Studying computer science is a smart bet in today’s world because the career opportunities for tech-savvy graduates are expanding every year.
There is also an extensive choice of universities when it comes to deciding where to study the subject.
Some 1,027 schools feature in this year.
More than 120 of the featured universities are American, and 61 institutions are based in the UK. Canada and Australia are also well represented with 28 and 30 institutions respectively.
Computer science degrees vary in their focus and specialisms. Some courses are very theoretical, while others are more focused on programming.
The ranking uses the same methodology as the World University Rankings, but with slightly higher weighting given to the innovation metric and lower weighting for citations. The full methodology can be found.
Scroll down to find out what you can do with a computer science degree.
Top 5 universities for computer science
5. ETH Zurich
ETH Zurich has a history of developing software and designing computer systems. Eventually, these projects called for a dedicated computer science department, which was created in 1981.
The department covers many areas of computer science, including computational intelligence, networks and distributed systems, algorithms and theory, and information security. Different programming languages are also taught on software engineering courses.
There are close relationships with other departments within the university and with partners in business and industry, such as IBM, Microsoft, Google, SAP and Disney, with which the university collaborates on research projects.
4. Carnegie Mellon University
The Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science was established more than 25 years ago.
The university introduced the US’ first bachelor’s degree in artificial intelligence in 2018, and it added a bachelor’s programmer in human-computer interaction in 2020.
The university offers a wide range of undergraduate programmes, majors and minors including robotics and human-computer interaction.
There are also several master’s and doctoral programmes within the field of computer science.
3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Many of MIT’s alumni feature on lists of influential entrepreneurs making an impact at home and abroad.
Students are encouraged to develop start-ups, and research projects have explored problems such as calculating the financial risks of renewable energy and developing faster parallel computing.
Undergraduates are enrolled on a flexible curriculum that allows them to focus on both abstract theory and practical problems in computer science. Students can major in computer science or in both computer science and molecular biology.
Graduates go on to design video games, work on supercomputers, research robotics and often join big companies such as Google and Microsoft.
2. Stanford University
The Stanford University computer science department was established in 1965.
The department offers bachelor’s of science, master’s of science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees.
The department undertakes research in many areas, including artificial intelligence, robotics, foundations of computer science, scientific computing and programming systems. There is also a strong emphasis on interdisciplinary research across chemistry, genetics, linguistics, construction and medicine, among others.
The home of the computer science department is the Gates Computer Science Building, named after Bill Gates, who donated $6 million (£4.9 million) to the project.
1. University of Oxford
Although computer science is a relatively modern discipline, the University of Oxford has one of the oldest departments in the country, formerly known as the Oxford University Computing Laboratory.
Since its beginnings, the department has provided lectures for undergraduates and trained research students at postgraduate level.
In addition to core computer science topics, students can take courses in computational biology, quantum computing, information systems, software verification, software engineering and computational linguistics.