<p>Okay so I'm trying to make up my mind which of the following has the most promising and/or most developed (well acclaimed) Computer Science program:</p>
<p>UC Santa Cruz
UC Davis
UCLA
CSU, Northridge</p>
<p>(If there are any other UCs or CSUs which offer much more extraordinary Computer Science programs, I wouldn't mind being referred) Please mention if you were a graduate of such program in any of the campuses and how you feel about that experience.</p>
<p>Out of those, UCLA has the best Computer Science program.</p>
<p>But UC Berkeley has an even better program than UCLA, I believe it's the top third in the nation.</p>
<p>UCLA has the best CS department on that list for both undergraduate and graduate, and it is also a very well known school. UCSC and UCD have wonderful research programs and good graduate programs, but I don't know how great their undergraduate programs are. I don't know much about CSU Northridge, however.</p>
<p>Some other California schools that I recommend are UC Berkeley, Stanford, and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Keep in mind that Berkeley's and Stanford's computer science programs are more research-oriented and theoretical, while Cal Poly's computer science program is more applied and project-oriented. All three of those schools that I've recommended are highly ranked. Berkeley and Stanford are very hard to get in, but I suggest that you shoot very high. I am currently a sophomore at Cal Poly majoring in computer science. Its computer science department is very good, has very small classroom sizes (all classes in my major has 35 students or fewer), very close contact with professors (no TAs to deal with), and very cheap (approx $17,000 estimated costs of attendance at Cal Poly vs. approx. $25,000 for Berkeley; and that's for California residents. Stanford is nearly $40,000 last time I checked).</p>
<p>Don't forget about the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at UCI: <a href="http://www.ics.uci.edu/about/about_facts.php%5B/url%5D">http://www.ics.uci.edu/about/about_facts.php</a>. The school has a really good varsity sailing program, too.</p>
<p>Thank you everyone for your quick responses! Anyone have comments on CSUN?</p>
<p>I have two good friends who went to CSUN for CS -- but they both really went there for the swim team. Both have good things to say about the school, but nothing that would I could guarantee would still be valid today. </p>
<p>About UCI -- I went there <em>cough</em> years ago, but I did earn an MBA in conjunction with graduate work in the ICS department, and I worked as an employee for the CS department for a quarter after I graduated. I was also a TA for a lower division programming course. They had really smart faculty and really smart students. This was, however, back when we didn't have both zeroes and ones. We had to make do with just the zeroes.</p>
<p>CMU is #1 in CS.</p>
<p>I've always wondered, but what makes CMU so distinctive from other elite Computer Science schools?</p>
<p>CMU is a relatively newly founded school.Computer science is a relatively new science. CMU decided to give up developing traditional engineering,instead,CMU tried to develope its CS department.</p>
<p>CMU rocks. Alan Perlis won the first Turing award and since the 1960’s, CMU has been a dominant force in Computer Science.</p>
<p>Definitely UCLA. Davis comes pretty close. Rest aren’t really known for computer science.</p>
<p>This is a 6 year old thread.</p>
<p>From all the research I have done myself, Berkeley and UCLA seem to be the better colleges</p>