<p>Hello! i am currently a junior and looking into colleges for computer engineering. my top 4 choices are:</p>
<p>Stanford
Purdue
USC
Illinois</p>
<p>Now, my question to you all is, how do these colleges rank each other in terms of computer engineering? i have already seen the US-News rankings for computer engineering, but sometimes its reputation is different than the rankings. thanks!</p>
<p>They’re all top-tier engineering schools. It doesn’t really matter which school you attend for undergrad engineering. You will receive a great education at any one of those schools. Choose the one that you like and will cost the least.</p>
<p>
This +1.</p>
<p>I would say that a factor may be what do you want to do after undergrad.
You could go onto the “Investment Banking” subforum and they will definitely tell you to take Stanford.
If you were looking to be recruited by branches/agencies in the federal government, then there’s a good chance that the name of your college may not matter. There are many instances where someone with a MS CE from a state school would be better off than someone with a BS CE from Stanford in terms of hiring for government.</p>
<p>What about in terms of a job at an independent company? say, microsoft or any other company not owned by the government?</p>
<p>Microsoft doesn’t care. They just want great developers. The microsoft person I worked with told me the only school they recruit from more than others is CMU.</p>
<p>I would have thought they get a lot of students from U. of Washington.</p>
<p>Stanford would have a local advantage to Silicon Valley, but beyond that, all of them attract recruiters from companies that do travel to recruit.</p>
<p>At that level is doesn’t matter. People like to rank colleges, unfortunately these rankings are largely based on the reputation of these universities that they’ve earned from the research coming out of their graduate-level departments. People often assume that “top-notch grad school==top-notch undergrad school,” but the reality is that people are sometimes disappointed with their very highly ranked schools. IF YOU PLAN TO GO TO GRAD SCHOOL, then the quality of your undergrad institution does matter because that way you can link into some top-notch research while an undergrad. But for just engineering, I think I’d prefer a highly-ranked undergrad only institution like Rose Hulman or Cooper Union, if I had my pick.</p>
<p>Long answer, make your choice based on what the school can offer you, how much you like its program, how conveniently-located it is, how easy it is to attend as an undergrad (e.g. do they make you live in a dorm your whole time or can you get an apartment? is it in a good neighborhood?), etc. Let the rankings serve as a list of suggestions, no more, no less.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, opt for cheaper. Both in terms of cost-of-living (Silicon Valley, Boston, LA, SF, are all high-cost areas), and cost of tuition and fees.</p>