I know, I know before I get the plethora of “There are better CS schools not in the Ivy league”.,let me explain. My S is a recruited athlete for football and wants to play at the highest level possible at a high academic institution. So down the line schools such as Stanford, Cal, Washington, Duke etc…may be in play but at this point(current sophomore) the interest has come from mainly Ivy league and D3 schools(MIT, CMU). Thus we are trying to narrow down the list strictly for Ivy schools at this point keeping in mind his fit for football, coaching staff etc…
So if you have any insight or advice as to which schools might be best for him please feel free. At this point he seems to be gravitating towards software development. Overall is there 1 school that has a distinct advantage over the others in CS? I’m not sure but I think Dartmouth is the only Ivy that operates on a quarter system which may help for football but it’s CS program isn’t the best from what I understand. Cornell, Princeton and Brown seem to be considered the best with Harvard making a strong push(the addition of the new building in Allston and the adding of 5 of the top respected CS faculty…Boaz Barak from Princeton, Scott Kuindersma, James Mickens, Alexander (Sasha) Rush and Madhu Sudan Adjunct P.rofessor at MIT). He has had the opportunity to visit Cornell, Dartmouth and Princeton and seems to like the rural/suburban locations but he will get the chance this summer to visit Harvard and PENN to get a comparison. At PENN he is looking more towards the M&T program as opposed to strictly CS. Princeton has the distinction of being one of the best undergraduate focus colleges in the nation which is a consideration as well.
If he can get into M&T, Penn is the best choice. This is a very selective program (50 enrolled out of 1000+ applicants). Many students in the program choose it over HYPSM. There is no big difference in terms of computer science education in Ivy leagues.
M&T is very intensive academically. Not sure whether he can handle it as an athlete.
My D16 only applied to Cornell, Princeton and Harvard from that group for CS. She is not an athlete so I can’t comment on that aspect.