Federal Data · No Paid Rankings
Best Colleges for Computer Science
Top computer science programs ranked by what their computer science graduates earn, plus completion rates, debt and actual cost. Federal data. No paid rankings.
How We Rank Computer Science Schools
These rankings use what computer science bachelor's graduates earn, not the school-wide average. College Scorecard publishes earnings three years after graduation for each field of study. A school is ranked when it has a published figure for computer and information sciences and computer science and at least 25 graduates behind it. Where a school has more than one of these programs, the largest is used and the table names it under the figure. Each school is then scored on our 5-component composite using federal data: computer science graduate earnings (28%), graduation rate (25%), social mobility via Pell Grant share (20%), debt burden (15%), and net cost for low-income students (12%). Where a school has not reported one of these, that component is dropped and the remaining weights are rescaled rather than filled in with an estimate. A school with no net price on file for families earning up to $30,000 is scored on its overall average net price instead. Only 4-year non-profit schools with sufficient data qualify.
- →Earnings: Median annual earnings of computer science bachelor's graduates three years after they graduate. Source: College Scorecard.
- →Graduation rate: Full-time first-time students completing within 150% of normal time. Source: IPEDS.
- →Net price: Average annual cost after all grants and scholarships. Source: IPEDS.
- →Social mobility: Share of students receiving Pell Grants, a direct measure of access for low-income students. Source: IPEDS.
- →Debt burden: Median federal loan debt at graduation. Source: College Scorecard.
Top 10 Computer Science Schools (2026)
Ranked by composite: computer science graduate earnings, graduation rate, social mobility, debt, affordability.
| # | School | Earnings (3yr)computer science grads |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA | $197,810Computer and information sciences |
| 2 | Brown University Providence, RI | $184,762Computer science |
| 3 | Stanford University Stanford, CA | $165,375Computer science |
| 4 | University of California-Berkeley Berkeley, CA | $161,399Computer science |
| 5 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA | $163,496Computer science |
| 6 | Cornell University Ithaca, NY | $158,076Computer science |
| 7 | Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA | $201,541Computer science |
| 8 | Harvard University Cambridge, MA | $163,896Computer science |
| 9 | Yale University New Haven, CT | $168,803Computer and information sciences |
| 10 | Rice University Houston, TX | $145,256Computer and information sciences |
375 of 1,154 schools with Computer Science programs have published computer science graduate earnings and are ranked. Top 10 shown. Earnings are the median for computer science bachelor's graduates three years after graduation, and Grads is how many graduates that figure covers. Data: IPEDS + College Scorecard. Updated annually.
All 1,154 Colleges in the Dataset
The ranking above shows the top 10 by composite score. Every school in the full dataset is listed here so you can explore beyond the top results.
A
44B
84C
127D
29E
31F
29G
27H
37I
28J
10K
21L
38M
71N
38O
27P
48R
26S
110T
54U
193V
13W
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