<p>Hi! This is my first use of the forum so forgive me I'm doing anything wrong.</p>
<p>I'm an International Student who is hoping to major in Computer Science.</p>
<p>The above 2 schools are my backup schools, and I can't decide between deciding the 2. Out of my other universities I'm applying, I was also thinking, would U Mich be a good enough backup? (Let's assume my stats are good enough for these to be backups, I don't want to be discussing that)</p>
<p>Could I get some advice?</p>
<p>1) In terms of internships, career wise, which school is better?</p>
<p>2) How does the two computer science programmes in these two schools match out?</p>
<p>3) Environment wise?</p>
<p>Once again, Hope I'm not doing anything wrong.</p>
<p>Both are excellent schools, with the most obvious difference being UT-Austin isn't tech focused, so it has broader academic offerings than GaTech.</p>
<p>While GaTech is excellent in engineering, I really didn't think it was as strong in Computer Science (at least not at the level of UT). I don't believe it's in the top 20 in the NRC rankings for Comp. Sci. Not sure about USNWR.</p>
<p>And not sure what you mean by asking if UMich is a "good enough" backup... "good enough" is a ridiculous understatement.</p>
<p>However, to answer your questions,
1) Practically zero difference at the undergrad level in science/engineering disciplines
2) For computer science specifically, the consensus is UT is stronger. In specific engineering disciplines, Ga Tech is stronger.
3) In terms of environment on campus, both are large public research universities. UT has a much higher % of in-state due to various laws restricting undergrad enrollment. Both have large international populations on campus. Austin and Atlanta are both great cities. Atlanta has a larger international stature. Personally, I still think Austin is an awesome place to spend college/early 20s. It consistently ranks highly in "Best places for..." lists. Atlanta is a much larger city with a more diversified economy and probably more long term opportunities for career development due to its size advantage (though Austin is certainly a major center for tech positions).</p>
<p>Just curious - if they are your backups, what is your #1?</p>
<p>I may have used wrong choice of words. No offence to UMich. I do think its a great school.</p>
<p>What I mean was would U Mich suffice as a backup? Or should I be further safer by using GA Tech/UT as backups.</p>
<p>USNWR places GA Tech 9th for Graduate studies. I don't think USNWR ranks undergraduate studies by discipline, hence I'm checking. USNWR overall ranking also places GA tech (30 ish) about 10 places higher than UT (40 ish). Is there a reason for this low ranking? I perfectly understand that ranks don't mean everything and thats perfectly why I'm checking it out here on the forums.</p>
<p>About the rest of the universities, again I'm not mentioning it, just like why I'm not mentioning my stats, yet to prevent any digression.</p>
<p>So are you just looking at academic quality or other holistic things? If you're purely viewing them as safeties, GaTech will be a lot easier to get into than UT due to the aforementioned reasons, but that doesn't mean its CS department isn't comparable. I don't pay attention to the other parts, but their robotics/machine intelligence stuff was really impressive to me.</p>
<p>As to why UT is lower than GaTech, my guess is because the areas that GaTech is good in are really good - many engineering programs are in the top 5 and 90% are in the top 10 along with CS (going with grad rankings). UT has a lot more top 20 programs in a bunch of different areas, but comparatively few top 5 programs. I wouldn't pay attention to those overall rankings though. They really punish schools like GaTech and most of the score isn't really related to what you value.</p>
<p>Academics are of course important. Like mentioned in my OP, I'm looking for to compare them in terms of career opps and internships, and probably research.</p>
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USNWR overall ranking also places GA tech (30 ish) about 10 places higher than UT (40 ish). Is there a reason for this low ranking? I perfectly understand that ranks don't mean everything and thats perfectly why I'm checking it out here on the forums.
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<p>Remember, the USNWR overall undergrad ranking is NOT an academic ranking... most of the factors making up the ranking have absolutely nothing to do with scholarly quality. It is based on factors like class size, alumni giving, selectivity, etc. - factors that will naturally punish a large public. However, if you look at the one factor that shows how the academic community views the colleges - Peer Assessment - I believe UT and GaTech are both at 4.0, which is higher than probably half the schools ranked above them in the overall ranking. Also, since GaTech is tech focused while UT has broader academic programs, GaTechs students stats are naturally skewed higher than UT. UT's overall student profile includes students majoring in areas like fine arts, film, journalism, etc. GaTech's students are of course going to be more quantitatively-oriented on averaged. Comparing UT's student stats to GaTech's is really apples to oranges unless you focus on UT's architecture, business and engineering school profiles. Again, USNWR makes no such attempt to reconcile such factors, which is another reason for the overall ranking being different.</p>
<p>The disparity in engineering rankings between the USNWR and the NRC are interesting. GaTech actually performed quite poorly in not only engineering, but natural science rankings per the NRC. UT was ranked higher in engineering. However, the reverse is true with the USNWR rankings. This is interesting since they're both grounded in peer assessment, and UT actually has a stronger engineering faculty than GaTech. (For instance UT has 49 faculty members elected to the National Academy of Engineering versus 26 for GaTech, which is the 4th highest # after only MIT, Stanford, and Berkeley.) I think part of the reason for GaTech's higher USNWR engineering rankings is because it performs more practical research, while UT is more theory-oriented (UT even does less engineering research than Texas A&M.)</p>
<p>I can say if you look at natural science rankings (physics, chemistry, etc.), UT is ranked higher than GaTech. </p>
<p>Again, they are both excellent schools, but due to this disparity in the engineering and computer science rankings, not sure that you can really say one is better.</p>
<p>UT has some impressive computer science facilities on campus and continues to build more. And fwiw, UT, through a grant from the NSF, now also has the fastest academic supercomputer in the world (#4 on the current top500 list).</p>
<p>Those NRC rankings are quite different; GaTech isn't even RANKED on the list much less ranked low for biomedical engineering (for example). Nevertheless, it is important to see that US News isn't the gospel.</p>