Today, we’re going to be talking about the top 10 universities for Computer Science in the world. These rankings are based on the QS rankings of colleges and universities which are based on such factors as academic reputation, employer reputation, citations per professor, and the H-index. If you want to learn a bit more about that, you can go to QS website, but the point being that these are based on an index of a number of factors and are by no means necessarily the definitive rating of what the best computer science schools are on the world.
About Computer Science
According to Oxford University,
Computer science is all about learning and understand the mathematical, scientific and engineering principles underlying every kind of computing system for mobile phones and the internet via systems that interpret natural language, to the supercomputers the forecast tomorrow’s weather or simulate the effects of disease on the human heart.
What we’re going to be talking about is what the best universities in the world are to learn computer science both at a practical level and also intellectually and theorem.
Top 10 Computer Science Universities in the World
Below, you’ll find the list from number 10 to 1. Let’s go 🙂
10. National University of Singapore (NUS)
The NUS school of computing was founded out of the Nanyang University Department of Computer science which started in 1975, and it was the first of its kind in Singapore and still the best in Singapore.
NUS doesn’t just focus on giving its students the practical skills for computer science, for data management, that sort of thing academically, they’re also really really big on connecting their students with entrepreneurial opportunities and mentorship. A big example of this is something which is called “The Furnace” which is the startup incubator at NUS which offers funding, mentorship and a lot of other fantastic resources and infrastructure so that computer science students can not only learn about CS but can take their start-up ideas from ideation to completion under the mentorship of Industry Titans.
9. ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology)
Here, computer science program was founded in 1981. There are 30 professors from over 10 countries in the department teaching more than 1,400 students with 60 post-docs. ETH Zurich is all about collaboration. Well, they have a lot of ties to the electrical engineering departments and the mathematics Department.
They’re also creating a lot of collaborations recently with other disciplines including physics, the life sciences and mechanical engineering, so that computer science students are focused on using their skills and applying them to other sciences to better the world.
ETH Zurich also has a lot of connections to big Industry players, such as IBM, Google, Microsoft and Disney.
8. EPFL – École polytechnique fĂ©dĂ©rale de Lausanne
Number eight on our list is École polytechnique fĂ©dĂ©rale de Lausanne(EPFL) in Switzerland. EPFL is an institute that focuses on the natural sciences in Engineering, so naturally, it has a lot of great ties for Computer Science students to collaborate with other students to really benefit the Sciences. One of the biggest draws to EPFL isn’t just its curriculum and fantastic faculty in the computer science department, but also its internship program which connects its computer science students to places such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, who recruit directly on campus and work with EPFL to create fantastic internship opportunities for their students.
Courses at EPFL can be taught in French and English. They highly recommend that you know both languages if you’re going to go there.
7. Harvard in Cambridge Massachusetts
Harvard is home to one of the most famous computer science courses in the world known as CS50 introduction to computer science, which is not only taught at Harvard and it’s world famous Sanders Theater, but is also taught online now to thousands of students all around the world. You might be able to take those classes yourself.
A very exciting development at Harvard is that in 2014, the university announced that it was going to expand its computer science faculty by 50%, thanks to an enormous donation by Steve Ballmer, who you might know from his work in being the Microsoft CEO.
Harvard computer science students can know that they are at the forefront of research opportunities in artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, data management systems and more, especially through collaboration the computer science department has with such institute as the center for research on computation society, the Institute for applied computational science in the Birkman Center for Internet and Society.
6. University of Oxford
The University of Oxford whose computer science program only has about 160 undergraduates and has a new degree in computer science and philosophy which includes an even smaller cohort of students.
In addition to Oxford’s groundbreaking work at the Inner Section of Computer Science and philosophy, they also have a lot of practical partnerships with many institutions, both on the research side and on the internship side, this includes Intel, Microsoft, as well as government and public funded institutions within the United Kingdom, including the Department of Traded Industry and the National Health Service.
So if you’re studying computer science at Oxford, you can guarantee that you’ll be working with major companies or with the government of the UK itself on groundbreaking computer science work.
5. The University of Cambridge
Cambridge was one of the first pioneers in the actual study of computer science and continues to be at the helm leading the best research in the world. This might not be apparent from the beautiful Gothic buildings around Cambridge, but Cambridge is right now in an area known as the Silicon Fen, sort of like Silicon Valley, but more British, there’s more than 1,000 specialized Computing and advanced technology companies that are sprouting up in the Cambridge area, which means a huge opportunity for computer science students at Cambridge to work with those new developing CS companies.
Cambridge not only has a huge emphasis on practical programming skills, but also likes to steer its students to the underlying theories in business, law, government and economics. They love having their students talk about how those theories play out in computer science.
Like all other courses at Cambridge, your evaluation, if you’re studying Computer Science at Cambridge, will be heavily weighted towards assessments and papers taken at the end of term.
4. University of California
This university at Berkeley is just a short distance from Silicon Valley. The electrical engineering and computer science department at UC Berkeley offers 2 distinct degree options for students interested in Computer Science.
You’re going to either get to Bachelor of Science offered by the College of Engineering or a Bachelor of the Arts in Computer Science, which should be offered by the College of Letters and science. While the faculty and courses at UC Berkeley are some of the best in the world, perhaps one of the biggest benefits of studying at Berkeley is as close proximity to Silicon Valley, a lot of UC Berkeley graduates in computer science go directly into Silicon Valley or even work in Silicon Valley for major tech companies at the same time as they’re studying at Berkeley.
3. Carnegie Mellon University
Specifically in their school of Computer Science, a lot of exciting work is going on right now at Carnegie Mellon University, which offers fantastic programs for its computer science students and groundbreaking research and a great example of this is a brand-new degree at the CMU School of computer science, which is aimed specifically at preparing researchers for AI directed experimentation.
It’s called the Master of Science and Automated Science, Biological Experimentation and it’s going to be beginning in Fall of 2019. CMU places a huge emphasis on interdisciplinary Majors such as Computer Science in the Arts and Music and Technology.
2. Stanford University
Stanford University is located in Palo Alto near the heart of Silicon Valley. That’s right! Silicon Valley. You can walk from Stanford to Google.
I know I said that UC Berkeley was close to the heart of Silicon Valley, but Stanford is too. They’re both fantastic schools with some of the best computer science programs in the world located to the biggest most exciting tech companies in the world.
Stanford’s Computer Science Department is housed within this Department of Engineering and has 10 different tracks, including Artificial Intelligence, Human Computer Interaction and Bio-Computation.
Similar to some of the other universities I’ve discussed today, Stanford places a huge emphasis on interdisciplinary work, making sure that its Computer Science students are working with other students in areas such as linguistics, genetics, medicine, engineering and Manufacturing.
1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
The Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at MIT is the largest department at MIT and starting salaries for students graduating with a bachelor’s degree in computer science from MIT are well over $100,000.
MIT’s Electrical Engineering and Computer Science program offers 5 undergraduate degrees at MIT as well as a Master’s in Engineering, which is available to undergrads.
They also recently changed their undergrads degree programs in order to give students more flexibility so they could pursue even more of their own interests. MIT is the cream of the crop.
So that has been the top 10 Computer Science Universities in the world. As I said at the beginning, these are the QS rankings and there are many other ways to rank these colleges and universities and there are many other ways to find the computer science school that is the best fit for you in particular.