Your CS university ranking

As we all know there are several disputable rankings over the internet. Some of them say sth. completely different than others, some seem like biased a bit etc. Therefore, it might be a good approach to ask TSR members abouth their own hierarchy of highger education institutions in terms of CS. A few of my types would be as follows, in decreasing reputation:

Cambridge, Imperial, Bristol, Oxford, Warwick, York, Edinburgh, Southampton

Probably you would have another types, looking forward to your picks and opinions.

Reply 1

rottcodd

I would say that a league teable devised by somebody from TSR is just as useless as one devised by a newspaper really. Everybody has their own league table to follow, one that is judged using criteria that is important to them.

Reply 2

ttx

A more interesting question might be what criteria are important to you when picking a comp sci degree ? (research impact, quality of undergrad tuition, job opportunities, theoreticallity/practicallity of course, ability of fellow students, wealth of department, etc.).

Reply 3

Bober02

Well I started it cause I thought it is not completely useless. Basically, you have the opportunity to say why this university is better than another IN YOUR VIEW I stress... I wanted this to be a thread of your own opinions of the unis, your own ranking, might be biased as hell, but perhaps some suggestions might help someone in picking his own uni. I don't expect this to be a competition for times, with research assessment or teaching rating bull****...

Reply 4

Ben

Bober02

Therefore, it might be a good approach to ask TSR members abouth their own hierarchy of highger education institutions in terms of CS. A few of my types would be as follows, in decreasing reputation:

Cambridge, Imperial, Bristol, Oxford, Warwick, York, Edinburgh, Southampton

I would rank Oxford and York above Bristol.

Reply 5

flugestuge

Cambridge,
Imperial,
Oxford

Big gap

York
Edinburgh
Bristol

Smallish gap

Warwick
Southampton

Reply 6

loopymeg

I lost faith in rankings a long time ago because for the most part they are absolute bull****.

Reply 7

Eifel

In academic circles, Edinburgh is considered best in the UK for Computer Science and probably the best in Europe. Maybe Cambridge may be on par with it, but it is certainly better than all the rest that you've listed. The research done at the School of Informatics @ Edinburgh has the highest RAE score of all UK universities for this subject.

So far, the only league table to recognize this has been the latest Guardian table which places Edinburgh at the top for Computer Science.

Reply 8

ttx

Eifel

So far, the only league table to recognize this has been the latest Guardian table which places Edinburgh at the top for Computer Science.

Have you read the Guardian table for Computer Science ? - it's a joke Bangor is rater higher than Cambridge, Imperials Comp Sci degree is classified as Electronic Engineering, the added value metric favors weaker universities, and the table treats CS and IT as the same subject.

Edinburgh has a good comp sci department, but the using the Guardian table as evidence is silly. Not to mention the G table only uses undergraduate metrics which are completely unrelated to the research at a university.

More useful evidence would be major breakthroughs/advances that have taken place at that CS department, Turing Award winners on staff, amount of research funding, Thomson SCI rankings of researchers,etc.

Reply 9

Bober02

I would say that Edinburgh might be best in Scotland, not in UK and definitely not in Europe. It is a respectable uni but there are several other computing departments I would place before Edinburgh's.

As for the Guardian's ranking, I personally believe that it is the ****test of all ever created. It brings completely random unis forward and leave generally-agreed-to-be-best unis far behind... Why, cause they take stupid criteria to create this table, that's what it is.

Reply 10

flugestuge

Eifel

In academic circles, Edinburgh is considered best in the UK for Computer Science and probably the best in Europe.

Funny how so little CS research actually comes out of Edinburgh.
Let me guess, you have links to Scotch-land :wink:

, or study in Scotty university.
Bias !!!!!!!!

Reply 11

Eifel

I'm not a UK citizen nor resident and have nothing to do with Edinburgh Uni. I'm a final year CS student though. :smile:

It's just that I've made quite a big research on the web for the past 15 days looking at CS schools in Europe and in the US for their reputation and achievements. In Europe, I'd say next to Edinburgh and Cambridge (for CS) is ETH in Switzerland. Everything else is far behind.

Just checkout the RAE scores of Ed.

Reply 12

Eifel

flugestuge

Funny how so little CS research actually comes out of Edinburgh.

For your information, RAE means Research Assessment Exercise.

If you ask Dr Google about it, he'll tell you the following:
Research Assessment Exercise - A peer review exercise conducted every few years to evaluate the quality of research in UK higher education institutions.

By the way, head off to inf.ed.ac.uk and check out how long a list of research students and staff they have. You don't suppose they just sit around and do nothing :biggrin: