Cal Berkeley vs. Carnegie Mellon vs. University of Maryland (free)

College Search & Selection
1

Hi guys, any and all advice is greatly appreciated, so I thank you in advance.

I am a high-school senior who was admitted into Cal Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, University of Maryland, and University of Michigan, all for engineering. I am planning to major in Computer Engineering, or its Electrical Engineering/Computer Science counterparts (different schools have different names for it). I would like some advice concerning my college choices.

For University of Maryland, I am an in-state student, and received a full-ride scholarship to their school. Unfortunately, I didn’t receive any other kind of money grants from other schools (including financial aid).

As of now, my current top-choice out of these four schools is Cal Berkeley, but I am still skeptical over it’s class-size and overall school size, as I have gone to small-ish private schools all my life. I also have currently knocked out UMich from my college choices due to its (very) similar tuition to Cal Berkeley, and they’re both public schools, yet Berkeley is ranked higher (and has a much more forgiving climate). Another note is that I am most likely planning to perform the 4 + 1 program no matter what school I go to (4 years undergrad, then get your masters the next year), except I will probably be doing it as a 3 + 1 due to my AP credits (at Berkeley, yes, at Carnegie, it’s a maybe due to the lack of classes you can jump out of)

As for financial status, with the amount of money my parents have set aside for the rest of my education, I should be able to go through Carnegie Mellon (the most expensive school), and then go to the most expensive Law School (Georgetown), for three years, and I’ll come out with a debt that is not super small, but it’s not large, and it’s manageable.

Because money isn’t necessarily an issue, I would like to ask the question…

Can you please give me help in my decision? Colleges are huge, and I only know so much about each individual one. All of my choices are amazing choices and I’m grateful for the choices I have, but I’m attempting to find the best one to me. Any insight into any of these colleges and their engineering programs will be highly appreciated.

Thanks for your time.

2

So basically, I’m having trouble deciding between Cal Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, and UMD (full ride). Right now, here is what I have been thinking, pros/cons-wise.

Cal Berkeley
Pros:
Right next to Silicon Valley (a dream workplace for any engineer)
Large school - more variety of people I will meet
Weather - a warm 70 degrees all throughout the year
Strong academics - Literally identical to Carnegie Mellon, and above UMD
I personally really loved the school when visiting, and enjoyed the campus and community a lot
Amazing class flexibility - basically take the classes you want, don’t take the ones you don’t want to
TONS of internship opportunities - I mean, Berkeley has a renown engineering program and very close by to Silicon Valley
It’s alumni network is pretty insane

Cons:
Crime - I mean, Berkeley is right outside San Francisco, so that’s a given
Pretty expensive ($65 grand a year out-of-state) - may not be a problem if I can become a resident of California and get in-state tuition: if so, then this becomes a pretty tasty pro
Large school - less teacher attention (Berkeley has 3x more students in the engineering department, yet still has less faculty than Carnegie Mellon)
Large school - bigger classes = more reliance on help from TA’s and other outside sources of help other than the professor (I’ve heard it’s nigh-impossible to catch a professor in his office hours)
Large school - more engineering students + less professors = less research opportunities (maybe?)
Large school - since it’s a public school, of course the rooms are much smaller and more crowded. However, I don’t see this as much of a problem, especially since if I go to Berkeley I will most likely

           *So basically, my only cons of Berkeley is it's size and all the results that come with it*

Carnegie Mellon
Pros:
Small school - more professor attention, less TA’s and more learning from professors
More research (and less competitive) research opportunities
Very collaborative - group settings with labs, hands-on experiences galore
More invested in students - faculty are willing to go out of their way to help students
Nicer dorms and living facilities

Cons:
It’s pretty expensive ($72 grand a year)
Small school - less variety of people, more elitist (many, many more absurdly rich people, especially internationally)
This is a con because I’ve already experienced this type of community in high school, and I dislike it
Carnegie is more CS-based than EE based, which may be tedious since many students in my major will just be in it for the CS classes (because they didn’t get into the ridiculously hard CS program).
Less class flexibility - pretty strict requirements concerning your class schedule
I do not get to use as many AP credits as I would like (especially in the language arts/history sections)

UMD
Pros:
It’s free
It’s also a very good engineering school

Cons:
Although it’s a great engineering school, it’s not near the likes of Carnegie Mellon and Berkeley
Money may not matter as much (see below)

3

follow the $$. there is NO reason to pay for an EXPENSIVE Engineering program elsewhere when you can be PAID to go to college at UMD.
CONGRATULATIONS! There are kids who would KILL to have the opportunity to go to college free.
Dont throw it away.

and DONT count on being able to pay off Law school debt easily.
there are TOO many lawyers in the US, and law firms are more and more able to save big $$ by outsourcing a lot of work that used to go to highly paid new hires.
the days of most law school graduates being able to count on 6 figure starting salaries are gone, and it will be even worse 6+ years from now.

