^^^Most CS rankings are for grad schools which would automatically exclude LACs.
@happy1 Yes that’s understood. Doesn’t change the rankings very much regardless. Harvey Mudd is probably the highest ranked LA college for CS but isn’t in the same category as other top colleges in overall ranking or CS.
2 pre-med, 3 mechanical engineering, 1 undecided engineering, 1 international relations, 1 stem education. I am curious to see which ones end up sticking with their path. The IR kid is the only one I would place a bet on. (I’m sure I’m supposed to say the same of the education kid since he’s mine but we’ll see 
)
@moscott I guess we will have to agree to disagree.
And now back to our regularly scheduled topic…
http://www.collegechoice.net/rankings/best-computer-science-degree/
https://www.niche.com/colleges/rankings/best-colleges-for-computer-science/
Not sure if there is a ranking out there period that doesn’t list MIT, Stanford, Berkeley and CMU as the 4 best in any order.
Although I am not expert in the area, I wouldn’t disagree with that top 4 ranking. Just saying there are also fine programs at some LACs.
@happy1 I would be very interested to see your list of LA colleges that top students majoring in CS are choosing over the typical top universities that are noted in the other thread?
@happy1 Btw I’m not saying you are wrong or there aren’t some great LA colleges that offer CS but it seems that the vast majority of top 10 students in HS graduations that are majoring in CS aren’t choosing them.
We are way off topic…but there are many reasons to choose a college. Some people choose LACs because they feel that they will thrive in that type of environment. If that is the case, they can and should seek out and find the LACs that do offer solid CS programs. Hopefully we can agree on that.
Absolutely.
@moscott Sorry - we cross-posted.
@moscott - that first link is only universities. Because they only look at universities. Harvey Mudd isn’t there and it would be if they included LACs. They say they used USNews rankings in their ranking, I’m guessing they only used the national university ranking as USN ranks LACs separately.
The Niche ranking does have some LACs - Carleton, Mudd, Bowdoin all in the top 25.
Several of the top kids at D18’s HS are going to major in BME. One is going to UPenn/Wharton for business.
BTW, D18 says “don’t major in BME, there are no jobs after graduation”. Don’t know if that’s true or not.
For heaven’s sake, it’s a simple matter of arithmetic.
There are fewer places at LACs than at universities. Duh.
Elite LACs are full and have low acceptance rates. But even a smallish to mid university, like many of the Ivies, which typically enroll about 1,200 to 2,000 students per class, enroll about 4 times as many as a 2,000 student elite LAC.
I had to check this one, but based on the honors program when D was a senior, these were the top 10 or so:
Molecular and Cell Biology
Premed (3)
Physics
Microbiology & Public Health (double major)
Sociology & International Relations (double major)
Secondary Education (2)
Math/Actuarial Science
Architecture
And I’m as surprised as others must be—not an engineer or CS major in the bunch. And most, not all, are going to large state flagships or fairly prestigious (top 30ish or higher) private universities that do have good engineering departments.
at our large public HS the top 10 were in no particular order OU:premed 3 Texas one Business 2 engineering, West Point x 2, Annapolis x 1, Rice:music, 2 A&M engineering and not sure. Few go to NE elite schools, there is no significant history of it at least and Engineering dominates. in 2016 there was one for seminary, one to AF academy and 8 to various schools for engineering.
@Consolation Simple math would equal out…which it doesn’t. Williams has about 600 enrolled while Princeton about 1,300. Yet look at the thread of where top 10 students are going. 50-1 being Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Princeton etc…for 1 Williams. Bad math.
@moscott actually, the bad math is yours. The top LACs (Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore, Pomona) between them have about 1800 entering spots per year. The Ivies and the super elite Ivy-plus schools (Stanford, UChicago, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern) have almost 25,000 entering spots between them. Moreover, many top students naturally gravitate to their state flagships for financial and personal reasons. Simple math means that the elite LACs will have minimal representation compared to a far larger number of far larger universities.
I’m not sure what the point of this thread is. Perhaps you could explain it to us.
@ThankYouforHelp I know exactly how many spots for each college. If you again look at Williams and Princeton in specific it is about 600 to 1300 per year. Both not large by any measure. However if you look thru the threads of where the top 10 students from each HS are/were attending an overwhelming amount were choosing Princeton to 1 Williams. Nowhere near the same rate as the 2:1(approximate) ratio of enrolled students at the 2 fine schools. The point of the thread is to understand why there seems to be a BIG drop off in top students choosing to attend a top LA college instead of the “typical” prestigious colleges. Is it not conducive to their major? Simply name prestige? Why not the #1 LA college vs say # 18 National U or a Hopkins? Why wouldn’t more top students choose better class sizes or a more focused education on undergrad?
Again go thru the thread of the top 10 students at their HS and where they enrolled. Even Cal Tech(250 or so) was a 10-1 vs Williams or Amherst. So there goes your theory of simply school size.
Yes, everyone wants Princeton. At Princeton you get the advantages of a national university, the advantages of an LAC, and the advantages of all of your high school classmates, neighbors and relatives falling down on their face in obeisance when you walk by. I don’t blame anyone for choosing that. If you are trying to prove that Princeton and Harvard are more desirable to most high schoolers than Williams and Amherst are, well you have succeeded in that not very difficult task. HYPSM are more desirable, because they combine the ultimate in resources, prestige, name recognition and career opportunities with the small classes, personal attention and cohesion of an LAC.
However, if you are suggesting that the top LACs aren’t competing with the rest of the national universities outside of HYPSM, you are not doing a very good job of it. The average SAT at Amherst, for example, is higher than at Johns Hopkins, Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Notre Dame, Georgetown etc. Amherst accepts 14 percent of its applicants, and if you remove recruited athletes, it accepts under 10 percent. Naviance tells us that from our high school it is harder for an applicant to be admitted to Amherst than to any of those schools (well, about the same as Dartmouth).
In some parts of the country, like most of the South and Midwest pretty much no one applies to the top LACs. They are not on their radar. In other places (like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC, San Francisco, Seattle, etc), the top students tend to have LACs on their lists competing with every national university other than HYPSM.