Top universities for computer science

The recently released QS World University Rankings by Subject feature 686 of the top universities to study computer science and information systems. 

The rankings are based on five different indicators: academic and employer reputation, citations per paper, H-index (which is used to measure the productivity and impact of a university) and international research network. You can find more information about the methodology and how the rankings are put together here. 

Read on as we discover the top computer science universities in each region around the world. 

In this year’s subject rankings for computer science, 109 of the schools featured are in the United States with five of these in the top ten for computer science worldwide, the most of any other country. Outside of the top ten, there are plenty of top computer science universities available, including Princeton University (13th), University of Washington (14th), Cornell University (17th) and University of California Los Angeles (18th). 

Canada is home to 25 excellent computer science universities, including University of Toronto in 12th place which scores particularly well in the citations per paper indicator. Other notable computer science universities in Canada are the University of British Columbia which remains 21st on the list and University of Waterloo which this year climbs three places to 22nd. 

The UK contains an impressive 58 of the top universities featured in this year’s computer science ranking – two of which can be found in the worldwide top ten. Outside of the top ten but still in the worldwide top 25 are Imperial College London (15th), The University of Edinburgh (20th) and University College London (24th). Ireland is home to seven universities in the subject ranking including Trinity College Dublin in the top 100. 

In Denmark, there are five top computer science universities, including University of Copenhagen (101st) and Aarhus University (140th) in the top 150. Similarly, Finland is home to five top universities in the subject rankings with its highest-ranked university Aalto University ranking 84th. Sweden has nine universities in the rankings including KTH Royal Institute of Technology ranking 62nd overall. 

The Netherlands performs well in the subject rankings for computer science with no less than 12 universities featured, three of these in the top 100; University of Amsterdam (34th), Delft University of Technology (54th) and Eindhoven University of Technology (69th).  

Romania contains four of the top universities including the countries joint highest-ranked entries Babes-Bolyai University and University POLYTEHNICA of Bucharest, both ranked 401-450. 

France, Germany, and Italy all perform extremely well in the rankings, France containing 30 top computer science schools, including Institut Polytechnique de Paris which remains as France’s highest-ranked school, having ranked 31st for the second year running. Germany contains 28 of the best universities in the world for computer science with its top university Ludwig-Maximillian-Universität München ranked 91st worldwide. Italy is home to 21 ranked universities with Politecnico di Milano coming out on top for computer science, ranked 33rd. 

Spain has 12 universities in the rankings, including its highest-ranked university Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (82nd). 

Belgium has seven entries this year with two of these, KU Leuven and Université Catholique de Louvain, in the top 150. Portugal’s three entrants include top-250-ranked University of Lisbon. Of Switzerland’s seven entries, two – ETH Zurich and EPFL – can be found in the top 10 worldwide.