Hello College Confidential!
I have a few more days before I need to commit to either Berkeley or Duke, and am still having serious troubles figuring out which to choose. I am heavily leaning towards Berkeley, my dad is heavily leaning towards Duke (given his experiences at a University of Illinois 35 years ago, a public school). I am not going to try to argue which is better, since I have no experience with either. I am basically going to dump all of my thoughts below, and would really just love to hear anyone’s experiences in any of these topics.
I was accepted to Berkeley Engineering as an Engineering Physics major, and will be looking to transfer into the EECS program (more on that later). At Duke, I was accepted into Pratt for Computer Science, looking to switch into Computer Engineering.
A little bit of backstory that is still heavily influencing my choice thus far:
My entire life I have been interested (almost equally) in STEM and the arts. Having grown up my whole life in California, and being very familiar with the visual and music arts scene in-state, I have trouble convincing myself that I would have a comparable academic and extracurricular arts experience at Duke as I would in California. I have devoted ALL (every last hour) of my free time outside of school for the past 5 years making skateboard films, and all of my free time the three years before that to electronic music production. Needless to say, the arts and skateboarding community have a heavy impact on my life, but admittedly, they are almost completely irrelevant when it comes to academics and careers. I have already had difficulty weeding out UCLA from my list, in fear of leaving the film & skateboarding community of LA/Orange County that I know so well and have grown up with my entire life. So with respect 2 my two remaining options:
-Berkeley will essentially be the same as Los Angeles in terms of arts and skateboarding.
-Duke’s art community is very different, much smaller, and limited to the campus itself. There is no skateboarding scene in the Raleigh-Durham area near Duke, and the film-related opportunities are much more limited and niche in North Carolina compared to California.
Even though I know I will mostly be out of the skateboarding scene once I head off for my undergrad degree, the arts scene and ability to integrate/participate in both the arts and STEM is still very different at both, and still very important to me. If anyone has experienced anything relevant to the arts at either of these schools, I would love to hear.
Now, for the meat of this decision: the normal college decisions stuff: academics, price, and network, etc.:
MAJOR CHANGE:
-Berkeley: after extensive talks with students and faculty at Berkeley, transfer into EECS is possible, but difficult. Everyone said it is all about devoting your time into the lower-div CS & EE classes. You must maintain a 3.3 GPA in all Engineering classes and all EECS related classes to gain automatic acceptance into the major. For most of the lower-div classes, this 3.3 GPA (B+ average) is in about the 60th percentile, give or take 10 points. Attending Berkeley would mean risking not even getting into the major that I want, even though I am pretty confident that EECS would be the best major choice for me (considering my background in stem and the applications of EECS to the arts)
-Duke: Without question, major transfer is easy and fast. I would expect no hiccups. Duke’s name/prestige is also beneficial for majors outside of engineering compared to Berkeley
PRICE:
Unlike most threads I have read, I am in a strange situation. Duke is actually cheaper than Berkeley in my case. Duke is guaranteed to be less than half the price of Berkeley for the first year, with no more than a 4% increase in expense each year afterwards. Duke is basically half the price.
CAMPUS/PEOPLE:
To sum it up, I can see myself at Berkeley, and I can’t see myself at Duke - that is just my gut feeling. I could be completely wrong. I think this largely stems from the extracurriculars and the area surrounding Cal’s campus - i.e. food, arts, music, skateboarding. I fear not being able to find my “niche” at Duke given the smaller student body, outside of the culture of California that I love so much.
NETWORK/CAREER/STARTING SALARIES:
The starting salaries out of EECS, which I am quite confident I would like to stay in, are essentially identical. This still strikes me as somewhat strange considering Cal’s proximity to Silicon Valley compared to Duke. Regardless, I feel like starting salary is a decent metric of measuring the career opportunities that each degree would offer. Outside of EECS, Duke has much higher starting salaries, so on the off chance that I hate EECS after a year, Duke would be the better option with regards to starting salaries in general. I would imagine that the network of Duke is much more tight knit that at Cal, but the starting salaries seem to suggest that they are quite comparable. I hear too often from former students that “___ public school degree__ did nothing for me after I graduate”, while at private schools the degree offers many more opportunities. It seems like the general alumni network out of Cal is essentially non-existent - it’s just a large LinkedIn page that makes it slightly easier to find (not get) a job. Any input on the validity of these claims would be awesome.
OTHER MAJORS/DOUBLE MAJORS:
As mentioned briefly, I am interested in many different things: math, computers, physics, visual arts, film, architecture, music, politics, civil rights, design, innovation, modern art. One of my parents and I’s largest fears is that if I decide to switch majors, I might be stuck with a (comparatively) worthless degree, depending on what I switch into. If I did not stick with EECS through my undergrad degree, I would likely study applied mathematics, physics, architecture, or design. The career opportunities out of these majors are much more limited, and might be a significant point of consideration.
EXTRACURRICULARS/TIME MANAGEMENT/COMPETITION/CLASSES/ADMINISTRATION:
The one thing keeping me from accepting Berkeley this second is the fear that I will have no time to balance both EECS classes and the other things I love (art, design, music, politics, civil rights), or even be able to allow enough time to successfully transfer into EECS. Berkeley does make their EECS program sound pretty freaking difficult and time consuming! There is a huge difference in the element of competition between Duke and Cal - so I am wondering if the competition at Berkeley is unfair, or if it is generally due to individual laziness/disinterest. This is especially worrisome since I have no idea how I would perform there, having been at the top of my class in high school but similar to everyone else at my school who got into Cal. I hear all the time that classes are difficult to get, advisors difficult to talk to etc. The CS61B (lower-div CS course) professor at Berkeley said that essentially half his class gets the 3.3 GPA requirement to earn/stay in the major. Access to professors, TA’s, and help in general seems limited. However, I can’t help but hope that the people who fail to meet these requirements honestly do so because of their own laziness - staying out late, honestly not studying, taking way too many extracurriculars, etc. I don’t know how my time allocation will fall at Berkeley.
-This is a non-issue at Duke.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP:
-Design and innovation labs would probably be a large part of my college experience at either school. Luckily, their design and innovation spaces are very similar. However, the entrepreneurship programs (not spaces) at Berkeley seem better than at Duke, but also still have a large element of competition. My dream career as of right now would be to develop camera technologies for use in the film industry. But obviously, entrepreneurship is risky! Thoughts?