Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In college admissions discussions, there seems to be consensus of the Big 4 of computer science: MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Cal. And in this survey of people across academic institutions, those same 4 are at the top.

Yes. And that's not based on US News ranking. Even 20 years ago those are the four top CS schools. US News tried to make itself legit by conforming to that. There is a big drop-off after the big 4.

Lol here we go. How are they conforming when this just survey results?

^ARE! (Stupid iPhone typos)

Anonymous wrote:GMU almost even with W&M, nice. I’d say if you want a job at a Federal agency in the DC area, Mason gets the bump. (So many Mason grads, and I’ve been uniformly impressed.)

PP here, ^^^^ I meant this for people who aren’t looking at VA schools. Obviously, Tech and UVA are better, but if the choice is between Mason and W&M....

GMU almost even with W&M, nice. I’d say if you want a job at a Federal agency in the DC area, Mason gets the bump. (So many Mason grads, and I’ve been uniformly impressed.)

Agreed. I was an undergrad in the 80's, and CMU always one of the best CS departments. I was deciding between Carnegie and Berkeley and chose Berkeley, mainly because of cost and distance.

Anonymous wrote:I'm surprised that Wisconsin is as high up as it is. Isn't it pretty easy to get into? Even OOS-- like compared to Harvey Mudd and Rice?

And I would have thought Cal Poly SLO and Colorado School of Mines and the service academies would have been up higher.

Tricky list. Some of the schools have two CS majors: one in the engineering school and one not.

Some of those schools let you in to freshman year, but maybe not the major come sophomore year. Madison is like that with engineering.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't claim to be up on CS rankings, but Carnegie Mellon being #2 does surprise me. When I was in undergrad way back in the 90's, it seemed like it had a reputation for being a decent school overall, but nowhere near in the same league as MIT or Stanford, etc. Then again, that's speaking as a school overall, not just CS, as CS back then definitely wasn't what it is now!

Times have changed since the 90s. Carnegie Mellon is high up there for CS.

I think you just weren't plugged into Carnegie Mellon in the 90s. It's always been incredibly well regarded for CS, engineering, and theater.

Anonymous wrote:In college admissions discussions, there seems to be consensus of the Big 4 of computer science: MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Cal. And in this survey of people across academic institutions, those same 4 are at the top.

Yes. And that's not based on US News ranking. Even 20 years ago those are the four top CS schools. US News tried to make itself legit by conforming to that. There is a big drop-off after the big 4.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These rankings are usually based on faculty productivity. Number of publications, amount of research grant money brought in. That is highly correlated with the size of the faculty, of course. More professors means more papers and more money.

"Top academics and officials at computer science programs rated the overall quality of undergraduate programs with which they were familiar on a 1-5 scale. A school’s undergraduate computer science rank is solely determined by its average of scores received from these surveys. To be included in this standalone peer assessment survey and ranked, a program must either have been accredited by ABET, housed in an institution that grants Ph.D.s in computer science or engineering, or have recently awarded 20 or more bachelor's degrees in computer science."

Would have been more informative to also be able to include SLACs. Obviously, these criteria prevent their inclusion in the rankings.

What SLACs are noteworthy but don’t offer at least 20 bachelor degrees?

Anonymous wrote:I don't claim to be up on CS rankings, but Carnegie Mellon being #2 does surprise me. When I was in undergrad way back in the 90's, it seemed like it had a reputation for being a decent school overall, but nowhere near in the same league as MIT or Stanford, etc. Then again, that's speaking as a school overall, not just CS, as CS back then definitely wasn't what it is now!

Times have changed since the 90s. Carnegie Mellon is high up there for CS.

I don't claim to be up on CS rankings, but Carnegie Mellon being #2 does surprise me. When I was in undergrad way back in the 90's, it seemed like it had a reputation for being a decent school overall, but nowhere near in the same league as MIT or Stanford, etc. Then again, that's speaking as a school overall, not just CS, as CS back then definitely wasn't what it is now!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These rankings are usually based on faculty productivity. Number of publications, amount of research grant money brought in. That is highly correlated with the size of the faculty, of course. More professors means more papers and more money.

"Top academics and officials at computer science programs rated the overall quality of undergraduate programs with which they were familiar on a 1-5 scale. A school’s undergraduate computer science rank is solely determined by its average of scores received from these surveys. To be included in this standalone peer assessment survey and ranked, a program must either have been accredited by ABET, housed in an institution that grants Ph.D.s in computer science or engineering, or have recently awarded 20 or more bachelor's degrees in computer science."

Would have been more informative to also be able to include SLACs. Obviously, these criteria prevent their inclusion in the rankings.

In college admissions discussions, there seems to be consensus of the Big 4 of computer science: MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Cal. And in this survey of people across academic institutions, those same 4 are at the top.

Anonymous wrote:These rankings are usually based on faculty productivity. Number of publications, amount of research grant money brought in. That is highly correlated with the size of the faculty, of course. More professors means more papers and more money.

"Top academics and officials at computer science programs rated the overall quality of undergraduate programs with which they were familiar on a 1-5 scale. A school’s undergraduate computer science rank is solely determined by its average of scores received from these surveys. To be included in this standalone peer assessment survey and ranked, a program must either have been accredited by ABET, housed in an institution that grants Ph.D.s in computer science or engineering, or have recently awarded 20 or more bachelor's degrees in computer science."

Anonymous wrote:These rankings are usually based on faculty productivity. Number of publications, amount of research grant money brought in. That is highly correlated with the size of the faculty, of course. More professors means more papers and more money.

Not really. This is an undergraduate ranking based on survey only.