4

Wait, do you want to go to law school after undergrad?

Though, @menloparkmom, people with STEM backgrounds can become patrnt lawyers, which seems to still be lucrative.

5

What exactly do you mean by “I’ll come out with a debt that is not super small, but it’s not large, and it’s manageable.”?
OOS tuition at Berkeley is absolutely not worth it. You will NOT be able to become a CA resident for tuition purposes; they have very strict rules about that for undergraduates.

Save your money for grad/law school and/or for a down payment on a house.

6

“people with STEM backgrounds can become patrnt lawyers, which seems to still be lucrative”
yes, but there are a very small # of patent firms relative to the overall # of law firms in the US. Patent law is a very specialized niche.

7

Seems like the obvious choice is to go to Maryland for free.

If law school is a possible destination, you need a high GPA and LSAT to get into a high ranking law school (law employment is very sensitive to the ranking of your law school).

http://www.berkeleytime.com and http://www.ourumd.com may help you figure out which school has more grade inflation in your major’s courses. But also take admission selectivity into account.

8

@menloparkmom @LoveTheBard I don’t think you guys understand. I’ve crunched all the numbers. If I go to Carnegie, stay there for four years, and then go to the most expensive law school for three years, I will graduate with manageable debt (less than $100,000), as long as I am frugal and be a TA/intern at all chances I can get, I will be more than fine. With the law degree alone I will be able to pay off that debt relatively quickly. In addition, even if I cannot achieve instate tuition for California, it’s not that much of a problem. It’s still less expensive than Carnegie.

9

Also, I don’t even know if I want to go to Law School for grad. It’s just the most expensive example. (like the worst-case scenario for how much money I could possibly go through) @LoveTheBard @PurpleTitan @menloparkmom

10

It would still be better to start a law career with no debt (and with your parents having more money left for their retirement).

11

I think that you are perceiving way too much of a “bump” in status [?] by going to UCB or CM over a free ride at UM .ESPECIALLY for a degree in CE .
Believe me when you graduate with Honors from UM AND list the name of the [ insert here] free ride Scholarship on the top of your CV, it will be just as valuable for grad school opportunities as a degree from CM or UCB.

My DS was awarded the most prestigious[ at the time] full tuition Trustee Scholarship by USC.
He was also accepted by many of the top 20 colleges and U’s. But with no $$.

He went to USC, graduated with special honors, and was accepted at every grad school he applied to.
He just received his PhD at CalTech , with no debt, and no worries.
trust me, your parents will thank you for choosing to be paid to go to college.

12

“In addition, even if I cannot achieve instate tuition for California”
you wont be able to so put that premise in the garbage can right now.

13

$100K is far too much debt but this means your parents have something like $400K saved up for your education.

Still, that money could be used for better uses (like an elite JD as well as an elite MBA, and in those fields, prestige matters much more than in engineering). Maybe I’d consider EECS at Cal because of the flexibility there. At CMU, you would be in engineering and not SCS, right? SCS is the prestige school/program there (while at Cal, it’s EECS) and it’s almost impossible to transfer in to SCS. But if I was in your shoes, I’d pick the named scholarship to UMD (which would also be pretty darn prestigious). If you really want to be close to Silicon Valley, you could always pick up a master’s at Stanford/Cal if you keep up grades at UMD and you’d still have enough money left over for a second degree (or invest in the stock market, or whatever). $400K invested now would actually be enough to retire on in 40 years even if you just make enough money to get by. Because of that, I’d definitely take the named full-ride scholarship to UMD. Plus, Cal would also be a giant state school.

14

$100,000 is not an insignificant amount of debt for a recent grad. You would not only have that amount of debt, but also consider the additional nearly $250,000 that you would be needlessly spending to have a UC education over a UMD education.

15

I agree with the consensus. Go to UMD.

