I was recently accepted to Lehigh’s CSB program, UVA’s and Tufts’ CS in Engineering School, and Wellesley’s CS Major. Does anyone know how good the CS program and engineering programs, in general, are at these schools? I wasn’t able to find too much information on CS and engineering at these schools. They all give me about the same amount of money, but Tufts and Wellesley slightly more since they are no loan schools. But I am mainly just wondering about the prestige and quality of their CS and Engineering programs. Thank you all so much in advance!
Lehigh’s program is a tier above the rest here in my experience. The rigor of both the CS and Business together is rare and both subjects have very good reputations on their own. Lehigh also has a good engineering reputation. Pending fit factors, that’d be my pick.
I can’t speak to Wellesley or UVA as much, but Tufts program is pretty standard - it’ll get the job done, but it’s nothing special.
Congratulations! You have some great choices. Some thoughts for you to consider:
- Curriculum: Wellesley is a liberal arts college so while you will still get a core CS education, your non-major coursework will likely differ from the engineering schools. [/li][li]Size: There are large differences in sizes of these schools. UVa: 22,000, Tufts: 11,000, Lehigh: 7,000, Wellesley: 2,500. One way this manifests itself is that all classes at Wellesley are taught by professors AND they know who you are because classes are so small.[/li][li]Gender Ratio: Your CS classes at Lehigh, Tufts, and UVa will likely have many more men than women. At Wellesley, all your classes will be mostly women.[/li][li]Consortium: Especially relevant for CS majors, Wellesley students can (and do) cross-register for classes at MIT and Olin. This dramatically expands the universe of available classes.
Good luck on your decision. There are no bad options for you with these great schools!
Strictly in terms of particular program strengths, I would agree with the recommendation of Lehigh for CS and would suggest either UVa or Lehigh for engineering.
I’m in the CSB program at Lehigh and it’s very difficult to say the least. That 100% job placement guarantee makes it worth it tho.
I would forget about prestige and focus on capabilities.
I would pick Wellesley so that you can take your advanced elective courses and have access to the startup culture mentality at at MIT. There is no substitute.
For example, the MIT Machine Learning class has been drawing over 500 students. They trim the class size by making it really hard (how bad do you want it). It’s the MIT way. Survive and flourish in that class and you are really spectacular.
I was recently accepted to Lehigh’s CSB program, UVA’s and Tufts’ CS in Engineering School, and Wellesley’s CS Major. Does anyone know how good the CS program and engineering programs, in general, are at these schools? I wasn’t able to find too much information on CS and engineering at these schools. They all give me about the same amount of money, but Tufts and Wellesley slightly more since they are no loan schools. But I am mainly just wondering about the prestige and quality of their CS and Engineering programs. Thank you all so much in advance!
@pengsphils - The current dean of the College of Computer Science at your alma mater was formerly a professor atTufts …
The Tufts CS department is relatively small (by MIT standards) and relatively large (by Wellesley standards). Research is focused on interdisciplinary areas in order to maximize leverage with other departments.
Using the the research ranking that you like to reference, and selecting Tufts’ areas of focus, shows Tufts research output being ranked in the top 25. If you normalize research output to the number of professors, then it rises higher.
http://csrankings.org/#/fromyear/2007/toyear/2018/index?ai&plan&chi&robotics&bio&visualization
1 Like
This is an apples-to-oranges comparison, because the Lehigh CSB (“Computer Science & Business”) program is not like the others. The CSB degree is offered jointly through the engineering and business schools, and it has full professional accreditation in both computer science (by ABET) and business (by AACSB). If you want to combine the studies of CS and business, and to graduate in 4 years, then Lehigh has one of the top programs in the US (along with M&T at Penn and MET at Berkeley).
It’s unlikely that any of your other options would be as good for CS and business combined. So if you want that combination, then I would pick Lehigh (as also suggested in post #2 above). The CSB program is very rigorous (is noted in post #5 above), because it basically squeezes two professional degrees into a 4-year program, but the end result is extremely marketable.
If you aren’t sure about the business part, and just want to do CS by itself, then all of your options would be good. UVA, Tufts, Wellesley, and Lehigh would all be fine choices. The differences in factors like location, size, and gender ratio would be much more significant than any differences in “quality” or 'prestige".
For straight CS I’d pick Wellesley as it’ll be more supportive of you as a woman in tech.
If you want CS+ business then Lehigh.
The dean of a college only has so much influence, frankly not nearly as much as other deans on the undergraduate experience. The creator of the program here has their roots in Rice and the research roots of the teaching program with Brown. That teaching approach is one of the unique identifying factors, shared by a select few other notable CS schools. I’m speaking from experience of directly comparing curricula with one of my friends at Tufts who is a CS major. While they do have their research specialties, just like most CS programs, I don’t think being in the top-X for that says much. It seems much more like cherry-picked data to make a point. That said, the adjustment for the number of professors is fair on the research front. Still, fewer professors points to a bigger problem of class offerings available per semester. Tufts is still better than other schools there, but isn’t nearly as expansive as other CS programs. The net evaluation in my eyes is that Tufts is a decent CS school that doesn’t stand out but isn’t insufficient by any means. I think @Corbett 's post sums it up well.
At Lehigh, you can major either in “plain” CS, or in CS+Business (CSB).
My understanding is that the plain CS programs at Lehigh are heavily male. This is probably the case at most other schools as well (Wellesley would be an obvious exception).
