My daughter was accepted into EECS at Berkeley and SCS at CMU, as well as the ECE program at UT Austin with a full tuition merit scholarship (versus no financial aid at either Berkeley or Carnegie Mellon). Any decision help is appreciated!
Is your child considering grad school? Will loans be needed to finance any of these choices? What are requirements to for keeping the UT merit award? Are all the programs she’s been admitted to ABET certified?
How does your D feel? What support is there for female engineering students at each school?
@HImom, thanks for your reply! She’s not sure about grad school at this point. The UT merit award is renewable over 4 years, but you have to keep at 3.5 GPA. Financially, it is not pleasant to think about spending that much for school, but no outside loans would be required. As far as support for females, CMU SCS has the highest percentage of females, followed by UT Austin ECE and Berkeley EECS, which are pretty close to each other at about 15% female. They all seem to have some sort of Women in Engineering Program. Finally, I believe that all the programs are ABET accredited…
It might be good if your D can communicate with some of the females in the different programs to get a sense of how the culture is. I know it can vary significantly among campuses.
I know USC has the highest % of females in their engineering program, which they’re very proud of. I know that the women won all the top prizes in 2010, the year S graduated. S was thrilled to have females in his study group and have one he worked with in the engineering dept.
It is amazing how much college costs, but at least engineering students CAN get good paid internships.
I’d ask the UT engineering dept for data about how many of their students keep vs lose the scholarships over their 4 years in engineering. 3.5 sounds high and is higher than the GPA our son had to keep to maintain his merit award at USC. Also see if there is s probation or grace period, in case the student has a tough term. Is the GPA cumulative or each term? It’s helpful if early 4.0 terms can take some of the pressure off later terms.
One other thing to consider is whether the student is allowed to switch majors and whether allowed to take any courses at any other U. We had a friend whose S attended CMU years ago. At one point he was burned out and wanted to transfer it at least take some course at our instate public U. CMU said no and that none of his CMU courses completed would transfer to in-state HI public U or U of HI completed courses transfer back to CMU. He and his family were very frustrated by that. Eventually, he returned and completed his CMU degree.
Since Berkeley is impacted, how hard or easy is it to switch majors? How hard or easy is it to switch at CMU? UT? Kids really have no idea how much they will like the subject as the material gets more specific and difficult.
Congratulations. My D is making the same exact choice and is really torn. I’ve attended two of the three schools on your list (UT and CMU), and have frequented the Cal campus. What I can say is all three schools are stellar. However, the culture at each of these schools is really quite different. Looking back on my college experience, how you fit in to the school you go to really impacts your success and enjoyment. I received a great education at UT, but I really hated the culture there. It was way too big, you were on your own, and I hate to say this, but depending on where you’re from, it was the south. I know Austin is cosmopolitan compared to the rest of Texas, but I have to say it was still the south. There is certainly a southern culture there. CMU was small and tight knit. Pittsburgh is a great place, but you have to make an effort to use it. There is a certain intensity at CMU, and it really is about the academics. There are certainly social activities and fun times to be had, but most of the people at CMU know what they want to do and are focused. If you have seasonal affective disorder, do not go to CMU as the weather is significantly better at both UT and Berkeley. Cal and Berkeley seem like a lot of fun, and I would argue that Cal has a higher intellectual vibe than UT. But, it is large school as well. From my research on Cal, there are definitely opportunities for research and engagement with faculty, but likely something you need to make an effort for. Ultimately, they are all three stop schools for CS. It’s important to be successful at whichever she chooses, and I really believe that the fit is the most important thing? Does she know what she wants to do and is she focused? Does she want a “party” scene or a very conventional college experience? Does she want large or small? Does she want urban, suburban, etc.? My D is leaning towards CMU and we are going back at the end of the month to confirm. She is intense, focused and driven. She looks forward to the challenge of CMU, its small classes and immediate access to research. Her only concern is whether or not there is sufficient social activity, and a sense of interaction and camaraderie. Good luck.
Quick addendum. My intro classes at UT were probably around 300 kids, chem, physics, econ. I recall calc and diff eq at around 100. It wasn’t until my junior year that class size got more manageable and I found better interaction.
Congratulations! My son is making a similar decision between CMU SCS, Berkeley, and another school. But, he’s also deciding between CS and physics, so there’s some added complexity there.
I noticed that she is EECS/ECE at two schools and CS at CMU. Is she more interested in the engineering or CS part? I don’t know, but is the CMU SCS program more CS-focused than engineering, since there is a separate college of engineering? I believe that at Berkeley, EECS can decide on a more EE path or a more CS path.
