berkeley v harvey mudd

Colleges & Universities University of California - Berkeley
1

<p>Hey guys, sorry if any similar thread exists on this board. </p>

<p>(also i x-posted this at the hmc forum to see if i could get a wider variety of responses)</p>

<p>Right now I’m admitted to Berkeley under pre-business & harvey mudd college as engineering. I applied to Cal as pre-business 'cause i was stuck between engineering and business (and i was scared that i wouldn’t be able to get into cal eng’g, since it’s so hard to get into), but lately i’ve decided that a business undergrad degree isn’t very important to me anymore, and i’d rather do engineering. </p>

<p>I’ve visited both schools (HMC for an overnight prog, affiliated with the school–so perhaps i didn’t get the purest feel for the campus, although i’m hoping to go back this week) (Cal thus-sat, including part of cal day) and I really really like both. I’m absolutely stuck in the middle; 50% of me wants to go to berkeley, 50% wants hmc. </p>

<p>I’ve made a pro/con list, although this is by no means comprehensive (which is why i don’t think the current lop-sided-ness should mean anything definite?) but if anyone could help me out I would appreciate it oh so much. and if it helps, i’ve always planned to study engineering but then go into business (and i think i’m going to get my MBA), although lately i’ve been thinking that maybe being an engineer wouldn’t be so bad. although i kinda…don’t know what they do :x</p>

<ul>
<li>= both pro & con</li>
</ul>

<p>BERKELEY</p>

<p>PROS

  • extremely diverse, seems to be a more complete experience to be surrounded by all kinds of people (not just engineers/scientists)
  • $8.5k scholarship
  • excellent location, will never be bored/have nothing to do, SAN FRANCISCO
  • far from home
  • great, nice people – something for everyone kinda thing
  • 8417529358 club organizations
  • will already know people there*
  • IEOR!!! (industrial engineering & operations research major) Has that integration of business and eng’g that I wanted to do; potential double major w/Haas
  • prestigious?
  • if I decide I don’t want to do eng’g, can transfer—plenty of options, not restricted – although i’ve heard about difficulties in transferring…
  • FAR FROM HOME
  • forces you to be independent
  • one of the most amazing culture/history i know of. it seems like cal students epitomize human virtue</p>

<p>CONS

  • ridiculously large—easy to feel overwhelmed/overshadowed
  • mad competition, kinda
  • killer amount of work
    –not sure if you can get help, will have to search to find resources/etc.
    –will have to be mad independent
  • will already know people there
  • location – “unsafe” (although I’d argue that it really doesn’t matter unless you’re not smart about stuff) – bums (although I really don’t care)
  • lots of $$$ for airfare
  • forces you to be independent (possibly cutthroat…)
  • no guarantee that I can transfer into eng’g or get into Haas
  • would probably get distracted from studying…
  • elevators & dogs EVERYWHERE–elevators pretty much unavoidable. not to mention subways. (i have a mad fear of dogs and am claustrophobic)
  • only ~7% out-of-state</p>

<p>OTHER
• ~$18.5k in loans? </p>

<p>HARVEY MUDD</p>

<p>PROS

  • NERDS!
  • $33k scholarship
  • really, REALLY dedicated professors
  • easy to get to know professors—actually, you will get to know every single one of them
  • nicest faculty EVER. strong advising system
  • small class sizes
  • extremely prestigious in the ‘know’ crowd—equates with MIT/Caltech/Stanford—easy to get eng’g jobs
  • intense clinic program
  • honor code is no joke; you can leave your laptop outside and no one will take it
  • safe, calm area
  • really, really strong connection/unity among students; strong, solid support base; everyone works together; cooperative, not competitive
  • easy to get help if needed
  • like 99% of graduating HMC undergrads get jobs by November following their graduation
  • will get to know everyone, and will probably be known by everyone</p>

