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<p>That isn’t “obvious” at all. What is your basis for this statement? The US News rankings? Even if US News does an unassailable job of capturing the set of features most important to excellence in this field, it’s not obvious that the features they’re comparing are the ones that ought to be most important to YOU. They might be … but then, 7-10-23 doesn’t look like a very big spread, not when you consider that (a) there are about 3000+ colleges & universities in America, and (b) the CS curriculum is fairly well standardized from school to school.</p>
<p>The 2013 IEEE “Strawman Draft” curricula guidelines identify 18 Knowledge Areas, such as algorithms, programming languages, and operating systems (<a href=“http://ai.stanford.edu/users/sahami/CS2013//strawman-draft/cs2013-strawman.pdf[/url]”>AI Affiliates Program – Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory). It is highly unlikely that in every one of these 18 areas, Michigan > Maryland > Penn State (or that any quality differences are equally great in all areas). The effort you put into your courses, projects, and internships is likely to matter much more to your success than any differences captured by such a narrow spread in the rankings.</p>
<p>What are your out-of-pocket costs to attend each of these schools? Is that a factor? </p>
<p>Have you visited each of them? Spent nights in the dorms? Attended classes?
Have you reviewed the course listings for each college, especially the upper-level courses, to see how well they cover areas you find interesting?</p>