<p>What are the differences in stats for each college in test scores and GPA?</p>
<p>Alright,</p>
<p>I've done a bit of reading around this forum and have the general idea that chemE is VERY tough--so tough, that a large portion of kids won't even finish the degree albeit obtain a decent GPA.</p>
<p>Is the academic rigor of chemE at Berkeley worth it in the long run? Will I have advantages as a chemE graduate from Berkeley over a chemE major from a school like Cornell, Penn, or Columbia? Or a chemE major from Penn with a business background?</p>
<p>I don't want to have to labor in a tough environment when I could have more opportunities at other schools and still have the same perks later in life when it comes to getting a job...</p>
<p>I may sound like I'm trying to avoid work, but honestly I'm not. I'm merely trying to figure out the best place for me to attend. If I have to put in the work, I will. I would just like to enjoy the ride :)</p>
<p>Well, if tough environment is a definete turnoff for you, and you're in a hard major-don't come to Berkeley. Unless you're really smart and could breeze through your classes-thereby giving you time to party or do what you will.</p>
<p>A ChemE major at Berkeley will have a better opportunity for jobs simply because of location (though the prestige of the program certainly helps).</p>
<p>Berkeley is close to (and owns) Livermore Labs and Los Alamos Labs. Not only that, it is close to Silicon Valley and high-tech.</p>
<p>Job-wise, only Penn can compare, really, with the Biovalley, but even that somewhat suffers next to the level of industry in this sector on the west coast.</p>
<p>So, yes, if you got the degree at Berkeley, you would have a leg up... but only if you got a decent GPA. Prestige and good location won't help you one bit if you're a 2.0. As said, if you think you got the smarts for it, go for it.</p>
<p>As long as your upper div GPA is around 3.3 (that's average, the grading gets a lot easier your last two years), you'll do fine and still have a good time. Keep in mind that by getting into ChemE from out of state, you're a bit smarter than the average to start with.</p>
<p>Where you can make a huge difference is if you treat your job search like a 3 unit class at the end of your JR year and your first semester of the Sr year (getting proactive, meeting employers, getting internships). Most Cal students don't, amazingly so.</p>
<p>Once again, thanks for the additional insights.</p>
<p>I have yet another issue bugging me:</p>
<p>A student I spoke to at Penn told me that he would choose Penn over Berkeley ANYDAY despite the inherent differences in academics at both institutions. He cited several reasons for this:</p>
<p>1) Penn has better networking. By connecting with Wharton students, job prospects are better. Also, the alumni network is very strong.</p>
<p>2) It is an ivy league school. The reputation of ivy league students alone is worth the difference in academics. If an employer has to choose between two similar candidates, one from UCB and one from Penn, the employer would choose the Penn applicant simply because of his ivy league affiliation.</p>
<p>3) Penn provides better opportunities for internships and what not.</p>
<p>Can any Cal students refute these statements? I feel like they are exaggerated and false.</p>
<p>This kid at Penn can't speak for the Berkeley experience just as I can't speak for the Penn experience. I've experienced a lot of networking at Berkeley.</p>
<p>Me personally, I would choose Berkeley over Penn ANYDAY. Just like my friend who transferred to Berkeley from Penn. </p>
<p>The whole Penn prestige thing is a result of Penn alumni getting US news to change the ranking methodology to favor their school. I mean, less than 10 years ago, Penn was where you went when you got rejected from all the other ivy league schools, and if you were a prestige whore. </p>
<p>Academically, Berkeley is a better school than Penn.... Berkeley's academic reputation score according to US News is higher than that of Penn. What does that mean? That means that surveys sent by US News to employers/faculty members across the US rated the abilities/aptitude of Berkeley alumni HIGHER than that of Penn alumni. Hmmmmmmm. </p>
<p>Besides, you're an engineering major. Only AN IDIOT would choose Penn engineering over Berkeley engineering. </p>
<p>Geography ALONE would get me to choose Berkeley over Penn.</p>
<p>Hope that helps.</p>
<p>Number 2 is certainly false.</p>
<p>When I went to cal, my ex transferred into COC from L&S. She loved it. She raved about her professors and her study groups. It was certainly more work, but it wasn't like she was in the library all the time. When she started to look at graduate schools, she got courted by both MIT and Caltech. She used to say how COC carried alot of weight with both schools. Ended up studying biochem. at MIT.</p>
<p>robot,</p>
<p>1)The Wharton connection is formidable on Wall Street, very good in corporate America, but quite a bit weaker in engineering. Cal Engineering on the other hand has carved for itself a strong niche, esp if you're not set on going back to the east coast, which might well be the case for you as the Bay Area is a pretty hard place to leave.</p>
<p>You don't know how far and where your career will carry you, but I can tell you that I felt good talking about my dorm with the Minister of Industry of a southeast asian country I have done business in, as this was also his dorm at Berkeley. Penn is a popular brand of tennis balls in most of the world.</p>
<p>2) You don't hear Harvard or Princeton saying they are great because they are Ivy. The lesser Ivies are trying to hang onto the coattails of the better ones. Cal engineering's rep is better than Penn engineering, which is a small and fairly obscure and marginal school. I didn't even know that Penn had an engineering school, unlke Cornell, which is a very good and known engin. school. But not as much as Cal Engineering, which is in the very top league with MIT, CalTech and 'Furd. </p>
<p>There is a whole lot less bias in the hiring of engineers, they tend to go with the best. Engineering dept also tend to not like people who got "placed" there, if that were the case. In many business jobs, like I-Banking, most applicants can get the job done. It's not rocket science. Contacts matter more. In engineering, your technical skills will be more sollicited and differentiation will be done based in good part on the rigor of your training.</p>
<p>I got my first job out of college in the east coast with a small company. My boss had a hard-on from the start about having a Berkeley engineer in his team. First interview, first offer. You'll get an internship if you work for it, and you'll get a good job too, if you are serious enough about the process.</p>
<p>The Penn guy is thrilled to belong to an exclusive club, the Ivy League. The Cal Engineer knows he has had one of the very best training from one of the very best faculty in the world. When you walk between the columns of McLaughlin Hall, you're in good company, with the people who have made this conversation possible, whether you're using a PC running an Intel chip (founded by Cal grad Moore) or an Apple Mac (founded by Cal grad Steve Wozniak.)</p>
<p>Most of all, don't let ANYONE make you believe that Cal is not fun, or less fun than Penn. I would give my left nut to be in your shoes and be an 18-year old walking under Sather Gate. One of the greatest thrills in my life.</p>
<p>See you this Fall at Memorial Stadium. Go Bears!</p>
<p>CalX, you certainly have a way with words sometimes! Too funny. ;)</p>
<p>I think, because this is the Cal board, you may be getting bias responses. I personally am one of the "idiots" who will be choosing Penn engineering over Berkeley engineering on May 1. This is because of several reasons. One reason is the campus and the neighborhood. When I visited Cal two weeks ago with a friend--with sincere apologies to the Cal enthusiasts here--both of us thought the campus and the neighborhood were crappy and boring. SF is not, of course, but it is too far away for people to say Cal is in SF, though it's still very reachable from Cal of course. Another reason is that, as a high school senior with limited exposure to the real world and what engineering actually is, I'm not sure if I want to do engineering yet. Another area I'm looking into as of now is business, hence Penn. And believe it or not, Penn's amazing recruitment is not limited to finance. Microsoft, IBM and the like do go to Penn to recruit every year, as Penn does a good job to encourage interdisciplinary stuff--Wharton is a great resource for all Penn students. Penn engineers could take up to 6 classes or so from Wharton without having to transfer or apply. This gives you an edge even as an engineer--some Penn engineers are hired straight out of undergrad as programming managers or whatever the title, as they have the programming knowledge as well as managerial skills.</p>
<p>Just another anecdote, the Penn student that volunteered to host me when I visited Penn a couple of days ago happened to be another "idiot," as he apparently chose Penn engineering over MIT. He went in crazy about computer science, and is now hating computer science, though he is still doing computer science (along with a double degree in Wharton). Penn engineering is not as bad as USNews rankings suggests. My host got into MIT, so he obviously knows the stuff about his engineering major--CS. He says he has been very happy about his CS professors.</p>
<p>Different people will say different things. I suggest that you post in the other schools' boards too. But all in all I agree that if you're sure about doing engineering (but be aware that the percentage of engineering majors changing into different fields later on is not low), and personally like the environment and atmosphere of Cal, then Cal is perfect for you. You really, really should visit by all means.</p>
<p>You probably had a bad tour of Berkeley. It's very likely you only explored parts of the campus and West/South Berkeley where it's ghetto. If you had explored East Berkeley (the Hills) and North Berkeley, you definitely wouldn't be describing Berkeley as being "crappy." I remember when I first came to campus to tour I completely missed the Hills and North Berkeley and I got the impression that Berkeley was a miserable place to be. Totally understandable.</p>
