Money is irrelevant to me as of right now. I got into both schools and I am having a hard time deciding which school to go to. Which school has a stronger CS program? NYU tandon has improved tremendously over the past few years, but I’m not sure if its CS program is at the level of RPI. If both schools have CS programs of the same level, I would definitely choose NYU over RPI, but looking at rankings and everything(which is hard to find for NYU Tandon, everything is for NYU CAS), RPI seems to be significantly better than NYU Tandon, but these rankings are all outdated due to the recent improvements at NYU.
Not sure where you’re getting your rankings info from. According to US News, NYU Tandon is ranked 45th for engineering and 29th fro CS, whereas RPI is ranked 39th for engineering and 52nd for CS. They’re both clearly similar in rankings, and both are reputed.
If it was me deciding, I would choose NYU. RPI is notorious for having very little social life, and students tend to be more cutthroat. Not to mention, RPI is in the middle of nowhere, whereas Tandon is literally a 5 minute subway ride from Wall Street or a 10 minute subway ride from Times Square.
I’d also consider how far away from home you’d be at each school, and how easily you could get home from each school if you wanted to.
Forget the rankings. They’re meaningless, especially for CS, which is all about what you know not where you went. Either school will give you plenty of opportunities if you take advantage. Choose the best overall fit. That said, why would you definitely choose NYU? You say money is irrelevant “right now”. Care to elaborate?
Information from the recent past on NYU Tandon School of Engineering may be under its previous names:
NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering (before the Tandon donation)
Polytechnic Institute of NYU (while in the merger process)
Polytechnic University (pre-merger)
If you want everything that NYC has to offer, then choose NYU. I wouldn’t worry too much about rankings - it’s not like employers care as much as what you can actually do in CS. Having said that, RPI is a strong choice. It has a highly reputed CS program among employers, with very high placement rate for CS and engineering. My D is at RPI and she says it’s not cutthroat at all - she has found the student body to be very collaborative. Troy is not the Big Apple for sure, but it’s improved considerably in the past decade. Plus, you’re a lot closer to nature if you need a breath of fresh air from the city. Two different experiences.
I want to strongly second @insanedreamer here. To me, the only reason to pick Tandon is for NYC. If it’s just about CS, despite Tandon’s improvements, RPI still has a good edge.