A CSRankings-style metrics-based ranking of top computer science institutions based on CTF performance.
| # | Institution | Points |
|---|---|---|
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As observed by CSRankings, rankings are intensely popular and influential. Students use rankings to decide which universities to attend. Recruiters use rankings to decide where to seek talent. However, resources are lacking for students and recruiters that value the types of skills that CTFs develop. CTFRankings rankings academic institutions by their teams' abilities to place highly (relative to teams at other academic institutions) in top CTF events around the world. The top universities in our ranking value CTF, and are good destinations for students and recruiters alike.
Our methodology is inspired by CSRankings, which is a metric grounded in objective measurement of the scientific output of Computer Science depratments at various academic institutions.
We weigh academic institutions by the number of times that their CTF teams placed in a top-N position among academic teams in CTFs. We use CTFs rated above a configurable CTFTime weight threshold. If multiple teams associated with an institution place in the top-N, the institution gets the sum of those points. If a team is associated with multiple institutions, that point is split evenly across those institutions. We only consider teams tied to academic institutions.
There is no perfect way to split points across multi-institution teams. Splitting evenly is the least complex and requires the least maintenance (e.g., no recalculation as the specific fraction of institution A and institution B changes within a team).
In our experience, almost every team is going to have alumni, friends, and other unaffiliated individuals. Given the universality of this, we chose to simply ignore potential non-academic affiliations in point division.
It is possible that there is a more optimal methodology for ranking teams. We welcome contributions on github! Open an issue and let's talk.
Note that in our experience, as long as the ranking is objective and makes some amount of sense, it is probably good enough. This holds, for example in CTF scoring itself.