[jbrowneWWFC]

I have received offers from Birmingham, Edinburgh and Sheffield to study Computer Science next year.

All things being equal, which of these do you think are the best universities for Computer Science?

[tooosh]

Edinburgh.

[Casshern1456]

Birmingham is pretty good for CS, but so is Edinburgh - time to see which town you like better.

[FinalMH]

Edinburgh.

[fluteflute]

I've heard very good things about Edinburgh.
I've heard good things about Birmingham.
I've not heard anything about Sheffield.

[jbrowneWWFC]

Yeah, to be honest it was probably mainly between Birmingham and Edinburgh.
I'm strangely drawn to Birmingham. Would I be stupid to reject an offer from Edinburgh?

[MartinMorrison]

Depends if there are any specifics you are looking for during your undergrad or afterwards. I think Edinburgh is slightly better known in the US but I could be wrong. The University of Edinburgh itself is very well known overseas because of its history. It also has an excellent informatics department: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education...e-courses.html

The informatics department at Edinburgh is not only the biggest research group in Computer Science in the UK, but the biggest overall: http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departme...rch-excellence
The 2008 RAE confirms this and it is discussed in detail at http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/mfourm...atics-and.html

If you're not that interested in research it won't make much of a difference to you. There are more module choices in Informatics at Edinburgh than Birmingham but not such a huge gap. If you prefer the city of Birmingham over Edinburgh and these factors of research aren't important to you, then I suggest you go to Birmingham since its CS program also looks quite good. Also, if you may be interested in student exchanges both universities have exchange program with ivy league universities (Bham: Cornell, Edin: Penn) so either way they are definitely well connected which is also an important factor.