Best universities in the world for learning to code
A worldwide coding competition reveals the universities producing the very best coders
Carly Minsky
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The universities with the best computer programmers are not the big names you might expect.
After a worldwide coding competition, HackerRank has produced a ranking of the 50 universities or schools producing the best coders in the world – and the results are surprising.
The top three institutions for coding are in Russia, China and Vietnam, while the top US university – the University of California, Berkeley – comes in fourth.
More than 5,500 students from 126 institutions around the world took part in the coding competition, and universities in the ranking are scored based both on the number of participants and their competition scores.
Only universities with at least 10 participants are included in the ranking.
The top 10 universities cover Canada, Russia, Ukraine, India, Sweden, Vietnam, China and the United States.
India is the best represented country in the ranking, with 22 individual institutions recognised for producing world-leading coders – making up almost half of the ranking. The US has only eight colleges in the ranking.
Chinese student Wentao Weng, who ranked as the 13th best coder in the world, started learning when he was just 11 years old. He now practises for about four hours a day during the week and most of the day on weekends.
Even though computer science isn’t on the curriculum at his school, he says: “We try to become one of the best coders among high school students to [get admission] into a good university.”
Top universities for computer science degrees
See the best 50 universities in the world and the best 20 colleges in the United States below:
Which colleges have the best coders in the world?
| Rank | College | Participant Count | Score | Country |
| 1 | ITMO University | 44 | 407.39 | Russian Federation |
| 2 | Sun Yat-sen Memorial Middle School | 13 | 387.18 | China |
| 3 | Ho Chi Minh City University of Science | 32 | 321.99 | Vietnam |
| 4 | University of California, Berkeley | 23 | 299.48 | United States |
| 5 | University of Waterloo, Waterloo | 50 | 266.59 | Canada |
| 6 | St. Petersburg State University | 12 | 260.68 | Russian Federation |
| 7 | National Taras Shevchenko University of Kiev | 11 | 255.83 | Ukraine |
| 8 | IIT, Indore (Indian Institute of Technology) | 19 | 254.26 | India |
| 9 | IIT, Kanpur (Indian Institute of Technology) | 27 | 250.72 | India |
| 10 | KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm | 11 | 231.23 | Sweden |
| 11 | DAIICT, Gandhinagar (Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology) | 56 | 228.95 | India |
| 12 | NSIT, Delhi (Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology) | 27 | 198.54 | India |
| 13 | Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta | 35 | 195.25 | United States |
| 14 | University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (UIUC), Champaign | 26 | 192.11 | United States |
| 15 | IIT BHU, Varanasi (Indian Institute of Technology) | 76 | 189.54 | India |
| 16 | Czech Technical University of Prague | 22 | 188.67 | Czech Republic |
| 17 | BITS, Pilani (Birla Institute of Technology & Science) | 25 | 165.13 | India |
| 18 | Bilkent University, Ankara | 13 | 157.56 | Turkey |
| 19 | Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, Cluj-Napoca | 35 | 153.72 | Romania |
| 20 | Highschool Grigore Moisil Iasi | 13 | 149.18 | Romania |
| 21 | Almaty Kazakh-Turkish High School | 10 | 138.87 | Kazakhstan |
| 22 | JIIT, Noida (Jaypee Institute of Information Technology) | 87 | 132.73 | India |
| 23 | IIT, Roorkee (Indian Institute of Technology) | 53 | 132.35 | India |
| 24 | University of Toronto, Toronto | 15 | 132.21 | Canada |
| 25 | AGH University of Science and Technology, Cracow | 12 | 130.34 | Poland |
| 26 | NIT, Surathkal (National Institute of Technology) | 25 | 128.39 | India |
| 27 | Université de Mons | 15 | 125.91 | Belgium |
| 28 | Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Ulsan | 10 | 124.65 | South Korea |
| 29 | IIT, Patna (Indian Institute of Technology) | 26 | 121.51 | India |
| 30 | DTU, Delhi (Delhi Technological University - formerly DCE) | 40 | 121.23 | India |
| 31 | IIT, Kharagpur (Indian Institute of Technology) | 42 | 115.89 | India |
| 32 | NIT, Kurukshetra (National Institute of Technology) | 52 | 110.93 | India |
| 33 | Technical University of Cluj-Napoca | 10 | 109.45 | Romania |
| 34 | ENES Unidad Morelia, UNAM | 15 | 106.29 | Mexico |
| 35 | IIIT, Bangalore (International Institute of Information Technology) | 21 | 101.92 | India |
| 36 | Ohio State University | 22 | 101.14 | United States |
| 37 | NIT, Warangal (National Institute of Technology) | 35 | 100.6 | India |
| 38 | University of Texas at Austin, Austin | 34 | 94.86 | United States |
| 39 | University of Washington, Washington | 12 | 88.52 | United States |
| 40 | NIT, Bhopal (Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology) | 28 | 84.94 | India |
| 41 | IIIT, Hyderabad (International Institute of Information Technology) | 52 | 83.98 | India |
| 42 | University of Tartu | 11 | 83.33 | Estonia |
| 43 | IIITM, Gwalior (ABV Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management) | 24 | 81.67 | India |
| 44 | Madan Mohan Malaviya University Of Technology, Gorakhpur | 16 | 77.79 | India |
| 45 | NIT, Surat (Sardar Vallabhbhai National Institute of Technology) | 12 | 77.19 | India |
| 46 | IIIT, Allahabad (Indian Institute of Information Technology) | 26 | 74.44 | India |
| 47 | University of California, Irvine | 29 | 73.34 | United States |
| 48 | University of Sarajevo | 12 | 71.91 | Bosnia and Herzegovina |
| 49 | NIT, Patna (National Institute of Technology) | 34 | 69.04 | India |
| 50 | North American University | 10 | 68.52 | United States |
Which colleges in America have the best coders?
| Rank | College | Participant Count | Score |
| 4 | University of California, Berkeley | 23 | 299.48 |
| 13 | Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta | 35 | 195.25 |
| 14 | University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (UIUC), Champaign | 26 | 192.11 |
| 36 | Ohio State University | 22 | 101.14 |
| 38 | University of Texas at Austin, Austin | 34 | 94.86 |
| 39 | University of Washington, Washington | 12 | 88.52 |
| 47 | University of California, Irvine | 29 | 73.34 |
| 50 | North American University | 10 | 68.52 |
| 55 | University of Southern California | 24 | 60.08 |
| 62 | University of California (UCLA), Los Angeles | 15 | 49.95 |
| 68 | North Carolina State University, Raleigh | 19 | 40.1 |
| 69 | University of California, San Diego (UCSD) | 11 | 38.36 |
| 81 | Northeastern University, Boston | 12 | 27.06 |
| 86 | University of Texas at Arlington | 12 | 24.87 |
| 92 | University of Texas at Dallas | 17 | 22.73 |
| 94 | Purdue University, West Lafayette | 11 | 22.1 |
| 95 | San Jose State University | 16 | 22.04 |
| 99 | California State Polytechnic University - Pomona | 21 | 20.44 |
| 103 | Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago | 17 | 19.52 |
| 108 | University of Florida, Gainesville | 18 | 17.21 |
| 110 | Arizona State University, Tempe | 18 | 16.16 |
| 111 | York University (NYU), New York | 11 | 14.77 |
| 119 | University of North Carolina at Charlotte | 10 | 11.47 |
| 121 | State University of New York at Binghamton | 10 | 10.98 |
| 124 | Concordia University Chicago | 11 | 9.12 |
