That is entirely upon your preferred likeness and personal preferences, that is why you should visit the campuses of Berkeley and CMU before finally commiting.
I cannot speak about CMU, but Berkeley’s atmosphere is amazing. There are plenty of things going on inside the campus. It’s a vibrant community of scholars and artsy people. Berkeley is the microcosm of America – the student body couldn’t be more diverse. About 30% of the students are on need-base (pell grant), but there’s also a sizable number of very rich, affluent and wealthy students. About 70% of the students are from California, but all 50 US States and over 150 countries are represented, too. Accross the Bay is San Francisco, which is for me, the most beautiful city in America.
You should recognize that economics and busienss are different courses of study. One is not better or worse than the other but they are different. In a b-school you take a business core curriculum that includes intro classes in subjects like accounting, finance, IT, management etc. and you will then major in one of those disciplines. Economics is a liberal arts course of study and gets very theoretical at the upper levels. You may want to spend a bit of time and look online at the required coursework for each path and see if one is more appealing to you than the other. If you 100% prefer the business path, then a direct admit to Tepper might be the safer option…if you could be happy with both business and econ and prefer Berkeley then go with that.
Yohohi- congrats! Not sure if you can just cut and paste but would you be willing to share your key stats that helped you get into CMU and Berkeley (both are on my list) ? Dont need all the EC’s. Thanks
@endeavor10 top .1% in class of 1000. 2350 SAT. 36 act. Asian. Pretty good ECS (internships and stuff). Not many awards (I believe this is the main reason I got rejected from all the ivies). Good essays. Good recommendations (teachers showed me them).