<p>I’m torn. I thought I had made up my mind when I was accepted to UC Davis for Computer Science and Engineering. I just found out that I have been selected for the engineering leadership pathways scholarship at SJSU. The scholarship is $5,000 a year. At SJSU I would major in Software Engineering. Davis did offer me a very good Financial Aid Award. It would actually end up costing only about $4,000 more a year to go to Davis than SJSU with the scholarship. </p>
<p>Anyways, if you have any knowledge of the Software Engineering program at SJSU, or Computer Science and Engineering at Davis, or any insight into towards my situation, I would like to you what you have to say.</p>
<p>SJSU’s SE major is similar to the CS major, except that a few additional software engineering methods courses are included, taking up schedule space that would otherwise by used for additional CS topics courses in the CS major. I consider the CS major slightly more desirable, as one overview software engineering course should be enough as far as school is concerned, with the more detailed stuff to be learned on the job. You may want to check to see how difficult it is to switch to the CS major at SJSU.</p>
<p>You may want to look at the required and optional courses in each major at each school to see what interests you more.</p>
<p>What are your post-graduation goals?</p>
<p>Hi ucbalumnus. Thanks for your response. The curriculum at UC Davis for CS and CSE look much more interesting to me than SE at SJSU. I’m interested in taking bioinformatics, scientific computing, and visualization, or concurrency, distributed systems, and databases. </p>
<p>I would like to go right into grad school afterwards, but I may not have the money to at that point. I wonder if UC Davis would give me a considerable advantage when applying for grad school. </p>
<p>I’ve considered switching to CS from SE at SJSU, but may disqualify me for the scholarship. </p>
<p>I am leaning strongly towards UC Davis. It’s hard though, because when I went to SJSU to interview for the scholarship, I was able to meet some of the students and teachers, and it was a very positive experience. I feel like I already have a connection with the people there. It also seems like the Engineering Leadership Pathways Scholarship might be more valuable than the money alone. I would be part of a group of selected students who would be required to participate in various events together.</p>
<p>If you plan to do a PhD program in CS, then</p>
<p>a. It will likely be funded (i.e. tuition waiver plus a living expense stipend), so if your undergraduate debt is not excessive, you should not have trouble with it on the money side.</p>
<p>b. UCD will probably have more undergraduate research opportunities than SJSU. Doing undergraduate research should be helpful if you apply to PhD programs.</p>