What are the best colleges for computer science?

sabertoothtiger
Wed, 20 Jul 2005 11:26:47 +0000

whether anybody here would truly turn down Harvard for Illinois or CMU for undergrad seems pretty dubious to me

I’m going to CMU for CS (starting next month), and I’ve met several others who turned down higher-ranked overall schools like Princeton, MIT, Caltech, Rice, Northwestern, Cornell, etc. for CS at CMU. I considered applying to Harvard and was qualified (though I probably wouldn’t have been accepted, statistically speaking), but I didn’t like the elitist atmosphere or the lack of respect for technical subjects that I perceived when I visited the campus.

I think a lot of people oriented towards CS and engineering (and who are actually interested in working in these subjects, not just as a route to “I-BaNkiNg!!1” and such things) would prefer to be immersed in a strongly focused research-oriented environment than a liberal-artsy we’re-so-great type of thing. Financial considerations like merit scholarships can also play a role. Thus I think turning down HYP for something like CMU SCS is understandable even if HYP people are almost equally competitive for top grad schools.