Can anyone tell me maybe top 10 private colleges with excellent Computer Science programs? How far off would the top choices be from say Cal Poly/UCDavis?
It depends what your looking to do in CS. Your question is too broad.
Also, it mainly depends on the department. It is a mistake to relay on the reputation of a university as a whole
Carnegie Mellon, MIT and Stanford would be in the top 4. Not sure what you would be trying to get at. There are alll kinds of CS rankings lists out there. Cal Poly and Davis are Top 40 programs.
Sorry, new to this. I am interested in knowing some of the top colleges that are not state schools that are also not extremely hard to get into for Computer Science, specifically software engineering. I’ve seen the lists for the top 100 but most are state schools or the ones that are extremely hard to get into. So say a kid who has 1400 SAT, 4.0 weighted gpa, some DE and AP courses, works, small extracurriculars. No one thing that is a standout on an application but a hardworking, smart kid. A kid who is not going to get into the top schools but also doesn’t necessarily want a huge state school. What options, colleges could we look into that still have very good computer science programs?
Harvey Mudd, but it is pretty hard to get into. What is the student’s unweighted GPA? Are they a URM (under represented minority)? Gender? Home state (assuming CA, but just want to confirm)?
Check out the smaller technical schools such as RPI, WPI and RIT.
In addition, Case Western and Rose Hulman might be of interest.
Other broader-based schools might include U Rochester, Santa Clara, Northeastern, Saint Louis U, and Drexel.
Other schools to check out would be the smaller, preferably with WUE, such as Western Washington U.
For larger schools, be sure to look at Arizona State U-Barrett Honors, U Texas-San Antonio and U Utah.
Is there any reason you would rule out public schools? Beyond price, many public schools will offer good CS experiences comparable to many privates. Schools like UW Madison and UMass Amherst come to mind as good options for match/reach, and UCF for match/safety.
For a 1400 SAT / 4.0W GPA I would second most all of them and categorize those mentioned so far as:
Reach: U Rochester, Northeastern, Case Western, RPI
Match: Santa Clara, WPI, Drexel, SLU, Rose Hulman
Safety: RIT, ASU, Utah
Hispanic male. Not sure of GPA off the top of my head but all A’s, one B. CA charter, top of his class. Public is fine, I just have a personal preference for schools that aren’t huge. I will look more at all mentioned. I appreciate the feedback.
I would look at Case Western Reserve U, in Ohio. Its small private and not quite as hard as other privates to get in, but getting harder every year for CS. RPI in Troy NY is a tad easier for admission than CWRU. Will depend on the exact math and science classes you have and your grades, but seems you have very top grades.
However, look again at the large public programs, in the midwest, as they may well be stronger in CE and CS
and offer more job connections back to the west coast then the smaller privates.
Look at Purdue and U of Illinois, both public schools both strong in CS and CE, and both have quite a few CA students applying. You do not have to limit yourself to private schools, I would look at easier out of state public schools, if you are worried about getting into Cal Poly SLO, which can be totally impossible for California students to get in lately.
If you need financial aid, Purdue may work out less expensive than UIUC, but both have some merit for out of state students.
Both Purdue and UIUC tend to admit most students who are qualified and take a very large number of students but still have very very strong CS programs, UIUC is equivalent to MIT’s EECS program or Berkeley’s program.
I also like U Mass Amherst.
If Florida is on your list–
UF Gainesville is much much better than UCF which is huge,the largest school in the USA now, in Orlando and easy to get in, but maybe not the best choice.
UIUC’s CS major is also extremely difficult to get admitted to – much more difficult than getting into UIUC as a general undeclared student (and changing into CS after enrolling is extremely difficult). CS at Purdue has also become much more popular recently, so admission to it is likely much more difficult than getting into the school.
Also, cost constraints? Out-of-state public schools tend to give little or no need-based financial aid. If financial aid is an issue, use the net price calculator on each school’s web site.
Answering the original post- the top 10 private CS programs would be exceedingly difficult to get into for just about anyone.
Depends on how you define and measure “top” colleges (or programs).
Here’s one ranking:
https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/computer-science-rankings
It focuses on graduate programs but may be relevant to undergraduate programs, too.
The top private CS schools probably should include Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and MIT.
After that, maybe Cornell and Princeton to round out the top 5.
Then choose the next 5 from among the other 6 Ivies (possibly excluding Dartmouth), Duke, Northwestern, NYU, JHU, Rice, USC.
If that is your top 10, they are all highly selective (and very expensive absent significant FA). The least selective of those 10+ probably would be USC and NYU. The latter is notorious for poor FA. Most of the above don’t award much if any merit money.
A notch down in the (perceived/real) pecking order?
Check out Boston University, Case Western, George Washington, Northeastern, and URochester.
By this point in the ranking (if not well before), IMO it would become increasingly hard to justify a big net price premium over your excellent in-state (CA) public alternatives.
UC Santa Cruz actually ranks pretty highly for CS and is probably within range with your son’s stats.
Take a look at smaller liberal arts colleges that offer computer science but which offer a great merit aid that may not be extremely difficult to get into. Many of these would have small but strong computer science programs. No small college, without big research dollars, it is going to offer the same breath of programs a say a giant state flag ship University.
However the final destinations for their computer science graduate maybe similar. Not everyone is going to get a job at Facebook, but not every person who works at Facebook went to Stanford, or MIT.
right now the best career move I can recommend is for students to look into the area cyber security. I work in this profession, and I can tell you that based on research there are millions of unfilled positions in that field.
To the OP, with the stats you presented, there’s going to be almost no private school that you can get into that is a better computer science school than UC-Davis, or CPSLO. Maybe Northeastern, but admissions has gotten way tougher there just in the last year.
What is reputation of Pomona for CS?
Stevens Institute of Technology is small, strong CS, about the same on admit as WPI and RPI. I would second Rose Hulman. None with widely recognized CS programs are “easy” admits, but they do not border on insanity!
There are, no doubt, some very high quality CS programs scattered around some fine LA colleges, but the variety and depth of closely related and rapidly developing new areas are limited in small colleges. Those mentioned above have depth in related areas.
Each of the above universities also have their distinctive brands and they like to believe unique characteristics. As a WPI alumnus, I know they are very big about involvement in groups with 80% in sports but we do not have Georgia Tech football games. We find MIT and RPI challenging enough. Cooperative and interdisciplinary research is a large part of the focus. Drama, music, magic club could be the EC focus. They like ECs.
There’s 2 problems with a private university. First, they’re very expensive. Second, you can get a CS degree from a public university for a fraction of the cost, and both are employable just the same.
@coolguy40
Not all public university CS programs are the same. Not all private universities CS programs are the same. Any public university CS program does not necessarily equal any private university program. The same statements apply to employment in CS. I would agree that employment opportunities for CS majors from some universities are too often underrated, but I would not assume that the Carnegie Mellon CS program is just the same as any other CS program in the country.
A young lady who I knew graduated from her HS as valedictorian and went on to her respected state university. At the end of her sophomore year she was trying to transfer to a smaller private university because she could not get a seat in her EE lecture hall unless she arrived 15 minutes prior to lecture. Not always true, but it happens. It could have also happened at private university.
Without these differences there would be no need for websites like CC. We could just list majors with prices and the job would be done. Mao Zedong used this approach in China years ago. There were supply and demand problems. One style did not fit all.
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Private universities usually do have very high sticker prices. However, net costs depend on your family’s financial circumstances and the school. Run the online net price calculators to compare the ones you like.