Chicago O’Hare airport is well known for having frequent flight delays and missed connections.
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There is a difference between studying the problem, which may absorb some (but probably not all) of the surplus of biology PhDs who graduate every year, and doing something about it, which is probably a mix of engineering* and social science** problems.
*Improvements in energy efficiency, conversion to non-fossil-fuel energy sources, infrastructure design to be energy efficient, etc…
**Convincing and incentivizing people to use less (especially fossil fuel) energy, urban planning to encourage energy efficiency, getting political agreements across national governments, etc.
The one time D18 had a connecting flight was to see her friend in WA. She had to connect in MN (MSP) and the Winter weather screwed that one up. So, I/we scrambled that day just to get her home to SFO. The whole WA trip was completely washed out.
If your S and your family can “underwrite” the 1/2 day to potentially a day’s worth of travel when those storms hit, then I’d lean towards Colgate for the outdoorsy-ness, 4 seasons, sports and the top notch smaller school, hassle-free education. 
Having said that, for me personally, I’m not sure I could deal with the travel. Michigan is a 4-hour-ish direct flight with a 30-minute bus ride to campus. That’s about as much travel as I can handle.
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Thanks. He’s pretty laid back and I think as long as there is internet he will tolerate the travel pretty well. I think I’d be more worried if he were going to be doing a lot of driving back East in weather but he won’t take his car to Colgate at least for a couple of years.
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Most of the connections are through Chicago unfortunately. I think perhaps Denver and Phoenix but it might vary depending on the date since the other two airports have limited flights.
When you make airline flight plans, be sure to consider the contingency of a 2-3 hour delay, or a missed connection requiring an overnight stay at the airport.
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Not to get too off track - but learning to travel, deal with flight delays and cancellations are all great life skills. The day of the secretary managing your travel is long gone in the business world. Kid get home from east to west and west to east for holidays - maybe not with perfect flights, but they can do it and I am guessing viewed as an adventure vs us adults having limited to no tolerance of these hiccups.
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Hi there. I’d like to point out that UCSC’s job placement that you may online see doesn’t represent the school at all. You can use: UC alumni at work | University of California
to compare the different UC’s salaries for any specific major. This is the most accurate source you can possibly use since it’s from the University of California itself. For CS, UCSC is nearly identical to UCSB, UCSD, UCI, and UCD in terms of after graduate salary, so please don’t worry about “a low job placement” when that in itself isn’t true.
Average salary for CS students at each UC after 5 years of graduation:
UCB: $137,409
UCLA: $119,606
UCSB: $108,232
UCD: $107,279
UCSC: $105,962
UCSD: $105,357
UCI: $103,236
UCR: $84,229
UCM: Data not available
As expected, UCB has the highest salary by a pretty decent margin and is followed by UCLA with UCSB, UCSC, UCSD, UCI, and UCD all having essentially the same exact salary. So I would cross off “low job placement” as UCSC’s con.
You also mentioned that your son went to a private high school and would better acclimate to a smaller school. This is true, but UCSC is split into 10 residential colleges so it makes a huge public school into smaller liberal arts colleges. This is a reason why people in California love UCSC and UCSD- they are intimidated by 20,000+ students and fear that they won’t be able to find their place.
UCSC announced earlier that Freshmen get priority for housing, so I wouldn’t worry about not getting it.
UCSC does have a student hub and it’s called the quarry plaza. This is where tons of clubs set up their tables to get students to join, the book store is here, plenty of restaurants/cafes, and is essentially right in the middle of campus. This is the main “hangout spot” on campus.
While there may be a chance of triple dorms, I seriously doubt there will be. And if there are, the triples are pretty big so they aren’t as bad as people make them out to be.
Salary was fine but percentage placed was quite low. I was using the Ivy Achievement CS ratings info. I posted a thread to try to get insight from Bay Area peeps on that but didn’t really get a lot of feedback.
I can speak to these SCU cons. They aren’t.
The climate at Santa Clara is just about round. When you say “hotter” what exactly do you mean? It’s not an equatorial climate. It’s really quite nice.
My kid was an engineering major there. She picked up a double major in biology with no difficulty at all. The only small rub was that she didn’t have a foreign language requirement in the college of engineering…but did have to fulfill this for that biology major.
