What's the biggest difference between Top 50 and Top 25 (Any Subject) School?

College Search & Selection
1

^^
As question is stated. What is the biggest difference between lets say a computer science ranking in the top 50 range vs a school whose computer science ranking is like in top 25 range?

Opportunities?
Faculty?
Classroom Size?

I’m pretty sure they should be teaching the same thing.

2

Where are you finding these rankings?

3

There can be considerable differences between schools that are independent of ranking. For example:

  • Subarea interests and specialties. A given subarea may be heavily emphasized at one school, but absent at another.
  • Pre-professional versus pre-PhD emphasis.
  • Class size tends to be more related to the size of the school, popularity of the major, and how classes are structured. Research universities may increase class sizes by hiring more TAs. LACs may limit class sizes taught by faculty, but that may limit access to the desired courses because they are full.
  • At some schools, popular majors may require a high GPA or competitive admission to declare, even for currently enrolled students, due to capacity limitations.
  • For CS, the structure and organization of frosh/soph level courses can vary considerably.
  • For CS, whether frosh/soph level courses tend to all use the same programming language or use different ones by subject can be significant. The latter is generally preferable (to avoid the "hammer, nail" type of thinking).
  • For CS, whether the curriculum is engineering-based or not. Engineering-based CS majors typically require additional physics and math courses. Some schools offer both types of CS majors.
  • For CS, whether the major has ABET accreditation. Strictly speaking, this tends only to be a consideration for the patent exam, where graduates of non-ABET-accredited CS majors need to have included science electives as specified in the patent exam requirements. It is not generally an issue in employment, although it does put a floor on the level of quality of the major (ABET accredited CS majors can be "ok" to "excellent", while others can be "poor" to "excellent").

Note also that a high “general” ranking does not necessarily mean that a particular major is good (or even exists).

4

As Heather says, what rankings are you looking at? Are you looking at grad school rankings?

5

Usnews and yea I think it’s grad

6

If you are looking at grad school rankings those come from productivity of research & published papers and individual esteemed faculty that may not even teach undergraduates. It will have nothing to do with undergraduate class size and it is not a great proxy how the undergrad experience or outcomes are, though I suppose they all have good undergrad depts. Some top 50 doctoral programs may have small and specialized depts, others cover everything. Dartmouth only has 12 CS professors, CMU has 131! Some top programs will have hundreds of kids in the introductory classes. That’s because some top schools are great public universities. Even many privates will have quite large intro CS though they may get a lot smaller a lot quicker than the public counterparts. Faculty may be great but may or may not be teaching undergrads, at some colleges, like Brown, all faculty teach undergrads as well as grads. Opportunities vary as far as access for undergrads to do research with faculty. At some colleges anyone can and at others you have to aggressively seek it out. Internships are a matter of who is recruiting on campus and your own initiative. I think there are some generally agreed upon subjects that should be covered but there are widely varying ways the material is presented. And advanced offerings can be thin some places and they do give you electives in you major, so no not everyone is taking all the same classes at every college. Also there may be many colleges with great CS undergrad programs that just aren’t big doctoral granting programs.

So, differences don’t occur along US News grad ranking lines–wrong question, but you got a great summary of a way to look at differences from @ucbalumnus. Oh, and don’t use those rankings.

7

It’s more useful to compare two specific schools and get into the factors that are meaningful to you. There might be many academic and cultural differences, but which one is the “biggest” depends on what is most important to you.

8

@BrownParent, that ranking does line up well with the ranking by number of grads who work at Google at the very top, however. Make of that what you will.

But in general, yes, choosing by rankings is stupid.

9

But is that treatment effect (quality of school’s CS major with respect to what Google looks for) or selection effect (the tendency of the students who best match Google’s needs and wants to attend those schools)? Google itself does recruit rather widely, but has a reputation of being very selective (though apparently not by school name) in hiring.

10

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Opportunities? Faculty? Classroom Size?

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Probably not…maybe an edge to faculty.

The bigger difference probably is endowment size.

11

@ucbalumnus: Probably both.

I would say that outside the top 25 (or the FB recruitment list), relying on rankings is ill-advised for any reason.

12

^ Why would the same measurable factors that push a college into the top 25 be irrelevant to comparing the 30-something v. the 130-something colleges?

(If you do care about class size, graduation rates, need-based aid, or selectivity, then those factors ought to be relevant both above and below the top ~25 cut line. If you don’t, well then they aren’t.)