First of all, Maryland has a great reputation in engineering and computer science. You’re not losing anything by going there.

Second of all, what does “less than $100K” mean? I would be curious to know how you came up with this number - what numbers did you crunch? CMU is $288K for four years and Columbia, the most expensive law school, comes out to around $282K for three years. That’s nearly $600,000.

But that’s almost besides the point. $80-95K in debt is still a lot of debt to have, and the median salary for lawyers is around $120,000 a year. I’m not sure what “relatively quickly” means to you, but a quick loan calculation shows that if you borrow around $85K at 6.8% interest, for a standard repayment term you’d have to pay nearly $1,000/month. It’s doable, but you’d have to curtail your standard of living by quite a bit, and I wouldn’t call 10 years “relatively quick.”

That is, of course, assuming that you make the median salary for lawyers. Data, though, seem to indicate that law salaries are bimodal (I’ve seen this said on the law school forum, too). There’s a cluster on the high end that starts around $160K if you go to a T14 law school and end up working at a BigLaw firm; then there’s another cluster around $40-65K. Check out this National Association for Law Placement [url=<a href=“https://www.nalp.org/class_of_2014_salary_curve%5Ddata.%5B/url”>https://www.nalp.org/class_of_2014_salary_curve]data.[/url]. Only 17% of the curve was under the bump at $160K; by contrast, about half the curve was under the bump between $40-65K. (The article also briefly discusses by why the median/adjusted mean salary for lawyers isn’t very informative - relatively few law salaries are actually close to the average. [url=<a href=“https://www.biglawinvestor.com/bimodal-salary-distribution-curve/%5DThis%5B/url”>https://www.biglawinvestor.com/bimodal-salary-distribution-curve/]This[/url] article goes into more detail about that.)

And that’s even assuming that you do go to law school, and don’t change your mind, or want to take some time off before law school.

Undergraduate TAs are often unpaid, by the way…very often they only receive course credit for it.

The bottom line is that Maryland is a great school and Berkeley or CMU aren’t worth mortgaging your future when you have an excellent option for free!

16

CMU would be good. (I considered it as a good fall back school, in case I dodn’t get into my top choices.) But more students are turning it down for UC Berkeley: http://www.parchment.com/c/college/tools/college-cross-admit-comparison.php?compare=Carnegie+Mellon+University&with=University+of+California%2C+Berkeley

1 Like
17

I know several families that have been able to afford shelling out for UCB/CMU/other-not-cheap-place. It is perfectly OK for you to accept that generosity, and go. And it is smart for you to crunch all of the numbers with your parents to see where else the money could be used. Since you aren’t pre-med, law school is a good proxy for the various hideously expensive grad programs that you might end up pursuing one day.

If you are serious about engineering, then it is fair to take potential grad school expenses out of the equation. If you don’t go straight through a 4+1 or 3+1 BS/MEng, an eventual MEng is likely to be covered at least in part by your employer. A PhD would be covered by the grad school. You could work a few years as an engineer and save a bit before law school - one thing the folks hiring an engineer turned lawyer for is practical experience as an engineer, not just book-learning. Top MBA programs can be very expensive, but again you would be expected to have a number of years of work experience, which gives you time to build up savings for that.

I don’t think that you like CMU well enough to keep it on your list, which leaves UMD and UCB. What do you need to do to keep the scholarship at UMD? Of these two places, which offers strong programs in other majors if you decide that CS and/or engineering in general aren’t for you? Which is most generous with your AP credits and/or potential CLEP credits. What else can you use your college fund for if you take the scholarship - house downpayment? new car? startup money for a business venture? How secure is that college fund? Is it in investments that would shrink drastically in a market crash? Think all of those through too.

18

UMD debt free.

19

On average, experienced lawyers don’t make much more than software developers, and most have a difficult time managing law school debt after graduation. If you want to go to law school, you’re far better off going frugal on the debt. If you have a full ride…take it and don’t look back. Consider staying at UMD for law school. You could start a legal career completely debt free and actually enjoy it.

20

Maryland is a no-brainer here.

Questionable accuracy of Parchment aside, this doesn’t differentiate between in-state and OOS/international students. The OOS yield at Berkeley is around 20%, which is certainly nothing to write home about. CMU’s RD yield is a bit higher, ~28% for 2017. Both pale in comparison to, say, MIT, which has a 73% yield.