College Decisions: UCSC EE vs UC Berkeley Applied Math

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Hello! My son got into UC Berkeley for Applied Mathematics and UCSC for Electrical Engineering. His intended major was always Electrical Engineering since it’s a good field to go into ( more stable/ more job prospects straight out of undergrad) , but he’s facing a difficult situation as UC Berkeley is one of the best public schools in the country and ranked very highly for Applied Mathematics. He plans on pursuing a graduate degree in the future in either some form of engineering or computer science potentially.

He would’ve ideally liked to go to UC Berkeley since the name is hard to pass up, but he is conflicted since he’s concerned about the job prospects associated with majoring in Applied Mathematics instead of Engineering. He looked into changing his major at Berkeley upon going there, but looks to be a difficult process as CS,DS, Engineering etc. are in different colleges, not within Letters and Sciences.

We would like some guidance regarding this decision, as we see merit in attending both universities. Please give us advice.

Thank you so much!

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For UCB applied mathematics, you can go to Where Do Cal Grads Go? - Career Engagement (warning: slow and best viewed on a desktop/laptop, not mobile phone), click the employment tab, limit it to applied mathematics, and see what kind of pay levels and employers hire the graduates. Looks like most employers are in finance and computing. For continuing education, the most common graduate majors are computer science, applied mathematics, and engineering majors. However, the overall tab indicates a significant percentage still looking for employment (versus employed or in continuing education).

If he wants to go to graduate study, applied math likely connects most strongly to industrial engineering / operations research among engineering fields, and subareas of computer science like theory, cryptography, and AI.

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Changing into CCDSS CS, data science, or any engineering major including EECS could be difficult, due to these majors being capacity-limited. This could also mean that getting into upper division courses as a non-major could be difficult, since students in the majors get priority.

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Here is UCSC’s career survey report: First Destination Survey . Select the desired major (e.g. electrical engineering) to see results for that major.

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Thank you for the advice! will take a look at that

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@ucbalumnus I don’t see any grads reporting in the last 5 years for applied math. Am I applying the filter incorrectly?

For me, it’s easy.

He wants to be an electrical engineer. It’s not going to happen at UCB. To me, you always choose major over name, especially when it’s something so specific.

The UCSC stats (how many employed) - not sure when pulled but likely early and not updated. The school is ABET accredited.

Now the student seems to want to go to grad school and not work right away - and if this is the case, I’d speak to a faculty at UCB to find out the possible future grad school majors, etc.

In the end, to me, there’s no point in going to any school that can’t lead to the ultimate goal someone has.

UCB is a great name (as is Santa Cruz). In the end, yes, on average, UCB students might get better results (if from the same major), but there will be many UCSC students in life that outperform those from UCB, no different than kids from Iowa or Wisconsin outperform on a daily basis kids from Michigan or the kid from Alabama doing better than the kid at Ga Tech.

And it’s likely, especially at larger firms, that students from both schools work side by side, making similar salaries.

So I’d lean toward UCSC - unless I found out that Applied Math could get me to where I want to go. I would not consider grad school - many get through the rigor of engineering and are done with school (at least for now) - and want to profit.

Choosing a “lesser” name pedigree wise is not unusual in the least. Both my kids have including one engineer and looking through this website, zillions of kids have - because they are choosing fit. A name doesn’t bring you four years, day after day, of happiness - and studying what doesn’t interest you - ehhhhh - why would you want to do that?

Good luck.

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There are some places where there is both “applied math” and “applied mathematics” for some reason, and it looks like the latter is the correct one.

Although that seems mostly motivated by job prospects, so a comparison of graduates’ career survey results is pertinent.

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How good is he at math? Math degrees are one of the subjects where the long tail of talent is very long and very obvious. IMO (I did undergrad math then a PhD in a subfield of engineering, my first job was computer programming) for a good hard working student who isn’t a superstar it is easier (and usually more satisfying) to be in engineering than math. On the other hand, an extremely talented mathematician will find that degree easier (and more fun) than engineering.

That difference will be more obvious when comparing UCB math (which will attract some very talented mathematicians) with UCSC engineering (which has strong students but fewer superstars).

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I missed there was a 2nd line right after - thanks for the correction.

Interestingly most end up as software engineers (last three years salaries) and some in trading, etc.

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My kid was an applied math major and was offered internships and job offers from top tier investment banks and management consulting employers. Ultimately he pursued a start up he founded and investors have seemed very satisfied with his applied math background.

It is a highly marketable concentration assuming your kid also has the social skills to convey the “applied” portion of the major.

Good luck.

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As @tsbna44 said, I would pick major over school name. I got my CS & Math degrees from CSU and my siblings got their not so popular majors from CAL. Guess who is having a better career now? Also, does your son have a passion in EE? For my S24, all he talk about is Engineering, he would rather go to no name school for Eng than CAL for other major.

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Berkeley has one of the top math programs in the country, but it’s not EE or CS, which would be extremely difficult to transfer into. (there have to be hundreds of others at Cal who are gunning to transfer into those majors.) So he has to decide by major, not name.

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  1. Applied math has excellent career prospects
  2. However the actual job applied Math and EECS lead to are quite different, as is the content of what you’d study for your major.
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I guess the question to OP should be about their original thinking process in applying to Berkeley for math, instead of EE.

That probably will help OP answer their own question.