15 GOTO schools for the best programming jobs

LinkedIn data reveals which schools have the most graduates working as software developers for the most desirable employers

Software developers from just about any school are likely to get a good job these days, but not all companies are equally desirable places for programmers to work. LinkedIn recently analyzed education and employment trends for 300 million users and identified the schools with the most graduates working for the most “desirable” employers (i.e., the best ones at attracting and retaining employees) in various professions.

Using these data from LinkedIn, here at the top 15 schools that budding coders should aim to attend to maximize their chances of working for the best companies. We’ve also noted other famous tech alumni, as well as the expected financial ROI on a computer science degree from each school.

15. University of California, San Diego

Top employers for alumni: Google, Qualcomm, Amazon, Microsoft

Notable tech alumni: Bud Tribble and Bill Atkinson, members of the development team for the original Macintosh

Annual ROI for CS degree: 17.2%

Overall rank among U.S. schools based on ROI: 11th

14. Brown University

Top employers for alumni: Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon

Notable tech alumni: Eliot Horowitz, co-founder of MongoDB; Andy Hertzfeld, member of original Macintosh development team; John Tukey, coined the terms bit and software

Annual ROI for CS degree: Not available

Overall rank among U.S. schools based on ROI: Not available

13. The University of Texas at Austin

Top employers for alumni: IBM, Google, Microsoft, Amazon

Notable tech alumnus: Michael Dell, founder of Dell Computers

Annual ROI for CS degree: 14.5% (in-state), 9.5% (out-of-state)

Overall rank among U.S. schools based on ROI: 44th (in-state), 233rd (out-of-state)

12. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Top employers for alumni: Google, Microsoft, Amazon, IBM

Notable tech alumni: Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript; Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle; Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netcape; Steve Chen, co-founder of YouTube; Max Levchin, co-founder of PayPal

Annual ROI for CS degree: 14.7% (in-state), 11.1% (out-of-state)

Overall rank among U.S. schools based on ROI: 39th (in-state), 160th (out-of-state)

11. University of California, Los Angeles

Top employers for alumni: Google, Microsoft, Symantec, Amazon

Notable tech alumni: Vint Cerf, co-creator of TCP/IP; Steve Crocker, member of the team that developed ARAPANET protocols, Paul Baran, devised the concept of packet-switching networks

Annual ROI for CS degree: 17% (in-state), 11.2% (out-of-state)

Overall rank among U.S. schools based on ROI: 13th (in-state), 158th (out-of-state)

10. (Tie) Stanford University

Top employers for alumni: Google, Oracle, Apple, Microsoft

Notable tech alumni: Bill Hewett and Dave Packard, founders of Hewlett-Packard, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, founders of Google; Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, co-founders of PayPal

Annual ROI for CS degree: 17.4%

Overall rank among U.S. schools based on ROI: 8th

9. (Tie) University of Michigan

Top employers for alumni: Google, Microsoft, Amazon, IBM

Notable tech alumni: Frances Allen, expert in compiler optimization and the first female winner of the Turing Award; Larry Page, co-founder of Google; Sid Meier, creator of Civilization; Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter; Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems; Thomas Knoll, co-creator of Adobe Photoshop

Annual ROI for CS degree: 17.2% (in-state), 10.6% (out-of-state)

Overall rank among U.S. schools based on ROI: 36th (in-state), 185th (out-of-state)

8. Duke University

Top employers for alumni: Google, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon

Notable tech alumni: Tim Cook, CEO of Apple; John Chambers, CEO of Cisco

Annual ROI for CS degree: Not available

Overall rank among U.S. schools based on ROI: Not available

7. University of Washington

Top employers for alumni: Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook

Notable tech alumni: Bud Tribble and Bill Atkinson, members of the development team for the original Macintosh; Tim Paterson, creator of QDOS, which became the basis for MS-DOS

Annual ROI for CS degree: 19.3% (in-state), 12.9% (out-of-state)

Overall rank among U.S. schools based on ROI: 2nd (in-state), 89th (out-of-state)

6. University of California, Berkeley

Top employers for alumni: Google, Oracle, Apple, Microsoft

Notable tech alumni: Jay Miner, creator of Amiga computer; Eric Allman, creator of sendmail; George Crow; member of the development team for the original Macintosh; Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis, creators of GIMP

Annual ROI for CS degree: 17.7% (in-state), 12.4% (out-of-state)

Overall rank among U.S. schools based on ROI: 4th (in-state), 108th (out-of-state)

5. Princeton University

Top employers for alumni: Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon

Notable tech alumni: Alan Turing, the “Father of Computer Science”; John Kemeny, co-creator of BASIC; Brian Kernighan, co-creator of AWK

Annual ROI for CS degree: Not available

Overall rank among U.S. schools based on ROI: Not available

4. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Top employers for alumni: Google, Oracle, Microsoft, IBM

Notable tech alumni: Bill Hewett, co-ounder of Hewlett-Packard; Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation; Bob Metcalfe, creator of Ethernet; Ray Stata and Matthew Lorber, co-founders of Analog Devices

Annual ROI for CS degree: 15.5%

Overall rank among U.S. schools based on ROI: 24th

3. Cornell University

Top employers for alumni: Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon

Notable tech alumni: Steven Sinofsky, former head of Windows division at Microsoft; Douglas McIlroy, creator of Unix pipes

Annual ROI for CS degree: 13.8%

Overall rank among U.S. schools based on ROI: 66th

2. Caltech

Top employers for alumni: Google, Oracle, Microsoft, Facebook

Notable tech alumni: Donald Knuth, author of The Art of Computer Programming; John McCarthy, creator of LISP; Ivan Sutherland, creator of Sketchpad; Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel

Annual ROI for CS degree: Not available

Overall rank among U.S. schools based on ROI: Not available

1. Carnegie Mellon University

Top employers for alumni: Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon

Notable tech alumni: Andy Bechtolsheim and Vinod Khosla, co-founders of Sun Microsystems; Charles Geschke, co-founder of Adobe Systems; Ivan Sutherland, creator of Sketchpad

Annual ROI for CS degree: 12.3%

Overall rank among U.S. schools based on ROI: 112th

The best of the rest

Here are the rest of LinkedIn’s top 25 schools for software developers:

16. Harvard University

17. Rice University

18. University of Pennsylvania

19. University of Arizona

20. Harvey Mudd College

21. The University of Texas at Dallas

22. San Jose State University

23. University of Southern California

24. Washington University in St. Louis

25. Rochester Institute of Technology

Source : http://www.itworld.com/