I don’t know if this thread is too old but going to try and it anyway. My question (and I do not have any special interest in UT Austin) is - why is UT Austin WAY ahead of RPI in CS? How does one measure that? Do UT Austin undergraduates make twice what RPI CS undergrads make? Do UT Austin undergrads know CS twice as better as those from RPI? My D is going to school in 2017 and I struggle with this everyday. If prestige is important then a CMU, MIT, Stanford is probably way more prestigious. Buth then when you get off the “CS Ivy list” (my term for top CS schools), how does one say that a UT Austin with almost 2000 students in CS can provide way better education than RPI which has 350 CS students?