<p>For one, US News is a poor ranking of CS. No ranking is really correct, but if you want one that’s more inclusive/correct/informative, try this</p>
<p>[NRC</a> Rankings Overview: Computer Sciences - Faculty - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-/124721/]NRC”>http://chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-/124721/)</p>
<p>where you can rank by quality (S-rank), reputation (R-rank), research, etc.</p>
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<p>Often, yes. The main differences in quality lie both in breadth and depth across several areas–courses, faculty interests, research projects (including centers, institutes, etc.), and so on. This is why size does usually have a big influence. Since larger programs tend to be ranked better, there will often be faculty doing research across more areas of CS (breadth), and more faculty doing research within these areas (depth). Another difference is in the quality of the faculty; the higher-ranked schools tend to have the faculty with greater impact, prestigious awards, etc. It’s definitely worthwhile to say that you worked under a MacArthur fellow or Turing Award winner, especially when it comes to recommendations for grad school or jobs.</p>
<p>It depends on what you want to do. Do you want to do research?</p>
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<p>I’ll add that Harvard has typically been ranked better in the NRC ranking, which is more reputable, than in the US News one. Fun fact: this year’s Turing Award winner (announced a few days ago) is Leslie Valiant, a professor at Harvard.</p>
<p>When it comes to undergraduate programs between the two, I wouldn’t say one is much better than the other–simply because Harvard students can cross-register for courses at MIT and vice versa. But when it comes to research, CSAIL is unbeatable.</p>
<p>Another downside of Harvard is that it doesn’t have its own CS department–SEAS kind of lumps all the engineering disciplines together.</p>
<p>I would give MIT the edge, but not by a large margin; if you were choosing between the two for undergrad, I wouldn’t advise anyone to let this be a factor.</p>
<p>The point is, MIT isn’t always the right one to choose, but at the same time, not all the top programs are the same and some are indeed better than others. Again, though, it depends on what you want to do. Also, you’ll need to check the individual CS programs to see whether they have a strong representation of what you want to do.</p>
<p>When it comes to Berkeley vs. Yale, there are a lot of other factors for undergrad that come into play that should probably outweigh the difference in quality.</p>
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<p>Again, you’ll want to look at what kinds of courses, faculty, etc. are represented. But in general, being “theory-focused” does not mean that software engineering is not represented, since the latter is monumentally important in CS. It tends to mean that their “specialty” is theory.</p>
<p>(By the way, I’m a CS major, soon to start a CS PhD, so others might have different ideas on whether research really matters, etc. but since you mentioned it, I assume that it’s a consideration of yours.)</p>