UMich [OOS] vs UCSB [in-state] for CS?

DadTwoGirls
Sun, 23 Mar 2025 16:54:24 +0000

My first reaction is that you have been accepted to seven very good universities (if I have counted correctly). Congratulations! Of course having seven very good acceptances does bring up the difficult question of which school to attend.

tamagotchi:

CPSLO is very well regarded. The CS major at SLO is also a difficult and highly desirable admit!

I agree with this. Given your list of acceptances, if I had the same list and were in-state I would consider SLO very highly and might very likely end up there.

Mystics:

Horribly cold weather…

It might be a good idea to at least think about how much you like very cold weather. I only visited U.Michigan once (for a meeting years ago). I happened to visit during a very cold week, where the temperature did not get up to zero Fahrenheit even once. We did not get out much because it was so cold (and the participants included someone from Wisconsin and someone from Montreal and someone local, so at least three of us were used to cold weather).

Waterloo is also very good and well known for CS. However, I am guessing that as an international student it is probably expensive (and the winter’s will not be much different compared to Michigan).

Academically I do not think that you can go wrong at any of these schools. “Prestige” generally does not matter much, if at all, in computer science or in high tech in general. What you can do will matter, but you can learn CS well at any of these seven very good universities.

I can see that this is a tough choice.