EE/CS Undergrad - Berkeley or Rice?

hippiecow
Fri, 30 Mar 2012 00:19:32 +0000

Hi everyone,

As the title says, I’ve got to choose between Berkeley and Rice for Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. I got the regents scholarship at Berkeley (with no merit money at Rice, unfortunately) so that means that I won’t be hit too hard by budget cuts at Berkeley (Regents Scholars get priority in choosing classes), but my EFC being that what it is, the two schools cost about the same.

I’ve visited Berkeley, but not Rice (I live in Northern California). I’ll try to visit for their admitted students program though. As for my comments on visiting Berkeley: the campus is nice though somewhat large. To me, that’s a double edged sword, because while it offers a lot of opportunities (provided I can take advantage of them, which I’m not sure of), it seems all to easy to get lost in the crowd, so to speak.

Berkeley has a few other advantages too, like it’s proximity to Silicon Valley / the startup culture of the Bay / etc. I’m not sure about Rice’s location - I would guess that Houston isn’t on the same par as the Bay area when it comes to tech companies, etc. And I’m not sure about Rice’s CS department either. Supposedly, it’s pretty good for undergrads, yet Berkeley’s is one of the best in the world (but is that for graduates only or undergrads too?).

Rice’s residential college system looks interesting though, and something to definitely consider.

Anyway, if anyone has any advice / suggestions / benefits or drawbacks to studying EE/CS at either place, please share! Thanks.