<p>So you're not SURE that you want to do engineering, and that is your argument for choosing Penn Engineering over Berkeley Engineering. I'll buy that, you're not an idiot. But if you WERE sure that you wanted to do engineering, you'd have to be a mo-f-in idiot to choose Penn over Berkeley. Or a prestige whore...which is just another form of idiot.</p>
<p>....and your host that chose Penn over MIT. I'm sure he didn't choose Penn over MIT because Penn had a better CS program....because that would simply be false. Perhaps Penn offered him better financial aid? Perhaps he was scared away by MIT's famous academic rigor? (i've met people who chose to go to UCI over Berkeley because they were scared away by Berkeley's academic rigor).</p>
<p>I didn't really make sure I covered every part of campus, but I'm pretty sure I went to most places, if not all of them. I stayed overnight on campus, at the Berkeley faculty club, and went to their libraries, and looked for their classes, went to the Haas building, went inside the Foothill dorms, went on the official campus tour, etc. I'm sure it's a personal preference thing if you guys like it so much. But both my friend and I were disappointed.</p>
<p>I think going to Penn has some more benefits. You can't just say that because Berkeley is great in CS, all kids in my situation should choose Berkeley. Fact: Penn Engineering's SAT average last year was about 1480, and its yield was not low (60%? I don't remember). These were the brightest kids, and would very likely have got into Berkeley engineering if they applied, especially if they were in CA. To say that those are clearly idiots who choose Penn over Berkeley for engineering is I think not very justified. i was going to give reasons in more detail about this, but I am going to miss my train. I will come back later</p>
<p>How can you be so sure you saw everything? While going to Penn doesn't make you an "idiot," I question certain parts of your posts. People discover new things here all the time, being here a day or two means it's probably likely you didn't see a lot of stuff on campus.</p>
<p>You made the right choice. Don't look back.</p>
<p>Hmmm...if you already made a choice, don't second-guess yourself. You'll just drive yourself crazy doing that. Having said that, its hard for me to believe that Penn or any other college back east (except for MIT, of course) is better regarded than Cal for engineering and computer science. From my experience working with start-ups and engineers in Silicon Valley, the sense I get is that the engineering and CS community is a very tight-knit community. In the case of CS, engineers are hyper-aware as to which universities have the best cs programs, which universities are pushing the envelope in terms of innovation, and which universities produce top-flight cs engineers. Alot of top engineers and CS people come from abroad (India and China) to study and work here, and all of them seem to know which academic programs are the most well-regarded. This has a synergistic effect in that these foreign engineers then "spread the word" to their peers in foreign countries, which further cements a university's reputation. From my discussions with them, the only 2 CS programs back east that these engineers consistently mentioned was MIT and Carnegie-Mellon. Of course, they raved about Cal's CS program. Admittedly, these engineers are biased because they worked in Silicon Valley. But hey, Silicon Valley is to CS and engineering what Wall Street is to investment banking. Its hard to discount the views of the movers and shakers of the industry.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Cal Engineering, which is in the very top league with MIT, CalTech and 'Furd. </p>
<p>There is a whole lot less bias in the hiring of engineers, they tend to go with the best. Engineering dept also tend to not like people who got "placed" there, if that were the case. In many business jobs, like I-Banking, most applicants can get the job done. It's not rocket science. Contacts matter more. In engineering, your technical skills will be more sollicited and differentiation will be done based in good part on the rigor of your training.</p>
<p>I got my first job out of college in the east coast with a small company. My boss had a hard-on from the start about having a Berkeley engineer in his team. First interview, first offer. You'll get an internship if you work for it, and you'll get a good job too, if you are serious enough about the process.</p>
<p>The Penn guy is thrilled to belong to an exclusive club, the Ivy League. The Cal Engineer knows he has had one of the very best training from one of the very best faculty in the world. When you walk between the columns of McLaughlin Hall, you're in good company, with the people who have made this conversation possible, whether you're using a PC running an Intel chip (founded by Cal grad Moore) or an Apple Mac (founded by Cal grad Steve Wozniak.)
