<p>Hi Guys!</p>
<p>So I'm currently debating between Berkeley, Notre Dame, Emory, Vanderbilt, and Carnegie Mellon for Computer Science. I was accepted to all the universities for Computer Science in Engineering except for Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon. For Berkeley I was accepted to the L&S and I plan on majoring in Computer Science and for Carnegie Mellon I was waitlisted for SCS.</p>
<p>I currently live in California so Berkeley is pretty cheap at about 20k. Vanderbilt, Emory, and Notre Dame had really generous packages and are all about 20k as well so money isn't really a factor here. However, Carnegie Mellon offered barely anything and I have to pay 50k. </p>
<p>I know that Berkeley and Carnegie have amazing CS programs but I was accepted for Berkeley into the L&S school and not the engineering school. Since all freshman are entered as undeclared in L&S I don't know for sure I can major in CS which is what I really want. </p>
<p>I'm having a really hard time deciding so I am asking all of you for your opinions. Anything will be greatly appreciated! Thank you so much!!</p>
<p>If you’re interested at all in pursuing and working a career in CS, Berkeley and the Bay Area are the place to be.</p>
<p>Currently, Berkeley’s L&S CS major is not capped, so anyone completing the prerequisites with a 2.0 GPA can declare it. However, the bulging enrollments in lower division CS courses are causing rumors that the major will be capped in the near future, requiring a GPA higher than 2.0 in the prerequisites to declare it.</p>
<p>Of the others, Emory has a rather limited CS department (actually a combined math and CS department, with CS faculty being the junior ones and the intro course taught mainly by grad students as the primary instructors). CMU, Notre Dame, and Vanderbilt should be fine (check the CS course offerings in their course catalogs), though you may have cost issues at CMU ($120,000 more). Notre Dame is a somewhat Catholic environment, which may be a plus or minus to you.</p>
<p>Berkeley is probably the best place for CS recruiting, due to having reputation, large size, and proximity to Silicon Valley.</p>
<p>Don’t go to Emory for CS. Because of the proximity of Georgia Tech, quantitative STEM majors are quite weak here.</p>
<p>If you got into CMU, that would give Cal run for its money. The remaining schools are not on par with Cal. For now, I would go for Berkeley.</p>
<p>CMU if finances aren’t a concern.</p>
<p>Berkeley and CMU (as well as Stanford and MIT) are the upper, upper echelon of undergraduate computer science schools. If $$$ is a factor, Berkeley seems the obvious choice, coupled with the fact that you’re waitlisted at CMU. If you hold off on your decision and CMU accepts you, you can always ask for more financial assistance, making admissions aware of your offers from other schools. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.</p>
<p>There is no way I would pay 120K more for CMU over Berkeley.</p>