Over 1.4 million assessments, the best-performing students don’t always attend top-ranked universities
Technology lets enter students into the fast-paced ecosystem where they tend to spend their time trying out the latest inventions as developers do with programming. However, the technical hiring platform HackerRank suggests recruiters should probably slow down a bit and go back to master the hiring process. HackerRank recently released university rankings that identify which universities around the world have students with the strongest key developer skills. The rankings were pulled out based on more than 1.4 million student assessments administered by potential employees on HackerRank’s platform during their interview processes. The rankings suggest the best student developers and their performance do not align with university reputation.
The research also suggests ranking schools (based on technical skills that employers need) are a better indication of professional success than university-centric data points like teaching, citations, and research, and thus a more valuable guide for tech recruiters and hiring managers.
Research reflects lesser-known ones among top universities
Though the result indicates the top developers are from shinning universities, most of the best student developers attend universities that emphasize practical skills do not fall into the known popular universities. Additionally, HackerRank provides a blueprint for where technical recruiters can find the strongest new developers to fill the growing number of jobs in this field.
HackerRank categorized the result is based on student performance in four key skills: problem-solving, language proficiency, data structures knowledge and Computer Science (CS) fundamentals. The key finding from the research includes universities in the Americas the Asia-Pacific region, and Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
• In the Americas, the best-performing students attend a mix of traditional top-tier CS programs and lesser-known ones. Columbia University and Carnegie Mellon ranked highly, but schools like Stanford, MIT, and Princeton – while included in the analysis – made no appearances across the four skills. UC Berkeley had a strong showing across all four key skills, likely due to a combination of a CS curriculum that emphasizes working on interdisciplinary real-world projects, and its strong developer culture. Other schools that ranked in the top five for different skills were Arizona State University and the Rochester Institute of Technology.
• The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) lead the Asia-Pacific region, driven by their specialization in creating curriculums that focus on engineering and technology. IIT Kanpur and IIT Madras appeared in every category, and only two non-IIT universities – Banaras Hindu University and Vellore Institute of Technology – ranked in this region.
• Imperial College London was the only university in Europe to rank across all four skills. Imperial College’s focus on helping students learn through “an emphasis on practical work” gives its students strong real-world skills. Though it’s not typically recognized among top CS programs, Turkey’s Bilkent University also ranked among the top five for two of the key skills, making it an overlooked talent pool for university recruiters.
Vivek Ravisankar, co-founder and CEO of HackerRank, advised, “This isn’t just a challenge for tech companies – to stay competitive, companies in every industry must evolve their technical recruiting processes.”
