I agree it’s too early to worry about grad school. I don’t know anything about Richmond, but I would seriously consider ASU. It’s got a lot of opportunities and a pretty good CS program itself. It’s also in a city with good opportunities for jobs. Not so sure about CS jobs in Virginia. Arizona is also not so far from California if he wanted to head up for the big pay jobs after graduation.
I didn’t see Richmond even on the CS rankings. But there seriously is a difference at lower tier vs mid tier vs upper tier schools. I’ve taken CS classes at a school ranked around 50, and also ranked around 75. The lower-tier school is so much softer. For example, they have a class called “Software Engineering.” This class is really just a basic object-oriented programming class. They also have an Operating Systems class, which is essentially just the 2nd half of the Computer Organization class I took at the mid-tier school.
@lb43823 Those rankings are based on research (or equivalently (more or less), Ph.D. programs). The Stanford Ph.D. program is absolutely fantastic.
Keep in mind if you want to do a nonthesis M.S. at Stanford, you could probably do so without much trouble. But if you want a thesis option, it may be difficult to find a professor to work with when there are 400 other Master’s students, plus all the Ph.D. students (who are the main priorities of the professors there).