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Comment by shortandsweet | Hacker News Reader

What are the big schools? I always thought that what was holding the Midwest up, not enough high quality schools.

University of Illinois Urbana Champagne, University of Michigan, university of Wisconsin Madison, and Purdue are all top 20 in CS.

Most of the Big Ten Schools are decent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Ten_Conference They aren't Ivy League, but they do compete internationally. My alma mater, Purdue, boasts the most amount of astronaut alumni of any nonmilitary school.

In my view, what holds the Midwest up, is that not everybody gets to live in the high-wage cities, yet we don't just give up on inventing and making things. Wherever smart, creative people live, there will be stuff happening, albeit perhaps at its own pace.

I tend to look at the high-wage regions like silicon valley, like they are a different country. Some folks will emigrate to that country, and I'm happy for them. Those of us who are left behind, for whatever reason, get on with our lives and find what there is to enjoy in our humble surroundings.

Most midwestern states have a world-class research university. Northwestern, U of Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Purdue...

Minnesota, Iowa State, and the University of Ohio State are very good schools too for tech prospects.

The "Big Ten Academic Alliance" does more funded research than the Ivy League and the UC system combined [1].

[1] https://www.btaa.org/docs/default-source/reports/btaa-annual...

There are plenty FAANG engineers minted from the top Midwestern schools - think CMU and other state schools - even if they rank behind the top schools on the coasts.

Top paying tech jobs tend to be found on the coasts though as well.

> There are plenty FAANG engineers minted from the top Midwestern schools - think CMU and other state schools - even if they rank behind the top schools on the coasts.

CMU is a private school, ranked number 1 in CS, and is not in a Midwestern state! That said, there are lots of top CS programs in the Midwest.

CMU is on the wrong side of the Appalachian mountains to best East Coast. Pittsburg has much more in common with neighboring Ohio than it does with Philadelphia. Its regularly included in the Rust Belt which is a subset of the Midwest.

It’s certainly not East Coast, but it’s very North East - the rust belt spans well beyond the Midwest. Even culturally Pittsburgh feels like it has more in common with, say, Buffalo or other North Eastern rust belt cities than Wisconsin or Minnesota.

Exactly. I think Pittsburgh has more in common with non-NYC New York than with Ohio. It feels much more like a non-Boston/NYC Northeastern city than like e.g. Columbus or Indianapolis.

I'm from Pittsburgh, my partner is from New Jersey. We argue about this (in a playful way) all the time; Pittsburgh is east coast, to me. Ohio is midwest. She counters with "a seven hour drive to the water is not on the coast."

I used to follow your Rust work and had no idea you are yinzer! Mineo’s or Aiello’s? :)

Fun fact: Carol, my co-author on the Rust book, is too, and still lives there!

I worked for Pizza Outlet/Vocelli's for seven years, so, I have some bias, haha! One of the locations I was at competed with Mineo's, so... not saying that Vocelli's is the best, but it has a special place in my heart anyway.

It's Pittsburgh, not Pittsburg.

The "is Pittsburgh midwestern?" debate is irrelevant since the article does not mention Pennsylvania. Also, increasing tech hiring by 100% in Pennsylvania would be really hard since the state also has Philadelphia and because Pittsburgh's tech scene has been strong for years.

Granting that there is a lot of fuzziness in all of these definitions, Buffalo and even Rochester can be included in "Rust Belt" but are not Midwestern.

Yeah, I meant to say CMU is a private school unlike the other leading Midwestern schools which are generally public. Pittsburgh is pretty far from the east coast, so it being in Pennsylvania doesn't really make it a 'coastal school' in my eyes, so I'll continue to lump it in with its geographic neighbors, though perhaps 'Rust belt' region is more accurate than Midwest for what I'm trying to b describe.

What ranking puts CMU at 1 in CS? Just curious because I usually see it behind a couple coastal schools.

It’s currently tied for 1 with their other usual suspects in US News [1]. Of course these rankings are all a bit arbitrary, game-able, and should be taken skeptically :)

[1] https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-sch...

Thank you for the link! Ah yes graduate education makes a lot of sense, CMU's computational linguistics department publishes incredible stuff and of course their ML stuff is the cutting edge, too.

It's in Pittsburg which is a Midwestern city. Even if the state has some coast.

The midwest has the following top 20 CS schools: Illinois (tied for #1), Michigan, Wisconsin, Purdue, maybe Carnegie Mellon (also tied for #1).

In addition, the midwest also has the following universities which are top institutions in some fields: Northwestern, University of Chicago, Washington University in St. Louis, Ohio State, Minnesota. I'm probably leaving out at least one Chicagoland school. Indiana is also quite good for CS, but is just not big enough to show up at the top of the rankings.

The problem is not a lack of top-tier universities. The problem, especially in Computer Science, is that everyone leaves after university. E.g., here's a map from CMU (page 4): https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/2017_one_pagers/scs/BS_...

From CMU, only 2% go to the midwest while 67% go to the west coast and 17% go to the northeast. Similarly, from UW-Madison, only about half stay in the midwest: https://dataviz.wisc.edu/views/FirstDestinationSurvey_0/Empl...

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US News 20 CS schools by state/region (note that UIUC is now in the tie for top):

1. Carnegie Mellon (Pittsburgh, regionally ambiguous)

1. MIT (New England/Northeast)

1. Stanford (California/West Coast)

1. Berkeley (California/West Coast)

1. UIUC (Great Plains or maybe Upper Midwest/Midwest)

5. Cornell (New England/Northeast)

6. UW (PNW/West Coast)

6. Georgia Institute of Technology (South)

8. Princeton (New England/Northeast)

8. UT-Austin (Texas/South)

10. California Institute of Technology (California/West Cost)

11. University of Michigan--Ann Arbor (Upper Midwest/Midwest)

13. UCLA (California/West Coast)

13. Wisconsin (Upper Midwest/Midwest)

13. Harvard (Northeast)

16. UCSD (California/West Coast)

16. University of Maryland--College Park (Mid-Atlantic/Northeast)

16. University of Pennsylvania (Mid-Atlantic/Northeast)

19. Purdue (Midwest)

20. Rice University (Texas/South)

20. USC (California/West)

20. Yale (New England/Northeast)

20. Amherst (New England/Northeast)

Washington University in St. Louis?

I have a friend who graduated from WUSTL’s CS program, who suspected the lack of accreditation stopped him from numerous job prospects. While WUSTL was a cornerstone of the early internet, it’s never been known since (IMHO) for particularly strong CS.

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