Looking to go into tech/startups/VC on the machine learning side. I’m seriously stuck and going in circles here. All colleges will be a similar price, so finances aren’t really a consideration here.
UC Berkeley is obviously prestigious and has a great network, is well known in the areas I want to go into, and has an amazing location being just 30 minutes away from SF (where I already go to a lot of events), but I toured recently and wasn’t a big fan of the public school environment, competitiveness, and student life here. However, I can’t really ignore how much the name will mean for my future and the academics in computing are certainly amazing—the teachers and classes were all great when I toured.
CMU is also a great option for going into tech, has an amazing network, and, after talking to some people, there seems to be no glaring differences between Dietrich and SCS, but I’ve heard mostly only bad things about CMU’s student life regarding mental health/depression and life outside of academics—also Pittsburgh is not such a great location. When I toured, the depth of the CS program’s research seriously amazed me and every student there seemed very driven and focused, something that I very much value and didn’t see as much at UC Berkeley.
Rice on the other hand is definitely not as prestigious as the other two in the tech/startup world (which does sincerely matter), but I love the community/people there, the small private school environment definitely fits with me more, and the location of Houston is pretty solid as well. The flexibility in education is something I value as well, as I could pick up a double major in Stats/CS pretty easily—if I wanted to do this at Berkeley, for instance, it would involve another application process (even though I’m in CDSS). It’s also a very similar environment to my current high school and would make the transition easy—I’m someone who often gets weighed down by my surrounding environment, so perhaps a nicer one like Rice’s would be conducive to me being more productive throughout all 4 years.
Please lmk what y’all think, I appreciate any and all thoughts and I’m happy to answer any follow-up questions
I think you have to be somewhere, day after day, for four years. Go to Rice. Work hard to get to where you want for an internship. And life will be fine.
Having worked in high tech for my entire career, I do not think that prestige matters much if at all in high tech (thus the t-shirts and blue jeans). Whether your code works matters. Whether you are reasonable to work with matters. Prestige really does not.
Math and computer science are a good combination. This is pretty close to what I did, except that I just majored in applied math and took the CS courses. When I hear “statistics” I am hoping that this includes probability theory, and maybe if you get that far stochastic processes. I have used these several times on the job as a software engineer (as well as statistics – I got far enough in math that these started to be different courses). However, since I was a math major it makes sense that the software jobs that were offered to me were ones that needed quite a bit of math. There are a few other math courses that might also be good to take. Multi-variate calculus, differential equations, and linear algebra are obvious ones. One or more courses on various types of algorithms might be thought of as either computer science or math courses, but would be valuable whichever department teaches them.
These are valid points.
I do not personally know Houston. However, it is my understanding that the high tech industry in Texas is on the upswing.
I think that you are comparing three very good universities. Assuming that all three are affordable to you, you might be best off at whichever university feels right to you. It sounds like this might be Rice.
There are hundreds of universities that are very good overall, and very good for math, statistics, and computer science. You are comparing three of the best. If you at some point in the future are looking for some form of graduate degree, UC Berkeley and CMU will still be there, and their graduate admissions staff will know how good Rice is.
I would start by ruling out Berkeley. The main point in favor of it is the entrepreneurial connections you could make there, but IMO Carnegie Mellon can match UCB on this point, and it seems like a better fit in other ways.
Looking at CMU and Rice head to head:
You like the size of Rice, but CMU isn’t all that much bigger.
I think you’re underestimating Pittsburgh. My daughter went to Rice, and I visited CMU with my other daughter. Purely in terms of the surrounding area, I like Pittsburgh better. It’s a great student city. It’s really a matter of individual preference, between the two, but I certainly wouldn’t call CMU’s area “not a great location.” Have you visited? The nearby shops and restaurants, the Phipps Conservatory, the river views, the resources of the larger city - there’s a lot to like.
