$20,000 presidential to UMD, OOS for berkeley
If you wanna work on the east coast: UMD, west coast: Berkeley
It would come down to the money for me and yes if I had a real preference on where I wanted to start my career…East Coast or West. If the 20k at UMD is instate, that’s a no brainer to me. UMD all the way!
no one can deny that UCB is world renowned for it’s top tier com sci program and while UMD is good in com sci as well, it doesn’t hold the prestige of UCB.
UCB out of state will cost nearly $40,000 in tuition alone, right? Too expensive! While Maryland in-state tuition is just about $10,000, so you’ll have $10,000 of that scholarship to cover your other college expenses. Do the math yourself, but I’m thinking that your Berkeley education will cost $200,000 more over four years. I spent nine years there as a student and then a staff member, so I know that Berkeley is a far superior campus, but it is still a large state school like Maryland. If you are rich, you should spend the money and go to Berkeley. But, if you’re like most middle class families, it would be an unjustified extravagance, unless you really want to relocate to the west coast for your future career.
I would not underestimate Maryland’s strength in C.S. This is a rather extreme price differential, and a very nice offer from Maryland. While Berkeley’s C.S. is outstanding, it is not worth that outlay, unless your family can afford Berkeley OOS without struggling. I would choose Maryland and not look back. I may have missed it, but it is not clear if you are already accepted to the C.S. program at Berkeley, or just a general admit – it would be very unfortunate indeed to pay all that money if you are not sure to graduate from Berkeley with a C.S. degree.
By the way, the abbreviation for computer science is comp. sci.; comm. generally applies to communications disciplines.