Berkeley EECS (Regent's Scholarship) vs. CMU SCS

1collegecrazed
Sat, 31 Mar 2012 15:12:55 +0000

Hey Guys!

I’ve gotten in to Berkeley’s EECS program with the Regent’s and Chancellor’s Scholarship and to CMU’s School of Computer Science. I know that both Cal and CMU are amazing schools, but I’m having trouble deciding between the two. Can you guys help me compare both of them by considering the factors below?


Workload - Judging by some of the threads on the Berkeley forum, EECS majors don’t seem to be the happiest people.
Public School vs. Private School - Class sizes and facilities/buildings are factors here. I’ve heard that students don’t interact with professors often at Cal (this may be due to the difference in class sizes; from what I know, intro courses at Cal are ~500 students compared to ~200 at CMU). Also, CMU just recently built the Gates Center for CS, so the facilities will be new.
Cost - I’m projecting that CMU will be ~15k more per year than Berkeley. Is a private school worth 60k more than a state school?
Research Opportunities - Is it easy to get research at CMU? Since Berkeley EECS is such a large major, is getting research more difficult? Will being a Regent’s Scholar mitigate this disparity?
Internships/Job Placement - According to the placement reports/surveys at Berkeley EECS (https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/EECS.stm) and at CMU SCS (http://www.studentaffairs.cmu.edu/career/Students/gps1/explore/survey/pdf/scs.pdf), the salaries and companies are slightly better at CMU than at Berkeley. Is this an accurate representation?


Thanks in advance.