<p>CONS

  • nothing but nerds, although I think that would be fine (not to mention there are 5 other colleges right next to it—so theoretically I could ‘escape’ from that if I really needed to) – but it may be a more complete college experience to be surrounded by all kinds of people, not just scientists/engineers – although i can find different kinds of people at the neighboring colleges…
  • kinda stuck if I’m at an eng’g school and I decide not to do eng’g – although i can do an off-campus major as long as i have an hmc minor
  • not very well-known
  • hella hard/lot of work…
  • sooooo close to home……. (~40 minutes)
  • boring location (Claremont), i think – although there is always a lot to do on campus
  • perhaps too small. will never get the diversity with just 700 kids at HMC (3,500 total at the Claremont colleges) </p>

<p>OTHER
• only ~12k in loans
• can always take summer school @ cal…
• when i talked to a berkeley prof (of Haas), he told me straight out to go to harvey mudd. which was actually really weird, haha
• general engineering program. i have no idea whether this is good or bad, but since i’m not really sure what eng’g i want to do, it seems better</p>

2

<p>bleh i always got the impression harvey mudd engin was harder to get into than berkeley engineering…ii say go with harvey mudd!</p>

3

<p>Good list DrH, let me pitch in as a Cal IEOR alum with a Haas MBA (I know where you’re coming from there…)</p>

<p>Add to your list of pros for Cal: for starts, read my post in response to the student deciding b/w Cal, Northwestern and Penn wrt ORMS and the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and so forth.</p>

<p>The better-balanced campus in terms of majors, classes offered and gender distribution is a very strong reason to choose Cal. For me, it would almost single-handedly eliminate all the Techs (MIT, CalTech, HMC, GT,…) as I wouldn’t feel as happy and stimulated in such a narrow environment.</p>

<p>Other pros:
-great networking, higher profile of the Berkeley Engineering and Business faculty and alums, as well as the campus at large. This has helped me a lot in my business career, both in the US and overseas (Asia in particular.)
-gorgeous campus, place and great food and venues all around the Bay and beyond.
-you do get to know the profs that you want to get to know. A lot of them are pretty nice and appreciate you seeing them in their office hours, which most students don’t do.
-In IEOR at least, very cooperative, laid back and friendly academic and social environment
-A huge amount of academic offerings to graze from. Humanities, sciences, languages,…
-Cal sports are great! I love the balance. The campus scene doesn’t revolve around athletics (like at Michigan or Notre Dame), but many students really get into it. Great, fun release.
-You will not outgrow Cal’s environemnt, always something new to do or see and people to meet. The opposite at HMC…</p>

<p>Addressing some Berkeley cons:
-for a large university, Berkeley “feels” a lot smaller. It’s a compact, pedestrian campus, and most students live near it. You’ll get to know people at the gym, the football games, the cafes, the restaurants, the campus glades, the piano/music rooms, the activities clubs or your church if applicable, and you’ll run into them daily at all these places and venues.
-you can save $$$ by carpooling to LA for a share of the gas money for your longer vacations. Over 10,000 cal students from the southland…
-Cal has a good Psych dept, it could help you overcome your dual phobias (you really should). Until then, stairways are there…
-A whole lot of California residents are originally from overseas or other states, this greatly mitigates the low % of OOS students. Once again, size matters… 7% of 22,000 is 1,540 OOS students, many times more than at HMC.
-I’ve never felt unsafe at Cal. If that’s an issue, you can live in east Berkeley, very safe setting.
-Yes, you could definitely get distracted from studying. BUT more importantly, I’ve found that taking a day off in SF or Napa with my friends, going out on a thursday in SF, going for a day hike or a weekend camping trip, hanging out with your friends socializing,… those activites help you keep your sanity, a positive outlook and stave off burnouts.</p>

<p>Good luck with your choice, I’ll be glad to assist with further Qs.</p>

4

<p>CalX, thank you so much for your reply. I really do like Berkeley, and it’s helped quell a few of my fears.</p>

<p>If you could comment/respond/answer any of these things, that would be great. I went to talk to my math teacher, and she told me that at Mudd, it’s so easy to get a high-paying job right after graduating (something like 99% of the kids get jobs by November of their graduating year) without having to go through 2332810325 interviews because they were referred to a job–but at Berkeley, one still has to go out and search for a job and go through that interview process–that it’s so hard to find a job because there are so many students. (Sorry for the run-ons) How true would you say this is–particularly of IEOR? </p>

