yeah … the final project really pushes the boundary. Getting rid of 2 partner teams is an insult to injury. At least with 2 people you could split the work …
Anyone who wants to look at the computer systems courses in more detail can look here:
Cornell CS 3410: CS 3410 - Fall 2018 | Schedule
Rice CS 321: COMP 321 Course Schedule
As I said - the material is interesting, straightforward and logical - I loved the course.
It’s the final project that was a killer at Cornell. We had to build a whole processor (in sim) starting form basic gates. An a assembly program needed to run on it and return a correct result.
Successful run guaranteed B+ in the course. I think I pulled like 3 all-nighters in 1 week just to get that one done … yikes … I think I’ve stopped drinking Mountain Dew … after that week…
From the fall 2018 Cornell CS 3410 page, it looks like processor design assignments was split into some of the six projects assigned in that course, rather than being one huge final project.
Among the courses that are required for CS, a course on systems isn’t among the most challenging in terms of difficulties (courses on algorithms and foundational CS theories are, in most cases). But it is among the most time consuming. It is helpful for software engineers who needs to deal with and optimize their code for low-level computer interfaces. Rice apparently doesn’t require this course, which may contribute to its students’ “happiness”.
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Honestly, I thought the final project was overkill.
Prof Pingali taught the course extremely well
https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~pingali/
And we knew the material.
The course without the final project probably makes for a much happier
(and no-less educated) student body.
My guess is NOW they need true WEEDER courses … they’ll need those even at Rice.
Cornell already removed one course from the Core Requirements … CS4810 the Automata Theory course. (that one was HIGHLY annoying).
It’s only flawed because you disagree with the conclusions. If Rice were #1, you’d be saying it’s the greatest survey in the world. The OP brought up SV, and there Cornell has a clear edge, if you want to suggest other places to OP, go for it.
“I don’t see Caltech or Harvey Mudd on the survey, but I doubt people would suggest it’s because those CS programs are no good.”
Cal Tech and Harvey Mudd are much smaller than Rice, the enrollment is around 900-1000, four times less than Rice. Looks like Rice is proportionally larger than Cal Tech than Cornell is over Rice.
“I hadn’t noticed that several others also took him/her to task for the same thing.”
The problem Rice fans will have with that survey is hiring managers in SV are not going to take anyone to task. Their confirmation bias (that everyone has) will kick in and seeing Stanford and Berkeley at the top, will conclude that the list is accurate. To your point, they may look for Cal Tech or HM, but they’re not going to look for Rice or why wonder why it’s not on the list.
I think student happiness at Rice is due to the many wonderful things about the school and its environment- not whether or not any one particular course is required for a particular major.
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Rice was, up until maybe a decade ago or so, much smaller, with only 1800-2000 or so undergrads. And it hasn’t grown by all that much. And unlike CalTech or Harvey Mudd, the majority of Rice undergrads are not engineering/computer science majors. IMO its beyond time to move on from this silly arguing about that survey and whether or mot it means much of anything in the big scheme of things.
Why would they need to “weed out” students, unless the department has reached its capacity in terms of number of CS majors that they can teach?
Also, upper level courses like automata theory would be taken too late to be useful as “weeder courses”, which are generally lower level courses so that “weeded out” students know early and can choose some other major. Colleges and departments mostly do not want to “weed out” students in senior or late junior year, since then they would either take longer to graduate after switching to a different major, or drop out completely (due to running out of money or financial aid needed to take longer to graduate).
- I think Cornell is running into capacity problems as well
- I didn’t mean for 4810 to be a weed-out course (3110 and 3410 would be)
(1110 is too easy, I guess most schools make 2110 (Data Struct & Algos) the main weedout course.
Looks like there are capacity issues in Cornell CS, but only barely, since the criteria to declare the CS major are a 2.5 college GPA in CS and math courses with no grade lower than C.
https://www.cs.cornell.edu/undergrad/uadmis/becoming-cs-major
To the extent there is weeding, the courses involved are the lower level courses listed on that page (CS 2110/2112 and 2800/2802, and Math 1120/1220/1920).
Speaking as a computer scientist who works in Silicon Valley, that is not how I would evaluate a CS department. 
For one thing, I came here to work some years back because I didn’t see a lot of prospects for finding a tenure track position after attaining a PhD. So if I were looking for the best computer scientists in my cohort, I’d ask who managed to get hired at any research university anywhere… let’s say in Iowa (no offense to Iowans)… because those new PhDs had a tough sale to make in a market with limited demand, whereas I came to the place where jobs abound (and have not regretted it at all, but that’s a different point).
But it also depends on what you mean by “best department”. If your plan is to get industry internships and a full-time software position after receiving a bachelors degree, that is one kind of computer science. If you want to go on to grad school, it’s a different question. Note that as an entering freshman, you may completely change your mind about this.
Anyway, I guess it’s a little more prestigious now to have a job with big tech than it was 25 years ago. It is certainly true that Google, Facebook, etc. are very selective who they hire. But as I said, it’s not how I personally would ever judge a CS department.
Hey, I found another tech/college type survey from Paysa published on the CNBC site. OH BOY!
For informational purposes only. I’m not attaching any significance to the fact that Rice is not on this list. But nevertheless, Rice is an outstanding school. 
“Data analysis site Paysa looked at 286,777 resumes of employees at 100 major tech companies to determine which colleges have the most alumni working for these sought-after employers.”
- University of Washington
- Carnegie Mellon University
- Stanford
- UC Berkeley
- University of Southern California
- San Jose State
- Michigan
- University of Texas at Austin
- Georgia Tech
- UIUC
- MIT
- UCLA
- Maryland
- Purdue
- North Carolina State
- Cornell
- University of Phoenix
- Arizona State
- UCSD
- Santa Clara
- University of Florida
- Cal Poly SLO
- Northeastern
- UC Davis
- University of Waterloo
- UPenn
- Harvard
- Virginia Tech
- University of Minnesota Twin Cities
- Texas A&M
I see a strong geographic effect here. Not to knock San Jose State, but if you were to put it head to head with UT Austin, University of Maryland (assuming College Park), Waterloo, Harvard, MIT (?!) and compare the rigor of the education you’ll get in computer science (e.g. algorithms, complexity, distributed systems) there is really no comparison.
However, SJSU benefits by being located in Silicon Valley, so it has that going for it if you’re mostly looking for employment as a software developer. And I’m really not knocking it, but this is not how I would rank CS departments.
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The resumes were culled from 100 tech companies from various geographic areas. I don’t believe it’s only Silicon Valley companies. Universities in Seattle and Pittsburgh are at the top.
OK… hmm… but seriously I would not put SJSU that high, though I would have encouraged my son to apply there if he wanted to do CS (he doesn’t). I am a bit out of date on academic departments, but there is no way the landscape can have changed that much for MIT. I am surprised not to see it up there with CMU, Stanford, and Berkeley. You can also get a rigorous CS education at any Ivy including Harvard or UPenn, which are way down on this list. I don’t see Princeton at all, which is crazy (if you are ranking CS the way I would).
The list does not appear to be limited to CS major graduates.
It’s not a quality of CS department survey. I posted for informational purposes only. And I’m not saying SJSU’s CS dept. even approaches the quality of schools in and around their rank in this survey.
And nowadays tech companies locate everywhere. My neighbor here in Silicon Valley starts his tech companies in London, as an example.
I think that’s an accurate statement.