Tufts. He graded him A+ and says Hescott is so good that his intro to comp sci class made so many kids want to study comp sci that the dept didn’t know how they’d handle the demand!</p>
<p>I don’t see Professor Hescott on the course schedule for Fall 2014. Any idea why that might be?
<a href=“http://www.cs.tufts.edu/Course-Descriptions.html”>http://www.cs.tufts.edu/Course-Descriptions.html</a> </p>