Google-based Ranking for Computer Science and Engineering Departments

Introduction: Rankings of Computer Science and Engineering departments continue to be a contentious topic. What factors should be counted, and how should they be weighted? Ask a different person, get a different answer. Can we do better?

The answer is a resounding yes. We propose a simpler, direct, and likely more meaningful method: Google-based Ranking. By building on top of the years of technology put into Google's novel PageRank™ algorithm, we can leverage the power of the Internet and deliver a complete ranking of the top departments in the field, all with the click of a button.

Methodology: We typed the following search terms into Google: Computer Science, Computer Sciences, and Computer Engineering. The second plural form of Computer Science was included because some departments (particularly the author's own institution) are known as a Department of Computer Sciences for strange and historical reasons. We then copied the top 30 results, excluding links to Wikipedia and other non-academic institutions and advertisements, thus leaving 26 or 27 schools. The results are listed below. We include, for the sake of comparison, the most recent U.S. News and World Report rankings.

Results:

Google: Computer Science 1. CMU 2. Maryland 3. U. Mass 4. Berkeley 5. Stanford 6. Cornell 7. Illinois 8. Princeton 9. Purdue 10. Georgia Tech 11. Brown 12. UCLA 13. Columbia 14. Indiana 15. Wisconsin 16. USC 17. Minnesota 18. SUNY-Stonybrook 19. Virginia 20. Texas 21. Yale 22. Cal Tech 23. Colorado 24. North Carolina 25. North Carolina State 26. Texas A and M 27. Washington

Google: Computer Sciences 1. Wisconsin 2. Texas 3. Purdue 4. U. Mass 5. Boston University 6. Penn 7. Stanford 8. MIT 9. CMU 10. Berkeley 11. Princeton 12. Illinois 13. Cornell 14. Maryland 15. Edinburgh 16. DIKU 17. UCLA 18. UC Santa Cruz 19. Columbia 20. USC 21. Brown 22. Utah 23. Indiana 24. Minnesota 25. HUJI 26. Rochester

U.S. News: Computer Science 1. Berkeley 1. CMU 1. MIT 1. Stanford 5. Cornell 5. Illinois 7. Washington 8. Princeton 9. Texas 9. Wisconsin 11. Cal Tech 11. Georgia Tech 13. UC San Diego 13. Maryland 15. Harvard 15. UCLA 15. Michigan 18. Columbia 18. Purdue 18. Penn 18. Yale 22. Brown 22. Rice 22. North Carolina 25. Duke 25. U. Mass 25. USC 28. Johns Hopkins 29. NYU 29. Rutgers 29. UC Irvine 29. Virginia

Google: Computer Engineering 1. Michigan 2. Illinois 3. Washington 4. Iowa State 5. CMU 6. Wisconsin 7. North Carolina State 8. UC Santa Cruz 9. Oregon State 10. Florida 11. Georgia Tech 12. Chico State 13. Texas 14. RIT 15. Case Western 16. Virginia Tech 17. San Jose State 18. Illinois-Chicago 19. RPI 20. Tulane 21. Mississippi State 22. Clemson 23. Purdue 24. USC 25. Cal Poly 26. Pitt 27. Syracuse

U.S. News: Computer Engineering 1. MIT 2. Stanford 3. Berkeley 4. CMU 5. Illinois 6. Michigan 7. Texas 8. Cornell 9. Washington 10. Princeton 11. Purdue 12. Wisconsin 13. Cal Tech 14. Georgia Tech 15. USC 16. UCLA 17. Rice 18. UC San Diego 19. RPI 19. Johns Hopkins

In these tables, schools that do particularly well in the Google-based Ranking system and not as well in the U.S. News Ranking are highlight in red. Conversely, schools that do well in the U.S. News Ranking and not the Google-based Ranking are highlighted in green.

We now focus on just computer science, as Google Trends tells us it is much more searched for than Computer Engineering:

(Also note the scary decline in the number of searches about Computer Science)

U.S. News Top 10 Computer Science departments, sorted by Google: Computer Sciences ranking:

1. Wisconsin

2. Texas

3. Stanford

4. MIT

5. CMU

6. Berkeley

7. Princeton

8. Illinois

9. Cornell

10. Washington

U.S. News Top 10 Computer Science departments, sorted by Google: Computer Science ranking:

1. CMU

2. Berkeley

3. Stanford

4. Cornell

5. Illinois

6. Princeton

7. Wisconsin

8. Texas

9. Washington

10. MIT

Given this data, we now compute our own, novel AverageRank™ statistic, which simply averages the above two tables and ignores virtually all other data, in what some have called a "useless" and others a "flat out wrong" statistical method:

1. CMU

1. Stanford

3. Wisconsin

4. Berkeley

5. Texas

6. Princeton

6. Illinois

6. Cornell

9. MIT

10. Washington

Conclusions: From our study, assuming that Google "knows all" and is likely right, we draw three primary conclusions:

• Wisconsin is likely underrated by U.S. News. This result is no surprise, particularly given the author of the article.
• MIT and Washington are likely overrated by U.S. News. This point is probably more surprising. Perhaps scholarship such as this and this has led to the demise of these highly-regarded schools.
• Other schools are about in the right place. This point is especially true if you (1) ignore some results and (2) play with the data in an odd and unsound manner, using (for example) the much-maligned AverageRank™ algorithm.

Future Work: In the future, we plan to conduct other searches, using advanced Google features such as quotes around the search terms and the OR keyword. We also hope to automate this process even further, thus eliminating the need to type up a report or even look at this web page again.

New! See this page in Romanian (courtesy A. Seremina). Warning: I don't read Romanian, and thus cannot verify the contents of this page.