Acceptance Rates for Computer Science Majors

Some majors are more popular than others. This is perhaps unsurprising; everyone loves the Indiana Jones movies (or at least some of them), but far more students want to major in business or computer science than archaeology. That said, colleges don’t just want to offer business and computer science majors; there is the belief that other fields of study have merit too, and deserve focus.

To this end, universities try to admit students with a range of interests. Thus it is often far more competitive to get admitted as a computer science major than to study a less popular field. The question we then get asked is just how severe this difference is. In this article, we’re going to look at acceptance rates for students interested in majoring in CS at top programs, and compare them to admissions rates as a whole. Our goal here is to give you a sense of scale for this challenge. We’ll also give some advice on maximizing your chances of acceptance as a CS major. Let’s get started!

Understanding CS Acceptance Rates

Each college handles admissions differently, with their own policies and priorities. In general, however, there are three main ways of doing things: 

• At large admissions. In this method, applications to a college are all judged in a single pool; this is how Harvard does it. 
• By College. At these universities, applications are judged based on which subsidiary college students are applying to within a university, and different colleges can have different acceptance rates. 
• By Major. For these universities, certain majors evaluate all applicants to that particular major separately, and the major itself has an acceptance rate. This is not true of all majors, just the most popular ones. 

We are relatively certain that applying to Harvard as a computer science major is going to be more competitive than applying to study linguistics, but it is pretty much impossible to put a quantitative value on the difference. Harvard releases no information on how many students apply to which majors, and how many of them are then accepted. Their admissions pool is a monolith, and how the decisions are made a black box. 

Thus when we want to discuss just how competitive computer science is as a major, we need to look at universities that admit by major, and which are willing to release admissions statistics. Not all schools do this, but some do, enough to give us a sense of trends, and useful points of comparison. 

Computer Science Acceptance Rates at Top Colleges

Now that we’ve covered the limitations of the data available to us, let’s look at what the data actually says. Here are the acceptance rates for CS majors at top colleges that admit by major or program, and which release that data: 

Note that acceptance rates marked with an * are from older data, or estimations based on student reports. These are as accurate as we could make them given all data available.

Note also that public colleges have differing acceptance rates for in-state and out-of-state students; most colleges do not provide a breakdown of this, but University of Washington does, which is a useful data point. 

To help further illustrate this point, here is this same data represented graphically: 

Of course, this is not every CS program in the country, but we do believe it provides a representative sample of how these schools work for admissions. 

What This Data Means for You

The first, and most obvious, takeaway is that admissions to CS programs is very very competitive. How competitive varies by school and program, but we have never found a CS program that is less competitive than a college as a whole. CS is one of the most popular majors available at almost every college; even if it is not the most popular major, it is usually one of the top five. 

How much being an in-state applicant matters depends on specific schools and their policies. UW, for example, is at one extreme, with almost no out-of-state students admitted to their CS major. UT Austin is at another end; with more out-of-state students admitted to CS proportionally than to the college as a whole. Applications are still competitive of course, but whether or not a particular college weighs your residency for a CS program depends on their own admission priorities. 

Next, these acceptance rates can move a school from safety to reach. UW isn’t too terribly hard to get into generally; unless you happen to apply to their CS program as an out of state student, in which case it’s even more competitive than Harvard. This is something you need to pay careful attention to when building your college list, so you know exactly what your odds are, and how hard it’s going to be. 

Maximizing Your Chances of Acceptance to a CS Major

Now that we’ve looked at just how competitive CS majors are at top programs, you may be feeling a bit nervous. After all, acceptance rates at top schools are already quite low, and this data makes it seem like students interested in studying computer science have an even harder path ahead of them. 

The first point we want to make clear then, is that it is still totally possible to get into a top CS program. Hundreds of students are admitted into these every year, and go on to study and graduate, and do remarkable things. It is a challenge, certainly, but that is very different from being impossible. 

Here, then, are our best pieces of advice for applying to one of these competitive programs. 

Apply Strategically

This is something we’ve discussed before. If a school is very competitive for computer science, then consider applying as a different major, and switching later. If your background is very closely connected to CS, then check out our guide to related majors. For advice on changing majors once admitted, check out our article on the topic. 

This will not be possible for every program, especially for schools that admit directly to their computer science major, like many of the programs charted above. That said, this is the single best way to improve your chances of admission at the last minute. 

Build Candidacy

The other key way to improve your chances, especially when applying to direct-admit programs, is to have a very strong candidacy in computer science. This is something you should work to build over your time in high school, becoming the kind of student that these colleges and programs want to admit. There are several ways to do this; there is no single right way, but many different approaches that work. Some things our students have done include:

• Teaching themselves coding languages, and uploading projects to code repositories.
• Doing research in computer science, and publishing or presenting it.
• Competing in CS events, such as hackathons or programming challenges.
• Taking part in CS summer programs.
• Completing internships where you use your CS skills to assist with the goals of an organization or nonprofit.

The goal of all of these is to both build your own skills with computer science, and to show off your passion to universities. Top colleges want to admit passionate and motivated students, so showing off your own passions and skills in what you do throughout your time in high school is the best way to stand out to them.

Final Thoughts

Some college majors are more competitive than others. CS is often one of the most competitive, though this does vary somewhat by school and program. We hope that this article has given you a good sense of just how competitive CS is compared to admissions as a whole, and how this added level of competition should impact your own application strategy. 
Of course, you don’t have to go it alone. Ivy Scholars has a long experience helping students build candidacy to showcase their computer science prowess, and in crafting successful applications to some of the country’s top CS programs. Schedule a free consultation today to learn more about how we can help you with your own academic ambitions; we love helping students succeed, and we’re always happy to hear from you.