What are the best colleges for computer science?

im_blue
Tue, 19 Jul 2005 19:39:37 +0000

whether a school has grade deflation or not doesn’t really matter for the purposes of Stanford PhD EE admissions. The PhD adcoms actually care about where you got your grades and how solid they are.

IMO, this is precisely why it often makes sense to turn down a better overall school for a better program, if you’re aiming for grad school. Perhaps not as extreme as UIUC over Harvard, but taking UIUC over Northwestern or Duke makes a lot of sense for CS/Engineering, especially if the latter would cost you a lot more money. Graduate schools know that highly ranked programs have more rigorous classes and labs and expect more from their students.



I would argue that if I was faced with that scenario, I would go to Harvard and major not in CS, but rather in math (or perhaps I would double in CS and math). You clearly don’t need a CS bachelor’s to get into a CS graduate program - a math bachelor’s works just fine.

Yes, you can get into CS grad programs with a BS in math, but doing so would put you at a disadvantage. Everyone else with a CS degree will jump right into the graduate CS courses and start doing their research, while you’ll have to waste time catching up to them. They’ll only need to take a couple of refresher courses to pass their PhD Qualifying Exams, while you’ll need to quickly get up to speed. Sure, a Harvard BS in Math shows that you have the capability, but you still don’t have the necessary background. Why start out grad school a step behind everyone else if you don’t need to? Also, many CS graduate programs explicitly state that they will not consider applicants who have not taken X, Y, and Z CS courses. If they’re going to be funding you for several years, they want you to be able to jump right in and produce.