Which universities are best for technical skills?
CodeSignal’s annual University Ranking Report attempts to answer that very question, based on how students performed on the company’s General Coding Framework, which features four language-agnostic code writing tasks. CodeSignal generated the list of schools from 32,179 students who completed the Framework between April 21, 2022 and April 21, 2023.
You can check out CodeSignal’s website for the complete list of schools rated highest for technical skills, but here’s the top ten:
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Stony Brook University
- Carnegie Mellon University
- Yale University
- Rice University
- Stanford University
- Harvard University
- California Institute of Technology
- University of Pennsylvania
As CodeSignal mentions in a note accompanying the list, eleven of the top 30 schools in its ranking “are not recognized in the U.S. News & World Report’s top 30 undergraduate engineering programs,” including Stony Brook, which CodeSignal ranked second. Obviously, every institution has different methodologies for assembling “best of” lists, and sometimes good schools are overlooked.
“When you rank schools by an objective measure of their students’ technical skills, you’ll find that talent comes from everywhere—not just the schools traditionally recognized as top engineering schools,” CodeSignal added. “Directly measuring candidates’ skills, rather than looking at what school they attended, is a proven way to build a stronger and more diverse team.” Recruiters and hiring managers, take note!
In addition to formal schooling, many software engineers and developers rely on other sources to boost their coding knowledge. According to Stack Overflow’s latest Developer Survey, which queried 89,184 developers from 185 countries, these tech professionals turn to technical documentation, blogs, how-to videos, and lots of other sources as they continue their learning journey. While a two- or four-year institution can teach you valuable skills (as well as the abstract principles underlying modern programming), you’ll need to keep learning throughout your life in order to maximize your knowledge and opportunities.
