Universities for Computer Science

College Majors Math/Computer Science Majors
1

My question: Is the ranking of these universities correct for CS?

Hey, I was wondering if people here could help me with this. Long story short my wife got a really good job offer in the USA. We decided she should take it and I’m looking to go to university and study CS, we will be living in LA.

For the past week I’ve done some research on the internet and I came to this list. I really prefer to stay in L.A. / close to L.A. since I will be living in an apartment with my wife. I have some schools far away from L.A. since they seem good/decent universities for CS. I have the University of Arizona in my list just in case and because it seems like a decent school + a high acceptance rate.

I made this list of the universities based ONLY on academic ranking from my own research on the internet. Since this is all quite new to me I was wondering what your guys opinions and stories are. I also read it doesn’t really matter which school you go to for the lower tier schools.

  1. UC Berkeley
  2. UCLA
  3. UC San Diego
  4. Cal Poly SLO
  5. University of South California
  6. UC Irvine
  7. San Jose State University
  8. Calpoly Pomona
  9. University of Arizona
  10. CSU Long Beach

I know most of these schools are very selective for Computer Science.

2

Note that UC-Berkeley is a 5+ hour drive to LA. Same goes for San Jose State.

I would stick Harvey Mudd in your list somewhere, probably somewhere between 3 and 6. I would add UC-Santa Barbara also somewhere in the middle.

Yes, many of the schools will be very hard to get into.

3

I think you’ll have a very hard time affording schools out in California, but you will also have a very hard time getting into a lot of these schools. I think computer science is impacted at Cal Poly Pomona, which means there’s a higher threshold than normal to get in because of the amount of applicants (CPP grad here).

What is your goal? To become a software engineer?

I’m on the other side here having been a software engineer for 4+ years and I can tell you that it’s not all roses. And you’ll end up using almost none of your degree for most places you’ll work at.

You could probably just teach yourself code and save yourself the money if you had the discipline and apply everywhere until you got a taker, work for them for a while, and then move on.

If you want to stick close to LA (in no certain order):

  1. UCLA
  2. University of South California
  3. UC Irvine
  4. Cal Poly Pomona
  5. CSU Long Beach
4

^ You could probably just teach yourself code an…

There are online programs from many universities these days.