UC Berkeley EECS vs Rice Premed

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For better community input, please provide the below details about your college offers:

Net price per year at each college, after applying scholarships and financial aid grants.

UC Berkeley - ~85K OOS
Rice - 70K

Maximum parent contribution per year.

No aid or scholarship so far

Major/division admitted to at each college, if applicable to the college. Also, any special programs like honors programs or combined degree programs (e.g. BA/BS->MD).

UCB - Electrical and Comp Sci
Rice - Any major, but likely CS

If you applied to regular fall term start, specify if you were admitted to start at a different campus, in study abroad, in an online/distance or extension program, or other than in the fall term.

NA

Desired major and post graduation goals (including if pre-med, pre-law, etc.).

Assume same CS major, which is better

If not a frosh admit finishing high school, indicate status (e.g. sophomore level transfer, junior level transfer, frosh after gap year(s)).

Freshman

International or domestic student (and state of residency if domestic).

Domestic

Student preferences beyond the above (including weather, class sizes, campus culture, college demographics, fraternities/sororities, distance from home, etc.).

None

Preliminary assessment of each college based on the above.

UCB is a strong elite name and the major is hard to get. Quant finance or tech is possible. Classes are too big like 1000 people. Rice is smaller, but maybe less prestigious?

What to take UCB or rice for future earnings, grad school prospects?

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Not sure I understand. We cannot decide for you whether you want finance/tech or medicine.

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just which school to pick for the same EECS/CS major. thank you.

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I would not worry about prestige. Prestige does not matter in high tech. Prestige does not get you accepted to medical school. Prestige does not debug your code for you, nor help you get through your organic chemistry mid-term exam.

These are both very good universities. They are both well known.

Some people might think that the overlap between CS and premed is odd. I do think that it will be an academically challenging combination. I would hate to be debugging software late at night the day before my organic chemistry final. However, there is quite a bit of high tech in medicine, and seems to be more over time. Someone had to write the software to operate robot assisted surgery systems (eg, you can Google “Da Vinci robotic surgery” to get one example of a system). Someone had to program the PET scanners and MRI machines. I suppose that quite a bit of math will show up in this software, but a CS major at either Rice or UCB likely will have taken the appropriate math classes. Also, any premed student needs to have a “plan B”, and CS is one realistic plan B.

It would not surprise me at all if half way through your bachelor’s degree you decide to either drop CS and focus on premed, or drop premed and focus on CS. That is okay. Adjustments to one’s career goals are very, very common. If you drop one half way through your first semester that is okay also.

Can you or more likely your parents pay for either of these schools for a full 4 years (through your bachelor’s degree) without taking on any debt?

They are both very, very good.

I think that you should think about fit, and forget about rankings. Which school is the best fit for you?

Really, attending the school that is a good fit for you will improve your long term prospects.

If you look at the students currently enrolled in highly ranked MD program, you will find that they come from “all over the place”. If you look at the students enrolled in a highly ranked master’s program in CS, you will find that once again they come from a very wide range of undergraduate universities. If you graduate from either of these schools and get a job in high tech, you will find yourself working alongside coworkers from a wide range of undergraduate universities (and in this last case a lot of them are likely to have attended university outside of the US).

Frankly if I had this choice to make, I would have trouble deciding also.

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Assuming you like medicine, Rice which is cheaper and has smaller class sizes will be better for research opportunities.
Assuming you do not like medicine, Berkeley is better and EECS is a flexible major allowing you to add bio related courses and work in a wide variety of areas.
Like the other poster said, this makes it a hard decision.

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Are you local to Rice? If you have no aid, it’s tuition, room and board are $87,047.

Rice is not less prestigious than UCB but the general public likely doesn’t know it as well - but those in the know - know how good Rice is.

Tech is possible from both - but if you want the Bay area, then UCB will be better. On the flip side, peopel see salaries and forget the cost of living and taxes.

I think both are good bets - but which suits you best?

1 Like
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While it would have been preferable for the OP to avoid confusion by indicating they are asking on behalf of the child, they didn’t. But OP is a parent