<p>Here's the deal: I live in Kansas and want to go into chemical engineering and possibly nuclear engineering. I basically have it narrowed down to berkeley or ku. </p>
<p>Berkeley, the obviously better school for all things i may remotely be interested in, costs 40,000 dollars a year, something that my family can definitely afford, seeing as we are not very financially needy. </p>
<p>But, on the other hand, Kansas is offering me full tuition, room and board plus 1,000 a year on top of that. </p>
<p>I love both campuses and am having an extremely hard time choosing between the two. Do i turn down money to pay a crapload for a good school, or do I take KU and hope for the good graduate school? I also recently called MIT to see what they look for in admitting students to chemical engineering grad school and they said that it "doesn't matter where you went to school, just what you did while you were there (research, faculty relations, gpa, etc.)" </p>
<p>So, based on the above scenario, should i pay to go to school or get paid to go to school???</p>
<p>In my opinion KU since you will probably be much smarter than the average student there if you got into Berkeley and it will be easier to network with profs and whatnot.</p>
<p>Berkeley doesn't offer that many advantages over KU in my opionion unless you want to wow people with the Berkeley name after you're done with college, especially since its also a public school and holds a lot of the same disadvantages as public schools; impersonal nature, poor number of opportunities relative to the overall student body. </p>
<p>That being said, Berkeley's faculty is among the best in the world and if you're confident in you're ability to succeed than you can probably achieve more at Berkeley if you work very hard and can stand the competition. It'll just be much riskier than it would've been at KU. </p>
<p>Job prospects are far and beyond better at Berkeley.</p>
<p>That much simply goes without saying, due to the reputation of the program and the location (very close to Silicon Valley). This also translates to impressive internships and activities such as clubs and honor societies (personally unimpressed with honor societies, but I suppose their purpose is different from a normal club).</p>
<p>If it was another school on generally a similar level, I'd say to perhaps consider it. But if you want to end up in a top tier school, being at Cal will help greatly due simply to great opportunity.</p>
<p>You will not find the internships, research opportunities, or other benefits at Kansas University.</p>
<p>UC Riverside gave me full tuition and slapped a $3000 stipend on top of it. However, I know that not only will I not like it (a student body that doesn't value academics as highly) but it'll hurt me in terms of what sort of opportunities and activities I wish to participate in. It's a similar situation to what you have, and I'd say that it's too much of a drop in quality on all sides to take Kansas University.</p>
<p>berkeley...if your family is rich...dont be cheap! lol i mean of course its money you can be spending else where, but 40,000 may be worth it for a rich family...think about the location/the experience/the name/etc.</p>
<p>and the difference it quality seems to be tremendous. Live a little!</p>
<p>If you want to live in Kansas all your life, then go to Kansas because it is cheaper (if money is a factor). If you want to work in California later on (with the better economy) or any other state in the United States then you should attend UC Berkeley.</p>
<p>Berkeley. Graduate from Berkeley's Engineering and you can go anywhere in the world and No one will be able to belittle you on your education. </p>
<p>The Short term financial benefits of KU is good, but seeing as how your family is very financially stable, then forget about it. The benefits of graduating from Cal will greatly outweight those offered by KU. </p>
<p>CantSilenceTruth is right in saying that you will definately be higher up in your class if you go to KU, but you have to keep in mind that after you graduate, your competition is the world. Dodging the bullet for four years will only make the inevitable more painful.
Go to berkeley. Meet and befriend your competition. You might get humbled at first, but you'll come out much stronger and wiser in the end.</p>