Just looked up the stats for the current CMU SCS freshman class.

Middle 50% SAT: 1570-1580 (770-780V, 800-800M).

Holy Crap.

Anonymous wrote:I thought Stevens Institute of Tech, US military, US Navy, Worcester, Cali polytechnic, Air force, BU, BC, Colorado SOM, and Tufts would be ranked higher.

Emory and Georgetown are higher than I thought. Emory a program is only 4 years old I believe.

Those universities are simply less well-known and generally focused on undergraduate education (other than BU), so their ranking will be lower.

Stevens, Worcester, Cali Poly are great technical schools though, think any employer who knows the schools knows that.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Computer science has almost nothing to do with so-called "computer science" jobs.

If you want a Ph.D. in Computer Science you perhaps should care about "computer science rankings", otherwise job placement is what matters at the end of the day.

This sounds right. There are definitely students who want to do research, and thank goodness for them as they continue to advance the field. For them, the top-end graduate programs are a worthy discussion.

But the vast majority of students are looking at jobs in industry. Given the voracious industry appetite for programming talent, any of the top 100 are good choices.

Absolutely correct. Like you said it's noble to go into academia in Computer Science (and there are areas of computer science that are "easier" than others), but it's a profoundly difficult path for all but the brightest of individuals. In fact for some areas like theoretical CS a strong math undergraduate degree is preferable.

That being said, some of the higher rated schools are likely to have more established networks and hiring pipelines. There are some CS-related industries where it's difficult to break in without a referral from someone already inside.

Any top 100 CS school is fine if you want to get any job.

If a student wants to get the top jobs, then yes the school matters because otherwise, the student isn't getting recruited out of college for internships and jobs, and the first job carries over to the later jobs.

That's simply how it is. CS is less prestige-focused than finance and business. However, stop acting like a student from a relatively unknown school has the same job opportunities as a student from CMU or Berkeley.

Even after getting the job, the salary compensation is different for students recruited from top schools vs. those from the rest. Tech companies fight for top talent and they use top schools as a proxy.

This "school you go to doesn't matter" schtick is tiring. Yes, if you simply want a paper with a Bachelors written on it perhaps. Or you want a simple life and don't mind earning less. But otherwise, it matters so please stop lying to the parents of prospective students.

Obviously if you are taking a second mortgage to send your kid to Stanford instead of UMBC, that's not advisable.

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.

No, this is the ranking for undergraduates. It's entirely based on a peer survey - how faculty at top schools rank the undergraduate program quality of other top schools.

That's going to be of somewhat limited value. Most faculty aren't that plugged into the goings on at other schools to the point that they'll be able to make a fully informed decision. Presumably their views will be formulated largely based on graduate students who came from said institutions (and the professors at those institutions), which is a somewhat limited perspective.

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.

No, this is the ranking for undergraduates. It's entirely based on a peer survey - how faculty at top schools rank the undergraduate program quality of other top schools.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Computer science has almost nothing to do with so-called "computer science" jobs.

If you want a Ph.D. in Computer Science you perhaps should care about "computer science rankings", otherwise job placement is what matters at the end of the day.

This sounds right. There are definitely students who want to do research, and thank goodness for them as they continue to advance the field. For them, the top-end graduate programs are a worthy discussion.

But the vast majority of students are looking at jobs in industry. Given the voracious industry appetite for programming talent, any of the top 100 are good choices.

Absolutely correct. Like you said it's noble to go into academia in Computer Science (and there are areas of computer science that are "easier" than others), but it's a profoundly difficult path for all but the brightest of individuals. In fact for some areas like theoretical CS a strong math undergraduate degree is preferable.

That being said, some of the higher rated schools are likely to have more established networks and hiring pipelines. There are some CS-related industries where it's difficult to break in without a referral from someone already inside.

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!

CMU was ranked in the lower 20s overall in the 90s, and has slipped to upper 20s as the ranking metrics have changed. It basically is still two different schools, the science half and the arts half (much lower SATs, GPAs etc) -- maybe that is why you are confused. You knew people who went to the art side.

Case, which has been rising up the rankings has a similar story. Carnegie U and Mellon College were two different schools as were Case College and Western Reserve. You can still see the science and arts split at Case.

Anonymous wrote:Computer science has almost nothing to do with so-called "computer science" jobs.

If you want a Ph.D. in Computer Science you perhaps should care about "computer science rankings", otherwise job placement is what matters at the end of the day.

This sounds right. There are definitely students who want to do research, and thank goodness for them as they continue to advance the field. For them, the top-end graduate programs are a worthy discussion.

But the vast majority of students are looking at jobs in industry. Given the voracious industry appetite for programming talent, any of the top 100 are good choices.

Computer science has almost nothing to do with so-called "computer science" jobs.

If you want a Ph.D. in Computer Science you perhaps should care about "computer science rankings", otherwise job placement is what matters at the end of the day.

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."

Considering the ABET requirement, I guess that would a number of SLACs from consideration. Interesting to, that in the case of NYU, CS program at Tandon Engineering would be included, but most receive degrees from the CAS.

*exclude

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."

Considering the ABET requirement, I guess that would a number of SLACs from consideration. Interesting to, that in the case of NYU, CS program at Tandon Engineering would be included, but most receive degrees from the CAS.

If you can get the data, you are better off looking at placement data for recent graduates.

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.

US News has a separate ranking of CS graduate programs. Relatively speaking, this ranking has more emphasis on undergraduate teaching. As a result, the private colleges are ranked higher in this list.

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.

Wisconsin is one of the best OOS values and experience for the money in the country.

Anonymous wrote:

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?

Survey results can be more trustworthy than formulas which can be easily manipulated by both the rank provider and participants.