The intro CS class at Berkeley (which they don’t recommend skipping) is over 1000 students! Math classes of several hundred are probably common. Does she have Regents at Berkeley? If not, getting the classes and housing you want can be difficult.
What are class sizes like at CMU? Probably smaller than Cal and UT I would think? We plan to find out more about the social aspects of CMU at accepted student visits, but he can’t go until late April.
BTW, any grad school in CS or EECS should be fully funded by the institution. I wouldn’t worry about that when deciding on undergrad.
** I don’t know, but is the CMU SCS program more CS-focused than engineering, since there is a separate college of engineering? **
To my knowledge, the SCS program is purely CS focused, ie no logic design and network theory for hardware, etc. In fact, I took a quick peek at the curriculum and I don’t believe you need to even take physics. However, and this is a big however, students minor in something so you could take EE classes. There is an engineering/science requirement where you must take 4 courses in these area with one being a lab. They cannot be math related, nor include a heavy component of programming. There is also a 5 course math/probability requirement showing the heavy preparation for algorithms.
https://www.csd.cs.cmu.edu/academics/undergraduate/requirements#bscsreq
Hi, I’m a currently Berkeley EECS student here who made the same decision as a senior (Berkeley EECS vs CMU SCS vs other options) so hopefully I can help all of you out (@obsessivemom, @Calidadtoo, @Ynotgo)
For obsessivemom, I would seriously consider the UT Austin option. A full ride is nothing to scoff at and from what I’ve seen personally, people place way to much emphasis between the differences of the top few schools. Sure, EECS and SCS might be ranked a few points higher, but at the end of the day, there really isn’t that much of a difference between something like UT Austin and CMU. Don’t forget that UT Austin is still a top-10 school for CS. The cost of attendance at Carnegie Mellon is $68k. That means that you will be paying $272,000, more than half a million dollars, for what? Moving up a few points on the US News ranking? To me, it’s just absurd to make a decision like that. It’s very possible that she ends up hating CMU/EECS (many people do, it has a culture of stress and overworking) while she would have a great time at UT Austin.
I know it’s hard because you want to think that if you don’t spend as much as you can, you will be putting your daughter’s future in jeopardy. However, the difference is almost entirely in your head. Even though I am at Berkeley, many of my friends, who went to less “prestigious” schools, have gotten summer internships just as good or better and have great job prospects in the future. The #1 trap that people fall into is looking at the median salaries and employment rates for the graduating class. Oh? CMU has a median salary of $105,000? That means my daughter has to go there to get a good job. The problem with this is that it lacks a fundamental understanding of cause and effect. The primary reason the CMU salary is so high is not because of CMU itself. It is because through the selective admissions process, CMU has selected a group of highly capable, intelligent and motivated people who are essentially destined to succeed. Sure, CMU plays a role in preparing its students for good jobs. But UT Austin will do that too. In other words, the important part is not going to CMU/EECS, it is being accepted into CMU/EECS
Studies have shown that students who are accepted to Ivy League schools but don’t attend earn just as high a salary as students who graduate from an Ivy League school. What this means is that if your daughter goes to UT Austin, she will still likely end up in just as good a place. To put it bluntly, the reason UT Austin’s median salary is lower than CMU/EECS is because of the OTHER students, not your daughter. In fact, she might be able to get even more attention because she will stand out more in relation to her peers.
Overall, UT Austin would provide just as good a education/preparation as CMU/EECS. Any benefits that you see present at those programs are not worth a quarter million dollars. I sometimes wish I didn’t come to Berkeley so I could have the extra money. From what I’ve seen with my friends, coming to Berkeley hasn’t necessarily given me that much of an edge.
However, between Berkeley and CMU, I would definitely lean towards Berkeley for a few reasons.
1.) Better location. The Bay Area is an amazing place to spend college years and it also next to Silicon Valley / big tech companies.
2.) CMU is known for being much worse socially. The academics at Berkeley are definitely very tough, but people find time to do other stuff as well. On the other hand, CMU is almost entirely studying and has a culture of stress/overworking.
3.) Collaboration. Personally, I’ve seen that Berkeley EECS is very collaborative and people are willing to work together. However, my friends at CMU SCS have told me bad stories about a cutthroat environment where people are too stressed about doing well to help others out. So if you go to CMU, most of your time will be essentially be spent studying alone.
Let me know if you have any other questions! I’d love to hear what you end up going with.
Sounds like you’re in a great place to be! This is a hard decision. Did you get accepted to Turing honors at UT? The program is really well respected and would make your classes much smaller. UT Austin’s median income is lower because of the amount of students staying in Austin for the booming start up scene. The cost of living in Austin vs California vs north east is substantial.