Academically, the Stat/ML program looks like a great way to get a strong background in your area of interest. You couldn’t be able to switch into CS, but as long as you’re okay with that, you’d have a lot of options in Dietrich if you want to tweak your focus. At Rice, you have amazing flexibility to change majors freely, but I wouldn’t say they have quite as much of an interdisciplinary bent in terms of blending multiple areas of interest. So, both excellent, but each with its own pros and cons.
Social life wise, Rice does it all for you. They assign you a residential college, and you have an instant community. Lots of fun competition among the colleges and mentoring within them. Few colleges do social engineering better than Rice. You can have a good quality of life at CMU too, but it’s more “DIY.” You might want to consider Greek life there, or a club sport, or something to be the social “glue.” Fraternities and sororities at CMU aren’t a stereotypical frat scene; they just move the needle toward a more traditional social experience, in a way that might work for you if the residential college system at Rice appeals.
The quality that kind of turned me off about CMU was actually something you might like - it felt so focused on corporate and entrepreneurial connections that I wondered if the whole experience would feel like a four-year career fair. But my sense from what you’ve written is that you might not mind that! Rice is more bubble-like, IMO; students are obviously applying to internships and later to jobs, but while on campus it doesn’t feel as permeated by the corporate world, but rather like a world unto itself, sometimes even a little summer-camp-like.
Fundamentally, though, if you’re really “feeling” Rice more than the other two, I think it’s absolutely fine to go there. With complete freedom to access majors in CS and business as well as math/stats, plus the entrepreneurship minor, you can set yourself up very well. And you’ll have a great time along the way. Give CMU fair consideration, but if your heart is at Rice, I don’t see you regretting it. Congratulations on earning such great options! If you’d only gotten into one of these three, you’d still be in great shape, but you get to choose, so all the better!
On #1 you say you don’t like the competitiveness at Berkeley and then in #2 you say you didn’t see enough drive in Berkeley students. It appears as if you are trying to find a reason to pick CMU which is fair but I’m not sure you’ve done your due diligence with Berkeley either. Pick CMU since you seem to want it more and frankly the two schools are peer schools with near identical clout and elite signaling.
Totally agree. My daughter always said her classmates were competitive with themselves but not each other. She had a study group freshmen year that continued into senior year. They took of lot of classes together and would meet weekly to go over homework. They would work together to get answers (i.e. student A would go to study hours to get help with one problem and student B will email the TA about another problem, etc) and would work on projects together when possible. It was SO helpful!
OP mentioned the tech/start-up world. I would say Rice is strong in this area, just not as large. It is huge in life science/health tech startups with the med center across the street. There are a couple of “innovation centers” in the Med Center that are like start-up incubators (https://www.fannininnovation.com and TMC Innovation | Texas Medical Center | Houston). My D needed an internship one summer and reached out to a bunch of start ups there. She got one and it later turned into a part-time job (and it showed her the start up life was probably not for her). Rice also has the #1 entrepreneurship program. Check out the Liu Idea Lab: https://entrepreneurship.rice.edu/
Lots of great choices here. A couple notes re: Rice.
Rice’s national reputation in computer engineering is extremely strong - put more specifically, the people who would hire you into your first jobs in the tech/startup world respect Rice as much as they do CMU or Berkeley (and the Rice grads at those places will look out for you). Things like USNWR rankings for individual academic departments are really impacted by school and department size, and Rice’s CS department is just smaller than CMU or (especially) Berkeley’s. There are a lot of advantages to a smaller cohort, especially when that cohort is full of equally brilliant engineers and a tremendous faculty. Your starting network would be smaller, no doubt about that, but Rice grads get great jobs. I can 100% promise you that your outcome can be just as good.
I imagine actually double majoring in both of those would be very challenging, but it won’t be the curriculum structure that makes it difficult :). If you’re interested in that side of things, Rice’s Applied Math department is also one of the best in the world.
I think you have three great choices academically, and all will open doors for you career-wise. I would feel very comfortable picking the place closest to your heart.
