US news states that UMD is #16 in computer science, is that true?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Harvard has graduates working in DOGE, none from UMD.

Whether you agree or not with DOGE, working for SpaceX, Neuralink, X.com, Grok/AI are the most sought after jobs in CS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Harvard has graduates working in DOGE, none from UMD.

Whether you agree or not with DOGE, working for SpaceX, Neuralink, X.com, Grok/AI are the most sought after jobs in CS.

Do you have inside info on DOGE employees? Can't speak for DOGE, but UMD graduates work at all of Elon's companies.

[Anonymous]

Yes

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Harvard has graduates working in DOGE, none from UMD.

Whether you agree or not with DOGE, working for SpaceX, Neuralink, X.com, Grok/AI are the most sought after jobs in CS.

Haha.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is equal to Harvard , is it believable?
https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/computer-science-rankings

UMD is better than Harvard and has been for a while.

Yea, I know a Harvard grad who told their CS major kid to not apply to Harvard for CS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sure. But I don't think that many (any?) professors, graduate students, or undergraduates would choose UMD over Harvard.

Prestige is very sticky, and Harvard resources flow even to its weak spots.

Most people interested in CS or engineering don't even bother applying to Harvard. It's not where the talent or energy is in these fields.

I absolutely believe that Harvard is not the first choice of people interested in CS. MIT, Stanford, Caltech are all more desirable. But are you seriously arguing that ambitious, worldly students apply to MIT and UMD but not other nationally prestigious universities? No. UMD might be a safety for the highest fliers, but they also apply (after MIT and Stanford) to Princeton, Harvard, etc. If the $$ is equal (which, given generous aid at the top privates, it will be except for donut hole families), students choose the high-prestige privates in even if they are ranked lower in their major.

You're wrong. My high flying STEM kid didn't even glance in Harvard's direction. Among ivy league schools, only Princeton and Cornell are any good. And Rice, CMU, Berkeley, UIUC, Stanford, Georgia Tech, Michigan and many other schools are far more interesting places for cs and engineering than Harvard. In this space, Harvard isn't a serious school. Neither is Yale. Talented people who are interested in cs and engineering don't even consider Harvard or Yale.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid is a stem kid and he didnt even consider Harvard (and did apply to MIT, Stanford, Michigan, etc) and UMD. Harvard to him wasn’t even a consideration.

+1 for a minute I thought I wrote this. Applied to those same schools. Harvard not on the radar.

FWIW, my kid had high stats from a magnet program. Now at UMD with merit. Dual CS/math major.

CS major at UMD is very very difficult now to get into. They halved the number of spots last year from almost 1400 to now like 700 with 600 direct admits, and 100 transfers - internal and external.

[Anonymous]

My son is a recent UMD CS grade. Parents of high schoolers should know that UMD is nobody’s safety school any more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My son is a recent UMD CS grade. Parents of high schoolers should know that UMD is nobody’s safety school any more.

This has even extended to CS centered CLUBS at UMD. App Dev club received 1,000+ applications for maybe 100 or so spots.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sure. But I don't think that many (any?) professors, graduate students, or undergraduates would choose UMD over Harvard.

Prestige is very sticky, and Harvard resources flow even to its weak spots.

Most people interested in CS or engineering don't even bother applying to Harvard. It's not where the talent or energy is in these fields.

I absolutely believe that Harvard is not the first choice of people interested in CS. MIT, Stanford, Caltech are all more desirable. But are you seriously arguing that ambitious, worldly students apply to MIT and UMD but not other nationally prestigious universities? No. UMD might be a safety for the highest fliers, but they also apply (after MIT and Stanford) to Princeton, Harvard, etc. If the $$ is equal (which, given generous aid at the top privates, it will be except for donut hole families), students choose the high-prestige privates in even if they are ranked lower in their major.

+1. This is my kid. MIT, Stanford, Princeton are top of list. But will prob choose Yale or Harvard if those top 3 are not an option and they get into HY. They did get a likely from Yale so hopefully that is a positive sign. Did not even apply to UMD (out of state). Also considering/hoping for Caltech but not sure how generous FA

[Anonymous]

CS Rankings

# Institution Count Faculty
1 ► Carnegie Mellon University
2 ► Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
3 ► Univ. of California - San Diego
4 ► Georgia Institute of Technology
5 ► Massachusetts Institute of Technology
6 ► University of Michigan
7 ► University of Washington
8 ► Univ. of California
9 ► Cornell University
10 ► University of Maryland
11 ► Stanford University
12 ► Northeastern University
13 ► Purdue University
14 ► New York University
14 ► University of Texas at Austin
16 ► Princeton University

[Anonymous]

UMD is definitely one of the top 20 CS colleges in the country. Harvard is not.

[Anonymous]

Every Harvard person I work with is an idiot. I’d never let my kid apply there to be honest

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OK, UMD is not definitely as good as Stanford, MIT or Princeton etc but UVA is 36 in that list? Really?

Rank does not matter. It's not real.

[Anonymous]

UMD is great but with the changing landscape in AI at least somewhat weakening the demand for a general CS background, I'd still clearly recommend going to Harvard for an undergraduate CS degree.
The vast majority of the Google/Brin $$ doesn't go to CS. It goes to math (where his dad was a prof) and medical research. The Oculus $$ (and resulting Meta stock) has been pretty good though!