US news states that UMD is #16 in computer science, is that true?
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Anonymous
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
+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
This has even extended to CS centered CLUBS at UMD. App Dev club received 1,000+ applications for maybe 100 or so spots. |
Anonymous
+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
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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
Rank does not matter. It's not real. |
Anonymous
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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! |
Anonymous
| Computer Science at UMD is limited enrollment and extremely selective. With a 15% acceptance rate, you literally need Ivy League stats to get into the UMD CS program. They are much nicer about admitting for other programs but their LEPs are very selective. |
Anonymous
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My kid applied to 5 schools in EA round. Perfect academic record and great ECs too. Applied to 5 schools for EA/ED - MIT, UMD, CMU, UIUC and GTech. He did ED for CMU because MIT does not have ED. It was actually an extremely stupid move to make. My kid was interested in either MIT or UMD. I made him apply ED to CMU because I thought the rankings were good. My DS was just not jazzed about CMU. Also, did not want UIUC because did not want to be in a cold place. Anyways, when CMU did not work out, I was very happy because I could not believe I was willing to shell out 400K on a school my DS was ambivalent about. No school, not even MIT, is worth 400K for CS. I would rather I give the 400K to my kid to give him a leg up. He only got into GTech and UMD in EA/ED round. Chose UMD over GTech because there was nothing special that GTech was offering him over UMD in terms of education, experience, internships or opportunity. Got into UMich, Purdue, VTech, UVA, UMBC in the regular round but was not interested and was pissed at me for making him fill the applications (Truthfully, I had panicked because DCUM had told me that we were being too ambitious and had applied to too few colleges) UMD tuition has been paid by UMD merit scholarship. So we have paid for only room and board and normal living costs. He has also earned a good amount each year by interning. Most kids who apply to MIT have the creds to apply to any top prestigious school for CS. And as more and more "MIT-worthy" kids come to study in public flagships, their rankings will continue to rise. MIT can only take a few small number of super-achievers. So, it is great that state schools are benefiting by getting these super-achievers. And these kids are also being employed by FAANG companies and other gov, academic and corporate entities. Harvard is not in consideration for most CS students. |
Anonymous
You might want to let people know this is data-driven; ranking based on the number of publications. A CS major would like this one. You plan to do a PHD you want to use this ranking. And no dude is manipulating this list. A school can climb the ranking by putting in the work. The US News one is "poofy" no-one knows why one is ranked higher. A school can climb by lining the pockets of some journalists not in the field. In both cases UMD was ranked high. And GMU is highest in VA using CSRankings. |
Anonymous
College Scorecard earnings 5 years after graduation for Computer Science BS majors: Harvard: $219,550 UMD: $144,220 |
Anonymous
Publications (research output) isn't a very good indication of undergraduate quality. |