As with many with many other disciplines, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) ranks first, according to "U.S. News and World Report," for its graduate school program in computer science. The computer science department at MIT claims approximately 30 percent of the student body (graduate and undergraduate), and its continual emphasis upon research puts it at the forefront of the computer science industry.
Stanford University consistently rates near the top for many of its graduate programs in the sciences. Because of its emphasis on research and specialization, Stanford provides students with a wide array of educational opportunities and hands-on research that will make them leaders in their fields. It is one of the major pioneers in the fields of artificial intelligence and robotics and also allows students to branch out and pursue interdisciplinary studies in order to enrich their educations and become innovators in other related disciplines.
Another innovator in the field of computer science, Cal-Berkeley has long been recognized as one of the premier institutions in the United States in multiple disciplines. In the field of computer science it too stands head and shoulders above the remaining field. Its emphasis upon research and cutting-edge technology makes it similar to Stanford in many respects. It also allows students to move beyond the strict boundaries of computer science into multidisciplinary research designed to connect computer science to other areas of knowledge, such as the human body.
There are a number of other schools that deserve honorable mention because of their reputations in the computer science industry. These schools consistently rate well year after year but still come in behind the top three innovators. Deserving honorable mention are schools such as Carnegie-Mellon University, the University of Washington, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Caltech, Cornell, Princeton, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of Texas-Austin. All of these schools are innovators in their own right but do not maintain quite the elite status MIT, Standford, and Cal-Berkeley do.