@riviere a good book that will help your son with the RW portion of the SAT is Erica Meltzer’s SAT Reading and SAT Grammar books.
If this thread lasts a long time, chances are you’ll wind up getting dozens and dozens of university suggestions. If you can perhaps narrow things down, that may help as well. Maybe geographic, weather, a specific sub major, etc.
@damon30
WPI and some other universities publish their actual salary, job placement and graduate data by major for each year. This makes far more sense to me than the “Ivy Achievement” sources. There are too many holes and assumptions built into the data to construct these rankings.
Most Universities and colleges collect this data from their own graduates Ask them for it. They should not be getting away with national generalizations and claiming that they reflect their graduates.
Does everyone participate in LinkedIn? Is it geographically biased by different user norms in CA or NY, or Chicago, etc? IE: One cannot say that it was a random sample. It is too easy to throw out numbers.
Select the Universities and Colleges that relay interest you and obtain data directly from their placement office when available When the sample size is sufficient to protect privacy (e.g., 5 or more graduates) they should have real data available by the end of summer following graduation. It is not complicated. Keep in mind that CA may be paying more for CS graduates than Maine (my home state), but at least one should try to collect data closer to the source.
Consumers have “ranking” fervor and will grab anything you give them if the have heard positively about the University, but they will question the ranking if it invokes an unfamiliar College or University name. We should have the opportunity to look into the “horses mouth.” It is a relevant part of the purchase for many consumers.
The person behind the website is Emery Berger of UMass Amherst - so maybe he is in cahoots with MIT 
If you look at the methodology used for that ranking, all it does is count the number of papers published in a select set of venues in a way that makes cheating more difficult while attempting to compensate for the differences between the areas. The good part of the ranking is that it is open source, so anyone can go into the code and see exactly what it is doing. The bad part is that it is heavily dependent on the size of the department.
Cal Tech gets a low ranking because it only has 13 active researchers (the right hand column) and CMU has 149.
The target audience for the ranking is students looking for Phd programs, not students evaluating undergraduate CS programs. The ranking part is not particularly useful (even for those seeking Phd’s). The really useful part (for those seeking a Phd program) is the ability find schools that have active research programs in the areas that you are interested. One can select the area of interest and it returns a list of schools. If you click on the circle next to the school’s name a display of publication activity for the school appears. If you click on the arrow next to the school’s name a list of professors with the number and type of publications appears. Clicking on a professor’s name takes you to their web page, so you can see if their current research activity interests you and whether or not they are looking for grad students.
@retiredfarmer I liked that article because of the many cross-rankings with other methodologies. But your point about LinkedIn is well-taken. I think the California CS schools were probably over-represented (“over-rated”), in particular UC Berkeley. Also local graduates hired locally in a high cost-of-living area likely skewed the salary figures upwards. But I think it still has some validity. If you want to get a job in the tech industry, then getting a CS degree at Berkeley is a great option.
@damon30
As a WPI graduate, if you want to get a tech job go first to the job placement office at WPI There is one for graduating students and one for alumni.
For graduating students see https://www.wpi.edu/student-experience/career-development/outcomes You will also find some LinkedIn services there.
For later networking with Alumni see https://www.wpi.edu/student-experience/career-development/alumni-career-services
Some universities have been honing their networking systems.
Check them out.
Check out University of Denver. Beautiful campus, almost new great computer science/engineering building, small classes, building new freshman dorms, study space, classrooms (for 2020), engaged professors, free tri rail pass for all students. Your son will get great merit with his scores, lots of smart kids there and great city but still has separate green campus.
Thank you everyone for very detailed info and good advises.
My son plans to apply to all UC campuses and will see where
he can get into. How about UC Davis/Irvine for CS??
Besides UCs, CalPoly SLO, CSU San Jose and San Diego,
any other good CS programs within CA?
OOS schools just seems too expensive without financial aids.
So another question is which OOS school could be within reach
with my son’s stats and could provide decent financial aid?
thanks.
Nobody can tell you what colleges would provide “decent financial aid” without knowing your EFC. As I suggested up-thread, run the Net Price calculators for some representative schools that meet need, and see how much need-based aid your qualify for. The recommendations will differ depending on whether you have actual “documented need” or whether you need to look for merit $.
@riviere You can run Net Price Calculators (NPC’s) for each school to see, but if you are of lower income often OOS privates can be a very good deal. I wouldn’t write them off until you run a few of those and see how they turn out. Certainly great to keep budget in mind this early though.
Additionally, some of the privates offer significant merit scholarships (20-30K), though the prices still tend to be pretty high after.
Perhaps hard to believe but with a 4ish UC/SCU GPA and 1480 SAT, SJSU may not accept him as a CS major. Last year’s EI (EI at CSUs except CPSLO = CSU GPA *800 + SAT) threshold was 4675. His will be about 4680 - a little over but they do shift year to year so, its not a sure thing.
http://www.sjsu.edu/admissions/impaction/impactionresultsfreshmen/
As you might expect, all the UCs have solid programs but, most of them will be a coin-toss at best - UCSC, though still a competitive admit has an outstanding CS program and is possible with a 4.0 even. IMHO UCSC offers one of the best overall student experiences among the UCs. Even in a rigorous major like CS, you spend a lot more hours out of classroom than in it.
UCR and UCM are both likely to admit him and have solid programs. For my money though, I’d look to CSUs like SDSU, CSULB and depending on what he’s looking for Chico .
USD and LMU are privates but, may offer enough merit $ to make them a compelling choice. There are scads of OOS options to consider depending on what he wants to do outside. The Wue list is a great place to start.