In the 2027 U.S. News Computer Science Rankings, certain state colleges are ranked as high as or higher than their private college counterparts.
UIUC and Georgia Tech are ranked #5; Princeton is also ranked #5.
Purdue is ranked # 14; Yale is ranked #17.
The public colleges, though, have an overall much higher admission rate. Here’s a chart illustrating the difference.
| College | Computer Science Ranking | Overall Admission Rate |
| UIUC | 5 | 37% |
| Georgia Tech | 5 | 28% |
| Princeton | 5 | 4% |
| Purdue | 14 | 43% |
| Yale | 17 | 4% |
I discuss the broader changes in the 2027 Computer Science Rankings in a separate article.
Based on the data, the public colleges seem to offer much better chances of admission than the private ones—chances seven to ten times greater, in fact.
This suggests that a California CS student with a good GPA can simply apply to CS programs at public colleges, from UIUC to U Washington, and watch his mailbox fill up with acceptance letters in the spring. In April, he can travel the country to see which college best pleases him, and then carefully select the one that offers the best mix of program, price, and student life.
Unfortunately, this dream scenario rests on several mistaken assumptions about how admissions rates and college acceptances work for applicants to CS programs as out-of-state students.
What the Computer Science Rankings Don’t Tell You About Acceptance Rates
The Computer Science Rankings tell us which programs professors consider strongest, but they don’t tell us how difficult those programs are to enter. We don’t have admissions data for every top public CS program.
But when the schools do provide the data, the relevant CS admission rates are often significantly lower than a higher overall admission rate.
Computer Science vs. Overall Admission Rates
| School | CS Rank | What Admission Rank Measures | CS Admission Rate (for most recent year available) | Overall Admission Rates |
| Georgia Tech | 5 | CS + Computational Media admit rate | 11.3% | Residents: 28% Non-residents: 9% |
| UIUC | 5 | Computer Science Admit Rate | 7.4% | 38% |
| U Washington | 8 | Direct-to-major CS/CE rates, broken out by residency | WA residents: 41% Domestic OOS: 8% International: 4% | Residents: 47% Non-residents: 39% |
| UCLA | 14 | Admit rate by engineering major | CS: 7.3% CS + Eng: 7.2% | 9% |
| Purdue | 14 | Major-specific first-year admit rate | CS: 42.9% | 43% |
Rates are from university admissions or institutional-research pages.
U Washington overall rates are 3-year averages.
Compare these Computer Science acceptance rates with each university’s overall acceptance rate:
- Georgia Tech Computer Science acceptance rate: less than one-half the resident rate.
- UIUC Computer Science acceptance rate: one-fifth the overall rate.
- University of Washington Computer Science acceptance rate: Out-of-state CS rate is one-sixth the overall rate.
- UCLA Computer Science acceptance rate: comparable to, though still lower than the overall rate.
- Purdue Computer Science acceptance rate: almost identical to the overall rate.
Of the five schools for which we have data, four have Computer Science admission rates close to 10%; in the case of three of these schools, those rates are significantly lower than the school’s overall or resident admission rates.
This suggests that for public universities, the CS admission rate can be much lower than the overall admission rate, suggesting that it is much harder to get into some top public CS programs than it first appears.
Why Public Computer Science Programs May Still Be a Better Fit for Some Students
Nonetheless, for strong CS students, an admission rate of 8% to a CS program might be an easier hurdle to cross than an admission rate of 8-10% for a private university like Rice, Tufts, or Emory. That’s because, well, these are CS students applying to a CS program. They have spent their spare time coding, building robots, and studying math—all activities that are attractive to CS programs.
By contrast, top liberal arts universities are looking for students with interests in the humanities as well as in STEM.
For example, Cornell, an Ivy League school ranked #8 for CS, requires all applicants, including applicants in Computer Science, to provide letters of recommendation from both a STEM and a humanities teacher; without the rec from a humanities teacher, you can’t even submit an application. Other liberal arts universities, though they are less restrictive with their application process, inform us that they expect recommendations from both STEM and humanities teachers, even for CS majors.
By the way, this humanities letter requirement extends into private technical schools. Caltech and MIT openly state that they are looking for students with a strong background in the humanities and expect recommendations from both STEM and humanities teachers. Caltech, like Cornell, requires a letter from a humanities teacher, and MIT strongly recommends one.
Recommendation Requirements at Top Public Computer Science Programs
What if future Computer Science majors have not excelled in an English, history, or foreign language class, and thus cannot secure a strong letter of recommendation from a humanities teacher? In that case, a public university is potentially a better fit: Among the highly ranked public CS programs I reviewed, I found no humanities-teacher recommendation requirement.
UIUC and UW, in fact, tell Computer Science applicants not to send letters at all. The UC system requires no letters of recommendation. For Georgia Tech, UT Austin, and Purdue, letters of recommendation are optional, and there is no humanities requirement. Michigan, Wisconsin-Madison, and Maryland require only a single letter of recommendation—again, with no humanities requirement.
This means that even UIUC, with a published Computer Science admission rate of 7.4%, is a candidate school for CS students who might lack the well-rounded academic excellence required for top liberal arts universities. Purdue, another top-15 program, is another.
Other strong public universities for Computer Science students are the University of Maryland – College Park (#17), the University of Wisconsin – Madison (#22), and the rising University of Massachusetts – Amherst (#28).
Finally, there are schools less popular with California students but still worth considering for Computer Science: Ohio State, Penn State, the University of Colorado – Boulder, and the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities. All these schools are tied at #34.
But applying to a public university as an out-of-state student introduces additional challenges to the application process. For California in particular, students should consider whether the out-of-state college has a good track record of admitting students from out of state. Some do, but some don’t. I will examine out-of-state acceptance rates at top public universities in a separate article.