<p>I have a junior who has decided to major in computer science. He is not interested in the electrical engineering end of the spectrum as much as web software applications development or similar. We are located in the Boston area. We are just starting this whole process, so I would appreciate any advice relative to specific schools that we should consider, within 350 miles of Boston, because of their good Computer Science programs. My son is intelligent, but not enough to get into Harvard, MIT, etc., so we're focused on good public universities or less exclusive private universities. I tried to find some kind of school rating for Computer Science over the internet, but came up empty. If anyone knows of one, let me know.</p>
<p>Northeastern, Tufts, NYU have good CS programs.</p>
<p>RIT has an undergraduate software engineering major, which sounds like a better fit for him than CS (but there are not many schools offering software engineering majors yet).</p>
<p>I went to Holy Cross and majored in mathematics and computer science and was able to land a job at Microsoft where I have spent 11 great years. Microsoft thought highly of HC's program.</p>
<p>There is no rating for Computer Science undergraduate programs - only for graduate programs (and that's related to the research going on and papers published, etc.). The last undergrad rating was the Gourman report in the mid 90's. If you search on this forum you will find it. I used Rugg's Recommendations when beginning the search for my son. I got it from the school counselor, but our library also had it.</p>
<p>MIT
Carnegie Mellon
UC Berkeley
Cornell
U Illinios UC
UCLA
Yale
Caltech
U Texas Austin
U Wisconsin Madison
U Maryland CP
Princeton
U Washington
USC
SUNY Stony Brook
Brown
Georgia Tech
U Penn
U Rochester
NYU
U Minnesota
U Utah
Columbia
Ohio State
Rice
Duke
Northwestern
SUNY Buffalo
U Pittsburgh
UC Irvine
UC San Diego
U Mass Amherst
Rutgers NB
Indiana U Bloomington
Penn State UP
UC Santa Barbara
Syracuse
Iowa St
RPI
UVA
U Michigan AA
U Iowa
U Conn
Southern Methodist
US Naval Acad
US Military Acad
U Houston
U Kansas
Washington U St Louis
Mich St
Stevens Inst
Case Western
Texas A&M
U Oklahoma
Kansas State
Vanderbilt
Washington State</p>
<p>That Gourman report's date is 1998. That is pretty dated for a field changing as quickly as computer science, isn't it? That is longer than most research grant cycles, so programs could move up or down significantly over that time period.</p>
<p>Also, does anyone know how the evaluation differs between graduate and undergraduate programs?</p>
<p>As a field, CS changes quickly. But the top schools don't change much, because most of the changes in CS came from the top schools' researches and their graduates.</p>
UT is difficult to get into if you are OoS. The high acceptance rate is because of the top 10% rule, which Texas is cutting back on. CS in-state is not a sure shot if you can’t get in CMU.</p>
<p>The ranking left out a school which has more than 20 ties to Turing award–the ‘Nobel’ prize in computing, has founded most number of famous IT companies such as GOOGLE, YAHOO, HP, SGI, CISCO, SUN, NETSCAPE, VMWARE, and RAMBUS, has created most number of IT inventions, and has ranked as #1 by US-NEWS, NRC, and Business Week.</p>
<p>Extremely highly regarded in math and computer science. Fantastic co-op program. Microsoft hires more students from Waterloo than any college in the world. Relative well priced because its Canadian.</p>
<p>As a silent creeper, Canadian schools are pretty decent when it comes Compsci. Take for instance, UofWaterloo, gr8 school, excellent coop, and they focus a lot on entrepreneurship(the founders of rim/blackberry are alumni). Also UofT, probably the most prestigious Canadian school, very intense compsci curriculum though. Also York U, surprisingly enough, they have a very excellent compsci program, can be linked with their business pro…gr8 rapport. One of my co-workers, mind you, I worked for IBM, DB2 developer, attended york. Got a follow up offer after his TIP (technology internship program, from the school). McGill, but I believe the course is in french, not too sure and UBC in vancouver…EXCELLENT CS program. The latter three, excluding mcgill, that is uoft, yorku and ubc have a ba in compsci, so you can do a artsy focus on the compsci.</p>
<p>undergrad - YorkU - Bsc Computer Science 2003
mba - Schulich - YorkU 2005
msc - UofT 2008
phd - ??? probably Standford, who knows.</p>
<p>But at the end of the day, make your uni choice and the school you feel most comfortable with, not entirely on peoples BIAS opinions. Go to the campuses, have a feel of the place, and see if you like!</p>