Specific example is a student that wants to take more than the introductory class in Operating systems. I couldn’t find a follow on at HMC. Does it matter for getting a 100K+ job at any company? Probably not, but it’s still a limit that you should not hit in a top 20 program.
Just to be clear, I think CP and HMC are an ideal program for almost every student that wants to study CS. But they do have limits that will be evident for many students.
Not at all. I’m just saying so many can get to many a place from many a place. We look at lists like they are the golden ticket.
How many colleges offer finance ? How many produce successful finance grads ? Well US News lists just 49 schools.
It’s the same with CS. I know programmers from schools like MS State and Memphis and they are living the good life.
Obviously the higher ranked schools attract what society has deemed the best and brightest and that’s who those with the big pocketbooks to pay will chase.
Education matters. But its not to say one can’t be great whether from Rose Hulman or Rhode Island, simply because they didn’t attend a school like Rice.
My nephews case. The job ‘required’ a cs related degree or maybe it was preferred. Either way they picked his resume and he had to pass a test. Thought he failed bcuz he did not have the experience in CS but as he said he must have had the knowledge they wanted.
Just saying - success can happen no matter what. You have brilliant kids forgoing college and getting paid to do so…by billionaires trying to price college isn’t worth it. After all, will Philosophy 101 or Intro to Religious Studies really impact a CS person ability to do their job ?
I don’t think anyone said that.
It was back to the rank discussion and @eyemgh bringing up salary of schools not ranked or lesser ranked. . And one person said their kid went to Gtown and didn’t major in CS and got a job.
Just trying to downplay rank. But maybe as usual I digressed too much.
Honestly I’d rather make $140k in TN than $200k in NYC but that’s a different thing. But a lot of time we use salaries to justify a school’s standing. And that’s fair although I’d love to see it equalizes based on COL.
That and I was responding to @CTDad-classof2022 question of me.
Let me push back on that idea a bit. If you are going to be in tech, you want to be working on the coasts because that is where the cutting edge work is being done and that is where you best develop your human capital. So kids want to work in areas where they start high, and the comp curve stays steep for a long time.
This is like being in Nashville if you want to be in country music. There is no other place to be.
I get it. Young people love NYC or Silicon Valley and it’s where you need to be. On the other hand, like finance, tech is spreading its wings and coming to places like Atlanta, Nashville, Denver, Austin.
But totally get the point. I think it’s less so today. But it’s still there.
My nephew had a choice. NYC. Miami. LA. Austin. Seattle. SF. And I think Atlanta. Chose NYC. wants to live in Brooklyn. Coming ‘home’ from Israel with his fiancé from there and she’s most comfortable there.
Probably to a lesser degree at CP, because they offer graduate level classes that undergrads are welcome to take. They just have a broader catalogue. HMC is different though in that both in CS and in Engineering Focus, much of that happens on the individual level in upper seminar style classes.
To be clear, I’m not one that maintains that schools don’t matter for engineering and CS/SE. I think they certainly do. I also don’t think a person who can code and gets a high paying job is equivalent to someone with a degree, or even an advanced degree, that has deeper knowledge and can do more complex stuff. I just don’t think that a blanket rank order represents reality when so many schools are equivalent. These rankings in particular just don’t show any school where PhD isn’t offered.
I know some successful Brown CS grads. Wonder where that falls in the list,. Apparently great networking.
I forgot to mention Brown. They certainly rank high on ROI lists that I’ve seen.
Fair point, and it’s important to raise awareness about these.
Maybe we should make our own list (with the usual caveats about rankings). So here goes…
What non-doctorate granting colleges have a “top 20” CS program?
You’ve mentioned a few. Could you please rank them? Then others can add on.
Love these threads…
I’m not into ranking in a generic way. Too much of it depends on the preferences of those looking at them. For my personal preferences, attention to undergrads, class size, opportunity to apply knowledge, placement and salary are all important metrics. I do think that leaving Caltech out of any list is pretty far off base. I’ll leave it at that. 
We all think about tech. My sons 2nd year roommate at Bama is graduating in December at 3.5 years in CS.
Accepted a job at a defense contractor in Huntsville. $77k.
Is that good ? I don’t know. Sounds ok to me. But it’s not google or Amazon…nor did he seek that.
Yesterday someone published stats from near elite IU for business. I don’t believe any discipline hit $70k. So to me it sounds good but …likely not to all.
I am also curious what the tails of the distribution are. Because that tells you what is possible from a given school. This past year I wanted to know how many kids a department has placed into jobs that I thought paid 150k or more. Because at that point of time that metric felt important to me. Irrespective of COL adjustments. I also want to know the extreme tails of the outcome – e.g. the top 1-5% outcomes. All this data is not easily available.
There are exceptions to everything. A Senior Partner at my technology consulting practice had a BA in History.
I’m comfortable saying that a student with a Computer Science degree is much better positioned to get a Computer Science job than another major.
Posters routinely ask about tails here on CC. By definition, they should be much more in tune with the average. Tails are nice, but tails are, again, by definition, rare.
Fwiw, non-PhD schools are not excluded from the USNews list, unlike the two separate Engineering lists.
Mudd is #29, Rose is #58, Cal Poly is #110
But based on what methodology? It certainly has little to noting to do with placement and salary. It’s random gobbledygook.
Not sure if it is for us to tell them what they should be in tune with. Different metrics give different kinds of information