<p>And if you could tell me anything else about IEOR, that would be great. I talked to a couple of IEOR kids at cal day, and they were all really nice. they told me that class sizes for them are around 50 kids, and the major itself is pretty small, and i think i’d like that–like it’d be a private school experience, in a way, right inside a huge UC. </p>

<p>i’m also really scared of whether i’d be able to transfer into IEOR. i’ve heard awful things about cal kids being ‘stuck’ in their majors.</p>

<p>and sorry if any of these Qs are dumb or anything…i’m just so confused x__x</p>

5

<p>whats IEOR?</p>

6

<p>

</p>

<p>Is there any way you can determine this before you make up your mind? Maybe you can talk to someone at Cal and find out what you’d have to do.
If it’s not possible, that might make your decision easier.</p>

7

<p>ILL: Industrial Engineering and Operations Research</p>

<p>DrH: at Berkeley, I would guess almost all engineering graduates have offers by November as well. But I agree about that offer not falling on their lap, except those who get internships the summer before. You’ll have to treat your job search like a 4 unit class, no more, no less.</p>

<p>But look at it this way: if you do get a job without lifting a finger at HMC, you will have to learn the whole set of professional job skills (interviewing, searching, resumes, professional presentations) when you will want to switch jobs, which most people do after a few years. In this sense, the process of job search at Cal is an important part of your professional curriculum.</p>

<p>Class sizes at IEOR actually get smaller than 50 in the last 2-3 semesters. I’ve had seminars with 15 students, and many upper div electives with 20-30 students. You’ll be able to do research as part of your final projects and work on professional assignments with real clients in some classes. I did a purchasing module for Gap, designed a scheduling program for a school district, a database management system for the wine cellars at Chez Panisse (world famous restaurant in Berkeley.)</p>

<p>IEOR is small, cozy and collegial, but I did very much like rubbing shoulders with other engineers and scientists in my lower div classes. Made friends with people from other majors.</p>

<p>The scary things yuo’ve heard about Cal students being stuck in their majors (a) don’t apply to IEOR and (b)were greatly overblown by the lone two posters with an agenda who squat here. There are some issues with the EECS major and to a lesser extent the business major, but IMHO, IEOR or ORMS is a better undergraduate major than bus ad. IEOR is actually the easiest major to get into in the college of engineering. I think that the ORMS major is even easier. Had the ORMS existed when I was at Cal, I would have picked it instead, beacuse it has great balance (soc, econ, psych, OB integration) and is close to a business degree but isn’t too practical (not quite like a vocational degree.)</p>

<p>Hope that helped DrH, I’m really happy for the opportunity to clarify things for you.</p>

8

<p>I have exactly the same dilemma to deal with in the next 5 days. As an engineering physics undergrad (in the Engineering Science dept. I think), I’m really worried about my prospects for grad school in the Berkeley environment. Is it really hard to get letters of recommendation from your professors? Are the letters you get any good (on average)? Also, what’s the undergraduate research experience like? Are many undergrads co-authors or do most do menial labor?</p>

9

<p>I recommend Harvey Mudd: the smaller environment plus a great education and less loans for a private school.</p>

10

<p>Harvey Mudd leads the nation in average debt for graduates. Granted, I hear good things about their post graduate jobs, and those that do graduate can do quite well, but it’s a nice little statistic I’ve heard.</p>

<p>I’ll respond from what I’ve heard and how I feel, psychionion. If you do fairly well here, you can go to great graduate schools- students do yearly. It’s not hard to get letters of rec, but to get meaningful ones, you have to put in at least some effort, you have to actually interact and get to know your professor(s). Determining average quality is impossible. Undergraduate research is available, although sometimes hard to get, particularly substantial jobs. I’ve heard some menial lab jobs, but some undergraduates researches get substantial work in projects, although this probably happens less often than learning the basics of lab work.</p>

11

<p>at osp, my host was from claremont and said he would never stay there for college bc theres absolutely nothing to do.</p>

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<p>Harvey Mudd!!</p>