However, I’ve also heard that the Lehigh CSB program specifically has a more balanced gender ratio than plain CS. Apparently most of the women who want to study CS at Lehigh opt for the CSB program. So female CS students are “concentrated” in CSB specifically, while male CS students are more split between CSB and plain CS.
I don’t have any numbers, but it might be something to ask about if you visit Lehigh or otherwise follow up on the CSB program.
@pengsphils - I was definitely cherry picking, but hopefully not in a deceptive way. I stated up front what I was doing and provided the source material. The point is that some smaller programs can provide more access to leading edge research than larger programs, but it will be limited to certain specialty areas. If those areas align with your interests, then the school is a good match for you, if they do not, then you can look for another school that does. Tufts is a top 10ish CS school when it comes to access to undergrad research (as measured by percentage of students that win research awards) but it may not be a good fit depending on the area in which you want to specialize.
In my opinion, the best part of the particular ranking system we are discussing is that it can be used as a tool to help find more college options that match ones interests. An assumption (which is not always true) is that there will be more course offerings in these areas as well.
As the @classicrockerdad post indicates, the hottest area in the industry right now is AI/Machine Learning. Tufts is actually puts a very high priority on teaching relative to research due to its roots as a liberal arts college. Next fall Tufts will be offering 7 different courses related to AI/Machine Learning. The AI course is offered over the summer. This spring three AI/Machine Learning courses were offered. In the fall of 2017, four AI/Machine Learning courses were offered. The base machine learning course has been offered every semester, while the specialty courses (called special topics) tend to vary from semester to semester. Basically, Tufts encourages professors to create courses based on their latest research rather than spend all their (research related) time focusing on publishing. This tends to negatively impact the departments rankings, but creates a richer set of course offerings.
Here is the list of course offerings per semester (click on the arrows to move between semesters). It is quite large relative to the size of the department.
While a fair general analysis, there are a lot of assumptions here - that a student wants to do CS research and is also interested in AI/ML.
I think the claim that Tufts is Top 10 for undergraduate research access is also deceiving - they have access for very specific areas, while many students in other areas such as networks, operating systems, theory, and software development (to name a few) would be very underserved for research.
When you get into the very deep specifics, there are strengths that Tufts has. However, I don’t think the chance of these being applicable for most high school seniors is very high, especially when not mentioned directly in the original post. To this case specifically, research is likely less applicable using probability when it comes to combined business/CS degrees, which in my anecdotal experience are significantly less likely to be involved in CS research.
I think the most important factors for most undergrads in CS without any idea what they want in terms of specialization is very different:
First, the introductory teaching/foundation can make or break a CS major and I think goes highly unnoticed by many because of two factors: most colleges take the same approach, and it takes expertise to understand the differences. I mentioned Tufts because I’m directly familiar with their approach, while I’m not with the others. It’s the same old approach most schools take that has it’s flaws for sure, hence part of the “nothing special”.
Beyond that, general research opportunities across many fields, depth of course options across many fields (regardless of how good it is relative to department size), general CS reputation (often correlated with general research reputation), and career opportunities/help post-grad are important.
Of course, outside of CS specifically, one needs to consider fit factors like the size of the department, but that isn’t something specific to CS/Engineering, which is what seems to be what OP is looking for.
@pengsphils - I am very familiar with introductory sequences in engineering and CS. There is more to it than you are aware of. STEM education is an area of research unto itself that ironically is not tracked in any of the academic rankings. What you probably don’t know is that back in the 90’s Tufts changed the standard introductory sequence within engineering and reduced the attrition rate from 33% to single digits. This drew national attention due to the fact that the average attrition rate nationwide was well over 50%. Now the drop out rate is a negative number (more people enter than leave). No engineering rankings take this metric into consideration. On the CS side, Tufts developed the Legos based robotics platform that introduced programming to elementary school children (MIT invented the underlying language). More recently, Tufts developed a platform that was successful in teaching pre-schoolers to program. That research has generated a start-up company.
The introductory sequence at your alma mater is being changed by your new dean. I can provide a link to the article if you like. The biggest challenge facing the industry right now is becoming more diverse. Tufts is a leader in this area and a new on-ramp is part of the solution. Putting a woman in charge can be an important step in changing the culture… The last three heads of the CS department at Tufts have been women. The current head was a member of ACM/IEEE Computing Society committee that created the latest version of the recommended curriculum for CS programs.
During the 90’s the dean of engineering at Tufts was a researcher in K-12 STEM education (which is unheard of}. The next head of engineering was a woman, which was unusual at the time. One female member of the faculty has won a presidential award (from Obama) for creating a national organization to mentor women in engineering. She is also a fellow of the IEEE. Another female faculty member is a fellow of the ACM. The Tufts chapter of the Society of Women Engineers was one of a small number of chapters to win a national gold award. Another female faculty member has started an organization to draw more women and minorities into coding.
None of this is tracked in any engineering/CS ranking, but it matters - especially to women wanting to enter the field.
.
The introductory sequence for engineering and CS are vastly different, though they share similar problems on the front of diversity. I didn’t make any claims about diversity though, though the introductory curriculum I’d advocate for and is supported by the dean is a positive force on that front. I’m also not speaking on the K-12 level but at the college introductory level. I think you’re speaking at a much higher macro level while I’m speaking to the specifics of a few courses in a single major, not all engineering disciplines. This is quite the tangent though, so I’ll continue this via private messages.
I can tell you for a fact that this is not the case, being very closely involved with those currently teaching and designing the curriculum. Any changes would simply be additions to the current curriculum, and my statements made about introductory approach still apply. There are indeed not accounted for in any ranking methodology, as I hinted at before.