Re: the religion requirement…there are tons (like 100 or more) courses that can be taken to fulfill this requirement. My science kid LOVED her religion courses because they were a welcome break from all the science and math. She took “Women in Religion”, some ethics course, and one other. We are not Catholics…she found these courses very interesting. I will say, she also like the Jesuit presence on campus.
There is a core course requirement but again, my kid liked that this broke up all that math and science she was taking.
The campus is gorgeous. The greater Santa Clara area is very nice. I think there is more going on there than at Colgate.
It’s close enough to go to Santa Cruz to the beach if someone has a car! My kid spent two summers working at SCU, and the Santa Cruz Jazz Festival was a happening then. One of her biggest regrets was NOT going to the Santana concert!
DD really enjoyed her four years at SCU.
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It would be pretty cool if he could live as an upperclassman in or near SC. I’ve heard the traffic is pretty bad so it would depend on his schedule. Don’t get me wrong I loved SCU. I would not be surprised if my D24 ends up going there.
Weatherwise he wants a change. He originally wanted to go to Seattle and might end up there ultimately.
As far as course requirements, the AO told me for the school of engineering it’s pretty full. Bio minor is biotech which probably wouldn’t be his area of interest. His collection of APs won’t count basically even with 4s and 5s.
I see. I remember hearing at orientation that something around ~40 percent of CS undergrads were unemployed after graduation at UCSC so this is quite a big difference (60% vs. ~25% on ivyachievement). It’s also odd to me that other great CS schools such as UNC-CH, UCI, UCSB, UMass, and Purdue are all around the same as UCSC. What’s even more strange is that ivyachievement says UCSB’s average salary is below 70k and that is wayyy wayyy off. Even Purdue on their website mentions that the average starting salary for CS graduates is around 100k yet it’s around 65k on ivyachievement. I wouldn’t put too much of an emphasis on these sort of websites.
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Here in SB / central coast the pay is definitely lower than major cities in many fields, though I’m not familiar with high tech particularly.
Well…if he is looking for a change in weather, then colgate would give him that.
Maybe it’s harder now…my DD graduated in 2010. But she had no difficulty double majoring…but she was a bioengineering major so there was course overlap. She did take Ochem one summer there. And she typically had 18-20 quarter hours scheduled each term…but 3 of those were orchestra and instrument lessons.
“Priority” is not a guarantee. And while UCSC will be building more housing in the future, housing for sophomore, junior and senior years will be a mad scramble and likely expensive.
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I never said it was a guarantee, I just said freshmen get priority. If they were able to house all freshmen and sophomores in previous years, there shouldn’t be a reason why any freshman can’t get housing. And by the time incoming freshmen are sophomores, Covid will likely be totally gone and housing will be back to normal.
I never said that you said there was a guarantee. But the bottom line is housing isn’t guaranteed for freshman. Period.
And I’m not sure housing was fully available for sophomores in prior years from what I understand. And then UCSC’s juniors and seniors will still have to find housing in SC.
In the past, freshmen admits got 2 years guaranteed housing and transfer admits got 1 year guaranteed. And yes, while UCSC hasn’t said that housing for incoming freshmen is guaranteed, it pretty much is. I currently go to UCSC and I’ve heard soooo many times in the past two weeks about how incoming freshmen are at the top of the priority list. One of my childhood friends’ parents, whose son is an incoming freshman, told me that the admission officers said that if they meet the housing application deadline, they will get housing. I even had a discussion with one of my professors about this and he said the exact same thing. Returing Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors are unfortunately not prioritized at all so it is much more of a lottery for them. But I feel that it’s safe to say that if you’re an incoming freshman at UCSC and you apply for housing, you will get it.
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As a parent considering UCSC, a post on the internet is meaningless to me. Now if the OP calls and speaks to Housing and UCSC will verbally state that in a conversation and the OP is comfortable with that, then fine. But priority is NOT a guarantee.
We still have an unknown and that’s the end of Covid.
And if you don’t get it, then it’s mad scramble to find a lease somewhere with 9 other people in a house for $1,000/month. Yes, I’m exaggerating.
And what’s the cost each year of the final 3 years? Having some sort of estimated housing cost for remainder of your time at UCSC would be nice to know too.
Either way, it’s my opinion, housing at UCSC is a CON compared to the other choices. No further argument from me, since arguing isn’t allowed here. 
Colgate sounds like the best option!