Looks like they let the L&S CS major expand to 550 students per year (despite the minimum 3.3 college GPA in the prerequisites for L&S undeclared students to enter the major), to go along with the 300-400 in EECS (which is tightly regulated at the frosh and transfer admission levels). L&S CS appears to be the second largest major on the UCB campus (economics is larger), a very different situation from the early-to-mid 2000s when the number of students was under 100 per year in the wake of the tech bubble crash.
According to the class schedule, the upper division courses with over 600 students appear to be CS 170 (algorithms) and CS 188 (artificial intelligence). On the other hand, there does not seem to be much interest in the EE side of EECS, since the upper division EE courses have enrollments under 30.
CMU is not for everyone Fit is very important there. Can’t imagine that it is so “renowned” for engineering that it is worth a major premium over UMD. There are smart kids at every engineering school. He would have no shortage of very smart peers at UMD.
@katliamom Thank you for your candor! I totally agree CMU = more personalize education and access to faculty and research. @ucbalumnus Your access to the schools data is very impressive!
Does anyone have good stats solely on undergraduate Berkeley EECS vs CMU ECE related to:
Student Faculty Ratio
of FT faculty
of Grad Teaching Assistants, and
Information on grading practices, such as bell curves?
I’m getting conflicting information, though the general consensus is that Berkeley has a worse faculty/student ratio and it seems that none of the CMU grad assistants are TAs (they are just research assistants). I also realize some of the Berkeley data may be skewed because certain basic classes are taken by students in unrelated majors. Just trying to compare these two majors as opposed to the schools at large.
Look at the online class schedule for each school if you want to see class sizes.
http://www.berkeleytime.com has grade distributions by course for UCB. Don’t know if CMU has anything similar. http://www.ourumd.com/ has grade distributions for Maryland. Presumably this is desired because of law school intentions?
“Research assistant” commonly means a PhD student being paid a stipend and tuition waiver for some research assistant work. So if one is leading a discussion or recitation section of a class, that is functionally like what is ordinarily called a teaching assistant or graduate student instructor.
$270,000 vs. free. That’s a CMU education or a UMD education and $3,000,000 when he turns 58. That’s the true difference when you consider the opportunity cost of the money ($270,000 at 6% annually for 40 years). Alternatively, it’s $1,500,000 at age 48. It would be a nice bridge between an early retirement and his fully funded 401k at 59.5.
He might get a slightly better experience at CMU, maybe even a superior experience. What he won’t get though is an experience that’s even remotely close to $270,000 more valuable financially. You all have to decide if you are flush enough to provide that as a gift simply based on the experience.
It’s unfortunately too late for this option now for you, but we had a plan for just this case. Not believing ANY undergraduate degree from ANY school is worth a quarter of a million dollars, we simply told our son that any program that netted out over $200k was off the table. The only schools he applied to, in addition to meeting all the requirements that he wanted out of a school, were schools that had reputations of granting good merit aid to high stats students.
Tough choice, but the financial implications are real.
Agree with above: CMU > Cal… but free UMD totally trumps CMU.
The fact is, he’ll take pretty much the same classes at UMD and be competitive for many of the same internships as CMU. And a year or two after graduation most employers won’t care where he went to school, but rather what he accomplished at his last job.
You can sweeten the idea of UMD by promising your son a great trip to Europe. (Even after paying for it, you’ll have saved a fortune over CMU.)
UMD is ABET accredited and I’m sure recruiting is good there. That is what is very important at the undergraduate level in engineering. UMD is a well respected school. There will be very many motivated, top students there in the engineering program. The family needs to decide for themselves though if the sustantial cost is worth it to go elsewhere.
@eyemgh@katliamom@sevmom Going back to the drawing board to make the UMD option sweeter. @ucbalumnus Good idea! Will suggest it. He has been reading this thread but his own will be better.
Another reason to keep costs down: a student who does not have immediate financial pressure is not forced into making career and life choices based on short term financial concerns, but instead can choose to prioritize longer term career development. See the posts below:
Are you comfortable co-signing all those loans for him? If something happens to you like a job loss and you are not able to co-sign for him, do you have savings to access to cover the price difference so he can finish?
for $270,000 in loans “it is estimated that you will need an annual salary of at least $372,860.40 to be able to afford to repay this loan” paragraph below results table of calculator
Thank you College Confidential community! You have helped my S come to his senses. This was a very difficult decision for S. Last month was very emotional. With CC community’s overwhelming consistent message, lots of friends and family talking to S and giving unemotional facts, parents twisting his arms and negotiating a deal……… S picked UMD! Logically it was a wise decision (emotionally he is still a bit sad). So glad it is all over. Unfortunately, now I need to start scheduling college visits for my D
Sorry about posting away questions on your thread.
can you please let me know if you filled out a FAFSA form for Banneker Key scholarship?
Does UMD have supplemental essays? D says she could not find it on coalition app or on their website.
Does UMD have any supplemental essays or honors essays?
