Why don't the world university rankings include the winner of the ACM

[vision27]

I found many rankings but none of them includes Saint Petersburg State University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics. The team of this university has won the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest 4 times. What do you know about this university? Is a diploma of this university valuable?

[buckworks]

What's ACM?

[vision27]

ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest

[buckworks]

That doesn't tell me what ACM stands for.

BTW, welcome to Webmaster World. :)

[vision27]

CM International Collegiate Programming Contest is an annual multi-tiered competitive programming competition among the universities of the world. (from wikipedia)

[Leosghost]

OP was spamming for this "university" a few days ago..looks like a change of method, rather than the previous "link drop" ..try to start a conversation and get search traffic from here..

[incrediBILL]

What's ACM?

The Association for Computing Machinery [acm.org...]

It's a place where programming PhDs and other self-aggrandizing types get published and pat each other on the back for thinking up stuff that they document in such complex language that only others of their intellectual stature can understand it.

It's kind of like Mensa for computer nerds without all the palindromes.

[vision27]

I just want to know more about this university. I don't think it needs to be advertised. If you don't believe me, you can find out who the winner of this competition was on the wikipedia.

[SevenCubed]

The self-aggrandizing types are way more likely to be found in Hollywood than places like the mentioned association.

[incrediBILL]

I just want to know more about this university.

I think the best way would be to get their list of alumni and see if you can find them on some site like LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. and ask a few what they think or find a college review site and see what others are posting.

The self-aggrandizing types are way more likely to be found in Hollywood than places like the mentioned association.

I know some of them, you would be surprised.

Hell, I've been published, I might even be one of them :)

[vision27]

So you think that this competition is not important and the results of it don't show how good the university is. I wonder if it is because of the fact that universities of the USA haven't won it since 1997.

[SevenCubed]

LOL vision27 nobody is suggesting they are no good. We're still stuck on figuring out what ACM stood for. Sometimes we take the long and winding path to the answers (especially on Fridays).

[incrediBILL]

So you think that this competition is not important and the results of it don't show how good the university is.

You said that, not me.

I said find the alumni and ask what THEY think because anyone can win a competition but it doesn't have any reflection on the quality of the professors, only the students.

Example: Back in '78 (stone age of computers) while I was already published at the tender age of 18, my professors couldn't break their way out of a wet for-next loop. The grad students in the electronics programs were building kit radios while I was building computer circuits from scratch and the professor had no clue how it worked. Had you asked me about my college I would've told you they were dumb as dirt and try MIT instead.

[Leosghost]

18 in 78 ? whippersnapper..;))

[lucy24]

What do you know, he's my kid brother's age. (On the other hand I recently learned that g1 is a mere infant of 40-odd. You just never can tell.)

Is it regionally accredited or only nationally? (Europeans, that is not a typo. "Real" universities have regional accreditation. At the school my father retired from, departments love being threatened with loss of accreditation because it's pretty well the only thing that will force the administration to spend money on decades-overdue upgrades.)

[ergophobe]

So you think that this competition is not important and the results of it don't show how good the university is

I won't say that - what I will say is this. In the US most big, famous schools have football teams. If a school has a great football team, it tells you little to nothing about how good their human physiology program is. In many cases it doesn't even tell you anything about how good their coaches are. It tells you how many resources they are willing to devote to winning the competition.

Schools that want to win competitions will recruit top players, whether it's a guy who can run like crazy or code like crazy. It doesn't mean they are offering top-notch instruction to their regular students and it doesn't mean their teachers are awesome. It means they have enough awesome students to win the competition. That's it.

I can tell you this - if Harvard University with their multi-billion dollar endowment (at least it used to be and was by far the biggest in the world) thought this competition was important to win, they would win it by buying the best team. But they would never win it by being the best undergraduate computer science education on the planet.

Don't misunderstand me - I am not saying the university in question is not a fine institution with an awesome education. I'm saying that winning this competition or not tells me little to nothing about that.