<p>In the next few months ill be applying to Waterloo, Berkeley, Rice, and Queens University (Kingston) and I had a few questions:</p>
<p>Keep in mind i will most likely be taking computer science or computer engineering.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Where does Waterloo rank compared to American schools in engineering/compsci?</p></li>
<li><p>Is queens anywhere close to the strength of waterloo?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I've had trouble finding answers to this because both Americans and Canadians seem incredibly biased to their respective systems and the feedback has been very varied.</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>Waterloo is well known, at least in Canada for its CS program. It is well known that Microsoft recruits heavily from the school. It’s CS training is reputed to be generally to have an emphasis on real world applications, as opposed the the other top Ontario CS program it is compared to, the one at U of Toronto which is considered to have a more academic focus. This means that an undergraduate CS degree at Waterloo is good preparation if you plan to enter the workforce after you graduate. If you plan on going to graduate school a more theoretically focused school might be a better choice.
The top two CS schools in Ontario are generally considered to be Toronto and Waterloo, however I don’t know all that much about the CS program at Queens.
As for the US schools, I know Berkley has an excellent reputation in just about anything so I cannot believe that they have a bad CS department.</p>