How does University of Illinois Urbana- Champaign compare to Stanford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of California Berkeley, and Carnegie Mellon University for the Computer Science program?

While considering a top-tier computer science program, schools like Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, and CMU often dominate the conversation. But the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) deserves a spot among these elite institutions. Let’s explore how UIUC stacks up against the competition. First, understand the focus and genre of programs at Stanford, MIT, Berkeley and CMU.

Stanford is called a startup incubator as it is known for entrepreneurship and Silicon Valley connections. There is a relaxed atmosphere with a focus on practical skills learning. An initiative to make 1^st year classes of CS accessible for the non-major students that allows them to widen them horizon to understand technology in their respective field of study for better career opportunities. Courses are strongly dedicated to mobile app development and modern technologies.

MIT is considered a theoretical powerhouse. There is more emphasis on the fundamental computer science principles and schemes. They have high power computing equipment and never considered developing software for lower powerhouse hardware that could be useful outside MIT. This caused their shrinking in computing over time. The Computer Science courses are so strongly focused on functional programming and algorithms that they are limited to the academic areas only. This creates a void with less emphasis on industry-specific skills. 

Berkeley can be considered an intellectual playground for its balanced application of theories and practical education. The courses are offered from low-level programming to functional paradigms. There is an excellent theoretical computer science department. But there is one downside to Berkley, that the administration is largely influenced politically, as most are bureaucrats that affect their behavior with the students.

CMU is all about the future trends in computer science and because of this focus point, we can call it a forward thinker. The Computer Science programs are strongly emphasized on parallel computing and advanced algorithms. The best thing it offers is a dedicated School of Computer Science with tailored admissions. Students are not much educated about entrepreneurship and probably that’s the only drawback to being a CMU CS student. With this, students will be depending on others for career setup through their advanced skill set.

UIUC is a hidden gem in computer science. UIUC’s National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) is a powerhouse in computer science research. Did you know that the web as we know it today owes much to UIUC alumni? Marc Andreessen, creator of the first graphical web browser (Mosaic) and co-founder of Netscape, and Robert McCool, developer of the Apache HTTP server, both did their groundbreaking work at NCSA while studying at UIUC. This allows students to join a community of successful tech innovators.