My son was accepted by both CMU stats/AI and UC Berkeley L&S Applied Math. We are out of state anyway so that the tuitions of both school are close. We recently visited both schools and think both schools are great. I think Berkeley wins in location (not sure how much role in job application) and CMU wins in the available resources. However, we need to make a decision by May 1. Please help us with more information about both schools.
CMU
Pros:
Close to our home
Smaller sized private school
Easy to elect the CS courses with additional majors ( we are happy with Math/Stats and did not want to transfer to SCS)
The stats/AI course design seems more fun and practical
The meals of the meal plan is great (important to my son)
Convenient access to the city.
Cons:
Pittsburgh is cold and gloomy. The top jobs are not close to it.
The school social thing is not much and the people seem very nerdy.
Even though CS is very famous, the recruiting for other majors like stats or applied math are not clear to us.
Berkeley:
Pros:
Top location to Silicon Valley tech scene.
Nice weather all year around.
Big school with a lot of research opportunities.
A lot of fun people
Math program is top in the nation although I don’t know if it is applicable to the undergraduate students.
Cons:
Hard to enroll the CS courses and need to fight for any resource.
Applied math curriculum is very traditional and outdated with all fancy AI/Machine learning courses offered in other department barely available to the math students.
Doesn’t seem a reasonable question to me. Smaller, more attention, better meal access which you note is of import.
If the student wants to end up out west, don’t you think CMU kids do ? Yes they do.
Many kids change majors. You might see which is more flexible. My guess is CMU but I don’t know. You should check.
But based on what you write, there’s not a real question here. CMU is the easy winner.
Ps - yes Pittsburgh is gloomier but when you don’t eat regularly or well, it’s gloomy too. In fact low blood sugar would be gloomier than bad sun. I’m not sure why you’d say that about UCB but obviously you’ve researched it yourself know it’s true.
I was a math major in university, focusing on applied math. I think that having some computer science course work and experience was very helpful and important. Taking a small number of AI and/or machine learning courses will also be useful.
Personally I think that applied math is a very good major, assuming that you get some CS and a bit of AI/ML experience along the way. There are a lot of things that you can do with a degree in mathematics.
It sounds like the student was accepted to L&S and plans to pursue an applied math major, but is planning also to take lots of CS/AI/ML courses? I agree that access to these courses would be a concern for a student in L&S.
UCB is notoriously inflexible when it comes to switching from L&S to CS (requires unpredictable “comprehensive review” process) or from L&S to EECS (not possible). It is conceivable that this major change will become less difficult as the demand for the CS major declines, but I wouldn’t enroll in the school assuming that it would happen.
In terms of jobs, CMU students come from all over, intern all over, and go on to next steps all over, including many going to California. Physical proximity to jobs really isn’t a major factor these days.
In terms of climate, if you like four seasons climates, Pittsburgh has very nice falls and springs. The winters, though, are in fact cloudy on many days, which combines with the northerly latitude to limit sunshine hours.
So to be very frank, if you have Seasonal Affective Disorder, I think you need to be cautious about choosing a location like that for college. Others, though, will usually easily adapt, and actively enjoy a lot of days, including some winter fun days.
I know a couple of current CMU students, and they both say the on campus food options are terrible and it’s better to just get food off campus. Anecdotal for sure, but something to consider.