<p>I was wondering if could rank the ivies in order of which you'd most
likely attend them if you got accepted to all of them (and only them)
and were 100% you would major in CS.</p>
<p>Cornell, Princeton, Brown. None of the other Ivies has an especially good CS department. (And none of the Ivies has a CS department as good as Stanford, MIT and Berkeley in any case, but for some reason you limited your inquiry to Ivies.)</p>
<p>I would stick Harvard in there as well- they have a good program that’s rising.</p>
<p>Cornell and Princeton are clearly the 1 and 2 respectively, followed by Brown, Columbia and Harvard. But 2 of the remaining 3 are ranked among the top 25 in CS. The only Ivy that is not ranked is Dartmouth.</p>
<p>@zenkoan. Don’t worry. I’d still choose CMU/Stanford/MIT over all the Ivies any day. I just didn’t feel like including them because there’s no question that none of the Ivies can match those three schools.</p>
<p>Yale is ranked around 20 for grad comp sci; it should be similar for undergrad since their reps are related. I think Yale doesn’t have as good a rep as some of the other schools mentioned above mostly because the program is small, not because it is not high-quality. Yale comp sci grads (the few of them that there are) do pretty well in job placement, if I remember correctly; they have more specific details on the department website I think. And it’s not like they don’t get recruited: Google, Microsoft, Oracle, etc. all come to Yale to recruit. That’s not to say Yale is better at comp sci than any of the schools mentioned above, just to say that it’s not as if you’re at a severe disadvantage doing comp sci at Yale or any Ivy for that matter.</p>
<p>I really don’t think any of them are bad. We get the impression nowadays that if a program is not as well-known or highly ranked that it is necessarily bad. Not the case.</p>
<p>Cornell is the strongest ivy for CS by far. It’s not at the MIT, Stanford, CMU, Berkeley level, but it’s definitely in the next group. Agree that Princeton and Brown would be the next choices.</p>
<p>There are other ivies in the top 25 USNWR CS, but honestly, those rankings surprise me; I feel they’re more a reflection of the overall quality of those schools, not CS specifically. Of course, they’re all fine programs, but CS would be an odd choice of major at these schools.</p>
<p>The National Research Council’s just released 2010 rankings of graduate programs at major U.S. universities could help guide you. The NRC rankings have been considered the “gold standard” of academic department rankings in the U.S. Averaging the ‘R’ and ‘S’ scores for computer science leads to the following national ranking.</p>
<p>NATIONAL RANKING OF COMPUTER SCIENCE PROGRAMS
ACCORDING TO THE NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL</p>
<p>1—Stanford
2—Princeton
3—MIT
4—Berkeley
5—Carnegie Mellon
6—Cornell
7—Harvard
8—UC Santa Barbara
9—Penn
10–UCLA</p>
<p>The reputation and strength of undergraduate programs may not be directly comparable to those of the associated graduate programs at the same institutions.</p>
<p>[Find</a> the Graduate School That’s Right for You PhDs.org Graduate School Guide](<a href=“http://graduate-school.phds.org/]Find”>http://graduate-school.phds.org/) </p>
<p>[2010</a> Computer Sciences Rankings PhDs.org Graduate School Guide](<a href=“http://graduate-school.phds.org/rankings/computer-science/rank/]2010”>http://graduate-school.phds.org/rankings/computer-science/rank/)</p>
<p>^ Princeton over MIT and Berkeley for CS??? LOL</p>
<p>This strikes me as the sort of question that doesn’t really do anyone much good. The chances that anyone will be in the position of making this choice is vanishing small.
First - computer science is a VERY broad field. Are you interested in theory, which overlaps strongly with math, or engineering, or actual programming/design? Are you interested in working immediately after graduation or going on to graduate school? Are you thinking about starting a company? You will find different schools homes for each of these.
Second - the Ivies are not , universally, strong in CS. They vary greatly in their approach to the subject as well. Cornell takes both an engineering and a A&S path, which is very interesting - but I don’t know if you can cross easily from one to the other. Princeton might be a good choice if you want more theory. I’ve not generally heard much about any of the other Ivies as strong in CS.
There are a lot of other places to go for great CS (although it’s a bit late to think about that now if you are a senior).</p>