UT places the largest portion of their students in Austin, then Silicon Valley, then Dallas, then Washington, then New York. I’ve been very impressed by UT so far on my college search. Of course take this with a grain of salt because I’m biased (I’m attending next year)!
@HImom, thanks for all your excellent questions. I spoke to the office that handles the engineering honors program scholarships and they said it is rare for students to lose their scholarships by failing to keep up the required 3.5 GPA. They didn’t have exact statistics, however, and I failed to ask whether the GPA was cumulative, which is a good question. Not sure how easy it is to switch majors at CMU, but we are visiting there soon and should have a better feel for everything after that.
@Calidadtoo , thanks for your excellent post! My daughter sounds similar to yours, in that she is also ‘intense, focused and driven’. She’s definitely not looking for a party scene and is concerned that both Berkeley and UT Austin might be too big for her liking. A smaller, closer knit school is appealing to her… We visited Cal last weekend and were quite impressed by the EECS department, but she is still concerned about the large class sizes. I also don’t like the lack of availability of on campus housing after the first year. Also, many thanks for the excellent CMU curriculum link. I have to say that one of the things I really like about Cal is the fact that EE and CS are together in one department. My D is torn between Computer Engineering and CS and I like the fact that she could go either way at Cal. At UT, the majors are in separate schools, and she applied to and was accepted into EECE, rather than CS, so she is committed to Computer Engineering if she goes there. Similarly, at CMU, she is in SCS and if she wanted to do ECE, it would be in a different department and school. However, as you point out, she could potentially address this with a minor (although she has her heart set on doing a double major, or at least a minor, in Robotics).
@Ynotgo , thanks for your very helpful post! And good luck to your son in making his college decision (and congrats on all the great admissions!) She is torn between CS and Computer Engineering, although she is leaning in the direction of CS. Her real passion is robotics, however, and that is something that both CMU and Berkeley are far better at than UT Austin…
@Jpgranier, UT Austin is indeed a great school, with a lot of opportunities. My daughter is accepted into the Electrical and Computer Engineering department, rather than CS, so Turing is not an option there. She did get accepted into the Engineering Honors Program, but that focuses on giving out scholarships to the top incoming students and giving them access to honors housing, rather than offering some different class options, as Turing does.
@staticvoidmain, thanks for your post!! It’s great to hear from a current EECS student. My husband, daughter and I visited Cal last weekend and were quite impressed with the EECS department and with the loveliness of the campus. We have not yet visited CMU, but that is coming up soon. And just to clarify–she has a full tuition scholarship in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at UT Austin, not its CS department. And because those are in different schools at UT, it is not possible to easily switch among them. So we are comparing ECE at UT Austin to CS at CMU and EECS at Cal. She is interested in both majors, probably a bit more toward CS, but her biggest interest is in the area of Robotics, where CMU and Cal both considerably outshine UT Austin. So that is a concern. Size wise, she now thinks she would prefer a smaller school, so she likes the sound of CMU there, and she’s not a party girl, so I don’t think she is particularly put off by what she has heard about the intense academic focus at in CMU’s SCS program, although the idea of its being cutthroat is troubling. One concern she has had about Cal EECS is the class size, and the potential difficulty in getting into classes. Have you had much of an issue with that?
My understanding is that changing majors at CMU was VERY difficult–not sure if that has changed, but is something to inquire about. At 17-18, it’s hard to know exactly which path one will ultimately want a degree in. Also important to inquire st the other Us how hard/easy it is to change majors or major/minor in different areas as your D sounds like she may be interested.
@HImom, that is an excellent point and is probably my biggest concern about CMU’s SCS program…Berkeley seems like it probably offers the broadest options, as it is excellent in so many areas…
I know Berkeley is impacted with lots of state budget cuts and may be pretty inflexible about changes as well. I honestly don’t know much about UT.
If she wants computer science and applied EE at UT, I would knock it out of the running. While the EE department is also amazing, transferring into CS, should she consider it, has proven very difficult over the past few years. Lots of problems with 5th and 6th year seniors taking minimum hours while working full time jobs in Austin (it’s hard to pass up 80-90k a year!). While this is great for them, it fills up slots in the program limiting transfer and freshmen enrollment.
I really don’t think you could go wrong between Berkeley and CMU.
With that said, unless you’re in state for Berkeley, the cost of attendance will be VERY large! I believe UT has a computer engineer with software focus? that is comparable to a CS degree. I know it’s not perfect, but doing that could essentially cost you 40k vs 240-280k… That’s a lot of money that could be put toward grad school, vacationing, retirement; hell, you could buy your daughter a starter home with the money you save… I can see why you’re thinking so hard on this!