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This actually ties into another one of my pet subjects here on CC, which is that, simply put, going to a top-ranked engineering program doesn't really seem to matter very much as opposed to going to a no-name program. I say that because the (sad) truth is that graduates from the top engineering programs really don't get paid much more than the graduates of no-name programs.</p>
<p>Don't believe me? As a case in point, take New Mexico Tech. I had never even heard of New Mexico Tech until last year. Yet the data indicates that New Mexico Tech grads for 2004 made an average starting salary of almost 55k a year.</p>
<p>Contrast that with the salaries that Berkeley engineers got in 2004. Notice how, in many cases, Berkeley engineers actually got LOWER starting salaries than the average New Mexico Tech engineering graduate got. This is particularly true of the Bioengineers. Seriously, a 37k starting salary figure is pretty darn weak for a Berkeley engineering discipline (although, granted, it is still better than what a MCB or IB graduate makes). </p>
<p>Furthermore, let's not also forget about the role of geography. Berkeley grads tend to work in the SF Bay Area, especially Silicon Valley. That's one of the highest cost-of-living places in the whole country. New Mexico, on the other hand, is dirt cheap compared to the Bay Area. Go ahead and punch up some of those cost-of-living calculators and you can see just how much less money you need to live in New Mexico vs. the Bay Area. Hence, not only at the New Mexico Tech engineers in many cases making MORE money than the Berkeley engineers, but they get to keep more of it because they don't have to spend as much just to survive. </p>
<p>Usually, companies will normalize salaries to wash out cost-of-living differences. But this does not seem to be happening for Bay Area engineers. Bay Area companies apparently expect new engineering graduates to take the same kind of salary that they might get elsewhere, with no adjustment for the higher cost of living. And those graduates will take those salaries. </p>
<p>Nor do I mean to single out Berkeley. I have done this same analysis for grads from MIT, Stanford, and other schools, and have reached the conclusion that, for whatever reason, industry simply isn't willing to pay much of a premium to get graduates from the top engineering schools. Simple economics dictates that if the market demands more of something, then the market ought to be paying more for that thing. </p>
<p>So all this talk about a boss having a 'hard-on' about having a Berkeley engineer on the team - well, if that were really true and lots of companies really do prize having Berkeley engineers (or MIT engineers or Stanford engineers or whatever), then these companies should be offering higher starting salaries for these engineers. But they're not. </p>
<p>Incidentally, this is why I also think that engineering is a really good degree to get for those mediocre students who barely got into college. If these students are able to complete their engineering degrees, they will get starting salaries that are almost the same as the engineering students from the very best schools like MIT, Stanford, and Berkeley. {Furthermore, they will actually get BETTER starting salaries than the graduates of the elite schools who majored in the liberal arts.} So it's an unbelievably sweet deal for them. </p>
<p>But it's not such a good deal for the graduates of the top engineering schools. This is why so many of them decide not to take engineering jobs, opting instead of jobs in management consulting or banking. A significant percentage of the engineering grads from MIT, Stanford, and Berkeley go off to management consulting or banking. </p>
<p>Hence, to recap, this is not a 'Berkeley' thing. This is actually a comment on engineering in general. Everybody talks about how engineering firms like to hire 'the best' and how engineering is highly clique-ish and rankings conscious. My response to that is that if that were true, then why aren't the graduates from the top engineering schools being offered higher starting salaries? It's a breakdown of the free market.</p>
<p>
[quote]
But if you WERE sure that you wanted to do engineering, you'd have to be a mo-f-in idiot to choose Penn over Berkeley
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Not necessarily. You can know that you want to be an engineer, but not necessarily what TYPE of engineer you want to be. One extremely annoying feature of Berkeley engineering is that it locks you into specific engineering disciplines with only constrained opportunities to switch around later. For example, if you come in as an EECS student and then find out that you'd rather do ME, you can't just switch over just "like that". You have to apply to switch over, and you may be denied. This is especially so if your grades are poor. For example, if you start taking EECS courses and do poorly, then that's probably a good indication that EECS is not for you, but then, because you have bad grades, you find that no other discipline wants to take you, so now you're locked into EECS. It's quite ironic, in fact. The reason why you want to get out of EECS is also the very reason why you are forced to stay. </p>
<p>
[quote]
Or a prestige whore...which is just another form of idiot.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, look, first of all, there are plenty of people who go to Berkeley just for the prestige. I know quite a few people who applied to most or all of the UC's and then just mechanistically chose the most prestigious one that they got admitted to. So if people who choose an Ivy just for the Ivy prestige are wrong, then people who choose Berkeley just for Berkeley's prestige are also wrong. </p>
<p>Furthermore, I don't really see anything necessarily wrong with choosing a school for the prestige. What's so bad about that? That's no different from people choosing to work for a particular famous employer for a few years because they know that it looks good on the resume. I know quite a few people heading off to work at companies like McKinsey or Goldman Sachs who know full well that they don't intend to stick around for more than a few years. They choose to work for these firms because they know that doing so looks good on the resume. The same can be said for many of the big 'brand-name' engineering companies like Microsoft, Intel, Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Cisco, etc. Lots of people choose to work for these companies just for a few years because they know that having that company name on the resume will look good. Certainly saying that you've worked for Microsoft for a few years makes you a stronger candidate for a future job position than spending those years working for a no-name company, ceteris paribus. </p>
<p>Where the problem comes is if people choose a school or an employer that they absolutely loathe, just for the prestige. Or to choose a school or an employer that does not offer what you want to do, just for the prestige. I agree that THAT is unwise. But I don't see anything wrong with considering prestige as a factor in choosing a school. That's just a good hard-nosed way to go about developing your career.</p>