The world’s top-25 computer science universities is a pretty exclusive group and, once again, the University of Waterloo is a part of it. But not just that – UWaterloo also has the biggest enrollment of the highest-ranked schools.
They are the biggest of the best. Each year, the QS University Rankings score 1,400 of the world’s universities on academic reputation, employer reputation and more. Then they break those rankings down into individual programs like computer science, engineering or mathematics.
Being in the top-25 in any subject is a substantial achievement – it puts you in the top 2% overall. For computer science, this elite group includes the biggest names in tech: Stanford, Harvard and MIT.
But, being top-ranked is only half the story for employers who are basing their location decisions on the availability of local talent.
Yes, most companies are looking for new graduates with specialized skillsets, but they’re also looking to successfully recruit these graduates. It’s not a given that you’ll win the intense competition to hire these incredible graduates, especially since some of the top universities aren’t training large numbers of students.
Stanford, for example, might be #2 on the rankings, but they only have 865 undergraduates studying computer science. Other top-ranked schools like Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard have even fewer.
Want to recruit their graduates? The odds are not in your favour.
Where do the odds get better? Well, that’s the objective of this article. We’ve taken the top-25 computer science schools and ordered them by enrollment. Which schools give you the best chance at recruiting top talent? We’ve done the research for you.
Here are the top-quality tech schools with the most tech students:
For the third consecutive time since we started collecting this data, the University of Waterloo is right there at the top of the list.
It’s the world’s 21st-ranked university for computer science and it’s massive.
Just short of 5,000 undergraduate students are enrolled in computer science and computer engineering, which are often combined for enrollment numbers.
That number goes up to 5,400 undergraduate students if you include software engineering, as many of the universities on this chart have.
The United States is the top country on the list, with about 19,900 undergraduate students enrolled in a top-25 program. This is mostly because an astounding 12 of the top-25 are in the United States.
The next closest country is Canada, with 7,932 computer science students, making it clear that when it comes to tech talent, North America is king.
*Universities marked with an asterisk do not provide full enrollment numbers for their programs, but they do provide either new enrollments each year or total number of graduates from a given program. In these cases, we simply multiplied the number by four to give an approximate number for four-year programs. This will not provide a perfect reflection of enrollment, but it does not affect this article’s conclusions.
**Peking University does not make its computer science enrollment publicly available.
The Toronto-Waterloo Corridor is a talent machine
Not far behind the University of Waterloo is the University of Toronto**, which is about 100km/65mi away – a short drive down highway 401.
Combined, these schools have just short of 8,000 computer science students, which is equivalent to the enrollment at the 11 smallest universities included on this chart.
Put another way, these two universities have more students enrolled in computer science than all of America’s top-25 East Coast universities put together (MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, Columbia, New York University).
It really speaks to the power of the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor, which also routinely ranks among the world’s top tech and startup ecosystems.
**This number for University of Toronto only includes enrollment at one of the school’s three campuses.
The United Kingdom can’t compete with Waterloo
The United Kingdom has five schools represented on the QS list of top-25 computer science universities, including Oxford at #4 and Cambridge at #8. They are undoubtedly great tech schools. However, enrollment numbers at UK universities are quite low, on average.
As you can see, the University of Edinburgh – the biggest UK-based tech school in the global top-25 – has the 14th-largest enrollment. The other four British universities are in the bottom eight.
The University of Waterloo has more students enrolled in computer science than all five of the United Kingdom’s entries on the list. It’s not close, either – there are about 1,500 more students at the University of Waterloo than the University of Edinburgh, Imperial College London, University of Cambridge, University College London and University of Oxford combined.
Silicon Valley – and California – edges ahead of Waterloo
For the first time since we started collecting this data, the three California schools represented in the top-25 – UC Berkeley, UCLA and Stanford University – have more students enrolled than the University of Waterloo, but just barely.
Stanford and UC Berkeley are two of the world’s highest ranked schools at #3 and #5, respectively, and thanks to their proximity are two of the biggest talent pools for Silicon Valley companies. However, they combine for 800 *fewer* students than the University of Waterloo.
To add more perspective, Stanford and UC Berkeley are just about the same distance apart as the University of Waterloo and the University of Toronto. The former duo has about 4,000 computer science students and the latter has 8,000. If you must choose a location based on talent… is there even a question as to which one you’d pick?
Entrepreneurship and work-ready talent define UWaterloo
The QS University Rankings make an attempt to standardize and rank universities that – realistically – are very different from one another. Their programs are different, their admissions are different and their cultures are different.
Two things that set the University of Waterloo apart that aren’t well-captured in the QS report are entrepreneurship and on-the-job experience.
In terms of entrepreneurship, UWaterloo is the undisputed leader in Canada. About 18% of all Canadian tech founders were students at the University of Waterloo. Velocity – part of the University of Waterloo’s suite of entrepreneurship programs – is Canada’s most productive incubator and has helped produce tech unicorns like ApplyBoard and Faire. The school’s unique inventor-owned IP policy attracts the world’s most entrepreneurial faculty, researchers and students.
In terms of work-readiness, the University of Waterloo co-operative education program provides all computer science students with two years of on-the-job experience at companies like Microsoft, Google, Apple, SAP and hundreds of startups and scale-ups.
The program is so big it accounts for about 1/3 of all university-related work terms in Canada. The day they graduate, University of Waterloo students are ready to make a significant positive impact wherever their careers take them.
Is talent driving your expansion strategy?
If you’re wondering where you’ll find the biggest pool of work-ready talent, don’t just look at the top tech schools, look at the top tech schools with the largest enrollments. Look at Waterloo.
Want to learn more about the University of Waterloo? Read our overview blog post or contact our team today.