Looking to major in CS.
Is CSRankings: Computer Science Rankings this ranking correct?
Are there any other disparities between the colleges?
I live in VA; is CS at UVA worse than Vtech by this ranking?
For CS careers, do college name or college GPA even matter?
Is ANY college ranking “correct”? That’s a rhetorical question. The answer is no.
The answer to the second question is that college name matters some and GPA can matter a lot.
Read this thread about that ranking system: More objective ranking of Comp Sci Schools?
and summon @simba9, @DadTwoGirls and @PurpleTitan
Yep, read that thread. That’s a ranking of research amount (not even rebased in size), which may not tell you all that much about undergraduate CS instruction.
GPA would be up to you (some companies have cut-offs). Name may matter though recruiting opportunities may matter more. Both should get recruited around DC. According to College Scorecard, UVa CS majors make more than VTech CS majors straight out of undergrad. Make of that what you will. UVa students do have higher stats on average than VTech students.
I posted an aggregated average of at least six different rankings, and posted the sources, so you can understand the factors that went into each one and decide what is important to you.
If you wade through the “ratings are meaningless” knee-jerk posts and understand what they represent and how you might want to use them, it may be useful.
CSRanking was one of the inputs - it’s based purely on published research so may favor larger schools
It’s in the Math/CS Major section, under my ID.
MAY?!?
It didn’t include Harvey Mudd or Cal Poly at all!
Yeah, if most/all of the rankings aggregated ignore the PhD-producing colleges, then a bunch of schools where CS alumni tend to have great careers will be completely ignored. Rose-Hulman, WPI, CalPoly SLO, Cooper Union, Olin, Santa Clara, Lehigh, Mudd, and pretty much all the other LACs.
And the schools that aren’t research powerhouses probably would rank lower than their alumni outcomes would suggest as well (like Dartmouth).
I know @RichInPitt is trying to be helpful and to gain more insight, but an aggregation of crappy data is still crappy. That’s why meta analyses were looked at with a jaundiced eye in medicine until they came up with a way to weight the quality of each contributing study.
^ Good point.
Another problem is that 4 of those rankings are essentially of one item that only has some bearing on undergraduate CS education:
THE, QS, Shanghai, and CSranking are pretty much all rankings of faculty research output (and I believe most aren’t even adjusted for faculty size).
Put them in a composite with the weights you do and you essentially end up with a slightly tweaked ranking of total CS faculty research output.