In this specific case which is always how my advice is gauged, do they? At a minimum, the next cheapest school is $200,000 MORE. The cheapest school is arguably in one of the hottest startup markets in the nation. The opportunities will be different. I know for a fact my son wouldn’t have landed his first job, arguably a tail experience, had he been at Cal. They didn’t recruit there. He would have had other opportunities though.
If you are from Texas, and you get admitted to your major (not just university) at UT Austin or Texas A&M, then don’t leave the state. You can’t beat the ROI.
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I will counter your interesting anecdote with one of my own.
A few days ago my son met a former classmate who had dropped out to start a company, raised several million in seed capital and promptly moved the company to SV. Why SV? Because he was trying to solve a really hard problem and that’s where the biggest collection of talent is. Boston couldn’t keep him, and Austin or Seattle couldn’t get him either.
Upon hiring that talent and making good progress on the idea for a couple of years, the company is now valued at several hundred million after their latest funding round. I expect that within the next year, the company will be valued either north of $5B, or close to zero, depending upon whether or not their product works.
The opportunities in SV are just at a different level.
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And did he go to school there? NO. Did he even finish school?!? NO. That’s my point. It was baked into him when he graduated from high school. Why can’t a Texas grad move to SV with $200,000 in their pocket?
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Im shocked any kids would even consider MIT or Carnegie Mellon for CS when they could just go to Berkeley instead.
I stated pretty clearly that the primary benefit of UC-Berkeley over UT-Austin was location, in terms of being exposed to a larger set of job opportunities. As I said, the difference in quality between the two programs is small.
For in-state kids looking at CS, it’s a no-brainer.
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I’d add on a few other things - not entirely relevant to the OP but probably makes sense given the back and forth.
When we say “big companies hire from everywhere” the nuance we miss is - when did they start hiring from at each school.
When Google started they hired exclusively from Stanford and then Berkeley and then going outwards from there. A lot of it was because of where the company originated from. As Google got bigger and bigger they became less stubborn about target schools and tapped into the larger talent pool. But those early engineers from Stanford et al made 100s of millions whereas the later engineers who got in later made order of magnitude lower outcomes even if in the millions.
In my son’s example - OpenAI and Perplexity founders came out of the same lab at Berkeley. They come to Berkeley regularly, network with the EECS kids here and guest lecture on AI and ML courses. Now if OpenAI grows enough to justify its valuations they will eventually hire from a ton of other schools but the early to rocket ship stage hires tend to come from a cluster of the same big CS schools.
Same with quant firms, and a gazillion startups that hire exclusively from the top 4-5 schools. SV has always delivered outsized outcomes relative to any other geography and for the right type of parent and student it might make perfect sense to spend extra.
For the vast majority of people it may not be but it’s not crazy to invest in a school that might have massive upside potential.
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In this situation, it’s OOS. Based on your rationale, in state or OOS, Berkeley seems to be a no brainer for CS career outcomes even if it’s $200k more.
If so, why would anyone who is interested in maximizing their career outcomes choose Carnegie Mellon or MIT (or any school) over Berkeley?
Deleted. Already addressed.
A worthwhile conversation, but as the mods have told us not to bring up other schools, it’s not a conversation for this thread.
I will assume the posters with the back and forth will take their discussion to pm so we can get back to the OP.
Further comments not directed to the Op will be deleted.
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