I am a high school senior applying for college now. I want to know what are the top tier schools for undergraduate computer science.
Harvey Mudd goes on the list for sure.
If you give us stats, home state, and financial situation, we can probably give you good options.
UIUC
Cornell and UW-Seattle as well
Waterloo is probably worth mentioning.
so what would you say are the first tier schools for computer science so to speak?
http://poetsandquantsforundergrads.com/2017/04/27/top-feeder-schools-silicon-valley/
So by this study the top schools outside of California area. .,
1 Carnegie Mellon
2 Texas
3 GA Tech
4 Illinois
5 Michigan
“so what would you say are the first tier schools for computer science so to speak”
I am not sure why I didn’t already see somewhere on this thread: Stanford, MIT, Caltech.
Past those three, everything mentioned so far on this thread is excellent. There are also a LOT of very good universities that have very good computer science programs. So even somewhere like UMass Amherst, which should not be mentioned in a thread on “strongest CS programs”, still is very good and has many graduates who do very well. Once you are more than a few months on the job people will care about what you can do, and not where you got your B.Sc. Many students should be able to minimize or eliminate debt for a CS degree because there are so many great choices.
Stanford
CMU
Berkeley
MIT
Caltech
Harvey Mudd
Cornell
UIUC
Michigan
Georgia Tech
CMU is, IMO, in the top 3.
But you can get a CS degree at a lot of schools so if you’re asking because you’re trying to decide where to apply, there are a lot of factors to consider besides “best”.
In none of your posts do you provide your stats. Are you qualified for these top tier schools?
Better question: Can you afford these schools?
It does no good to make a list if you can’t afford to pay their fees and if you don’t have top scores, GPA and EC’s to get in.
A previous post indicates that you have a class rank of 25 out of 648.
If you were in the top 6 of those 648, then I would say you had a slight chance.
My son’s class was similar in size. He was in the top 5.
Those kids got into some of their top tier schools. They were rejected to some top schools as well.
You want to go to a competitive top tier university for computer science? Aren’t you concerned about grade deflation? Low GPA = low job prospects.
@auntbea 25 out of 648 is still top 3-4% of the class. Seems to me many other factors (grades, rigor, test scores, ECs) matter a lot more than top 3% rank vs top 1% rank in one particular high school.
These links list many of the schools mentioned above, all of which have excellent CS programs (undergrad and grad):
https://www.paysa.com/blog/2017/06/05/top-colleges-in-tech/
https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/computer-science-rankings
I would stay away from the UCs unless you live in California, as they don’t take out of state applicators too kindly from what I have heard. If so, UC-Berkeley is probably your best bet. Living in New York there are multiple fantastic CS as like Cornell, RPI, Columbia, even our state school SUNY Stony Brook in Long Island is one of the best.
…
What are you wanting more of?
Theory, go to MIT, Stanford, Cornell.
A.I? Go to GIT, or USC.
Language? Northeastern or UPenn
…
I would do some research of the universities and see what best fits you because we can’t answer that for you. Hope this helps a bit and I understand college admissions time as a senior can be stressful, good luck and if you have any questions message me as I’ll do my best to help with you!
The UC’s love out of state applicants! As long as they are full pay.