My son wants to study CS, applied for CS at UMD, accepted to UMD letters & sciences. I heard if pass 3 courses and keep the GPA above 2.7, will be able to declare CS major.
Also admitted to CS in UCSC,
Background, California resident.
Thanks in advance
At UMD, the requirements to get into CS from L&S are the same as the requirements to maintain the CS major for direct admits. So it’s not much of a disadvantage to not have a direct admit. As per USNWR rankings, UMD is #18 for CS and UCSC is #60. So a big difference there.
Of course, cost is also going to be quite different for you being in-state at UCSC vs OOS at UMD.
In brief: if the finances work out, UMD has a much stronger CS program.
Agreed but there are also soft factors like distance from home. I went to school across the country. Others are not comfortable with that. What is right for your student ??
A critical detail, in my opinion, is, in Letters and Sciences, one must have overall GPA of 2.7 when applying to the LEP major.
If one gets C- in the required Gateway classes, it is harder to achieve a 2.7 GPA.
A student already admitted to LEP majors needs just a 2.0 overall GPA.
See LEP requirements for those already admitted:
Versus seeking admission from Letters and Sciences:
https://drive.google.com/drive/mobile/folders/1_LC5A9v0PIx9APH1nPxM5FMysSllpe0I
Other factors to consider are whether a student has AP credits or can take some easier general education courses to boost their GPA.
Edited to add:
See UMD GPA calculator
https://www.testudo.umd.edu/gpa/index.html
CS at UCSC is in engineering? Take a look at four year plans for each major.
Grass is always greener elsewhere.
Consider quality of life,
UMD still has major construction project on campus - light rail - expected to take four years more, as well as on neighboring streets. Major tech employers/ fed govt/ contractors have remote work, very few are back to five days in person work. Maybe in April, waiting for more to open up.
See UCSC, need a 3.0 B average in Qualification courses to stay in Computer Science
https://catalog.ucsc.edu/Current/General-Catalog/Academic-Units/Baskin-School-of-Engineering/Computer-Science-and-Engineering/Computer-Science-BS
UMD is also a more social environment. Big football emphasis, unlike UCSC. Just something else to consider along with cost, location, and prestige of CS program.
That really isn’t a big difference.
The rest of the Big Ten really questions UMD’s emphasis on football.
We can agree to disagree. UMD has a much stronger CS program.
My son is graduating CS at UCSC Baskin school of engineering. My husband works in tech and we live in the Bay Area. I don’t know anything about UMD but here are my thoughts: in terms of academics, the CS program at UCSC is hard, very hard. That’s good and bad. My son was well prepared, having completed many cs courses in high school and already knowing programming when he started. If your son is strong in CS then UCSC will be okay, if not, then it will be hard.
My son chose UCSC partly because of weather (it’s great in Santa Cruz) but also because the school has few non-major requirements. He is graduating in 3 years (spurred on by the pandemic which made virtual college kind of pointless). He has several friends in the cs programs who have their own businesses, in fact, he and one friend have started their own web services business.
The campus is jaw droppingly beautiful. My son can see Monterey Bay from his dorm window. The redwood trees and the flowering cherries with trails snaking through creeks on campus is something I still wonder at. Santa Cruz is a cute small city with lots to offer.
UCSC does not have a strong main student center, it’s very spread out, due to their ‘small schools’ approach. No football team, either, so it’s not got that strong central school community thing going on. However, there’s lots happening on campus, but it’s not centralized (everyone goes to the football game, for ex).
The difference in school rank that one person mentioned is really immaterial. Companies are desperate to hire cs grads. My husband is having a hard time filling cs positions at his company. No one hiring is going to say ‘you went to rank #x versus rank #y school, hmm, pass’. Maybe at google, but nowhere else. Don’t worry about that, that’s my advice. In fact, look at the strength of the program and ignore the dumb rankings that do nothing but make money for outlets like US news and world report.
My husband did CS at Berkeley. He says the CS program at UCSC is basically identical to Berkeley (then and now) and is quite good and prepares students well. He often rejects candidates for positions because they can’t answer basic computer logic questions in interviews (it’s hard to hire qualified candidates, because they can write their ticket).
My advice is to visit both campuses and see where your son feels most comfortable and most likely to fit in. UMD probably has an excellent program as well. Good luck!
Each school will likely have a recruiting bias in favor of it in its local area, particularly among smaller employers that have less need or budget to recruit widely.
Google college recruiting does not appear to be especially elitist, based on hundreds of colleges it recruits at.
Interesting. My friends at facebook, cisco, intel, etc. are having a hard time holding onto programmers much less hiring them. That’s just what we are observing. I have asked them about my son at ucsc and they’ve encouraged him to apply. My niece’s fiance who works at google and was an ivy league graduate says it was very competitive to land his job, but that’s just one person and you are probably right that google is probably not elitist anymore either (I worked at Oracle in the 90s and it’s nickname was ‘little Stanford’ because it hired so many Stanford grads, but I don’t think any company can afford to be so elitist anymore, on that I agree with you).
Thank you very much! Your comment is really encouraging.
Iam also looking for similar information for my son.
Sports is not a factor.
Based on my research so far I see UMD needs at least 4 courses outside CS, UCSC seems to only need 1. The class catalog for UCSC seems more modern topics for CS ( I have background in CE)
Campus and building is more modern in UMD. Dorms seems slightly bigger in UMD.
How hard is it to get classes in UMD ?(more students in CS ~3200 vs ~2000 in UCSC)