Cornell or Rice or UCLA or UW or UCSD of CS major

College Search & Selection
1

Hello all,
(My previous post on this topic did not come up with all the info and questions. Mods, please remove my earlier post and retain this one. Sorry about that)

This is my first post and seeking out guidance from the experts on this forum. Thanks in advance for reading my long post and suggestions.
We are from CA and our DS wanted to study in a big city for colleges (LA, New York, etc) so that he could go for events, concerts, and just have more to do in general. So, obviously UCLA was his top choice all these days but everything got changed since he was admitted to Rice and Cornell.
We visited the Rice and likes the school, campus and overall residential college experience. He will be going there next week (overnight Owl days) for admitted students event to explore more.
Coming to Cornel… Being in NorCal, we have no experience with snow and freezing cold like in Ithaca. Planning to visit Cornell this month but it may not give an exact picture of harsh winter season. The Cornell is on top of his list now. He thinks that the Ivy league tag will provide him better networking and job offers but still worried about weather and college town going to offer.

Below is the list of 5 colleges(priority wise) with COA. Hope to reduce it to 2 by mid April after visiting couple of colleges.
!) Cornel – College of Arts & Science (CAS): computer science (offered Grants, Total cost after grants~ $55K)
2) Rice University: computer science (offered Grants, Total cost after grants ~ 45K)
3) UCLA – Admitted to computer science ( Total cost ~35K)
4) University of Washington – Direct admit to computer science (P&B scholarship, Total Cost: ~43K)
5) UCSD – Computer science. Regents scholarship (Total cost: $29K)

For us most affordable option is UCLA and hope to manage 4 years without any kind of loans. DS will be out of college without any debts. Whereas for Cornell/Rice/UoW, the loan could go up to 20K per year. Other concern that we have is that the grants from Cornell and Rice probably will go down in the coming years based on the increase in our income. So, we have to pay more from our pockets or go for more loans.

Questions:

  1. Is it worth to send him to Cornell by taking loans needed? As of now he has no plans to do grad school.
  2. Is it possible for him to adjust to new weather conditions at Cornell and give up most of his all his interests (big city)?
  3. All five colleges are excellent for CS major but If we have to take small loan only (say ~10K per year), which college is well suited for him… Rice or UW?
  4. Out of 5 colleges, UCSD + regents with added benefits has the least price tag. Is it worth to be considered among top 3 in the priority list?

Any help would be greatly appreciated here.

2

Looks like the loan amounts you mention are parent loans, since student loans without cosigner are limited to $5,500 first year.

How would parent loans affect your finances, including retirement and any younger kids’ college funding? If there are younger kids, be aware that you will be setting a precedent or expectation of similar levels of college funding for them – if you cannot afford that, it may be better for family harmony to avoid setting such a precedent.

3

Tough choice.

For computer science, Cornell and Washington have the best reputation. Overall prestige wise, Cornell and Rice take the lead. UCLA and UCSD are great schools for CS too, and in-state tuition is hard to beat. If I were in your shoes, I’ll probably nudge kid towards UCLA or UCSD.

4

@ucbalumnus, the post is from a parent. I do know that student can borrow $5500 and up to $28K? for 4 years. But Rice University would like to limit student loan to max $10K for 4 years. We don’t need to worry about setting “precedent” :). Thanks

5

So if I understand correctly, the yearly loans would be:

UCSD or UCLA: no loans
Washington: $5,500 student loan and $2,500 parent loan
Rice: $5,500 student loan and $4,500 parent loan
Cornell: $5,500 student loan and $14,500 parent loan

(student loan can increase to $6,500, $7,500, $7,500 in later years)

?

6

@bogeyorpar, Thanks… I do agree with you about the overall prestige and I believe DS’s list reflect that also. Major concern with Cornell are (1) COA and loans (2) Weather (3) Distance from CA. We will be visiting UCLA during Bruin day (04/14 - 04/5) and also Owl day at Rice to explore the campuses. If we have to pick between UCLA and UCSD (Regents) for in-state tuition, which one? Unfortunately, we cant make it to Triton day on 04/14.

7

@ucbalumnus, thats pretty much correct assumption. As I have mentioned earlier Rice’s policy is not to allow more than $2500 student loans. (max 10K for 4 years). However, Rice and Cornell did not include any student loans in the fin aid offer or any Federal sub/unsub parents loans. Based on this, I am assuming all the remaining $$$ is from Parent Plus loans?. We are contacting them to revise the offer to include loan options.

8

@WCbound , we (my son and I) visited all the schools you listed. We share your concern about Cornell. We drove from New York to Ithaca, and for 3 hours, there’s nothing but cow country. We have not lived in the northeast but we have relatives there. When they heard Cornell, they said, “upstate New York is so beautiful, but in the winter, there are usually 3 feet of snow on the ground and you can’t go anywhere.” The CS and Engineering buildings are very new and modern.

I also share your impression with Rice. Very nice and warm and comfortable. But it doesn’t have the in-city feel, because the Rice campus and Houston itself are so sprawled out.

We live 30 minutes from UW. It has a gorgeous campus, top notch CS facilities (Allen building and the soon-to-be Gates hall), modern dorm rooms, and surrounded by high tech companies – Amazon and Microsoft headquarters, second largest Google, Facebook, Twitter campuses, etc. The letter from CS department says “prepare you resume, since internship recruitment events will happen soon after Fall quarter starts.” (Your son should have received the same message.)

UCLA is in a nice neighborhood and campus is lively. When we were on campus, there was a contest of some sort outside of the gym and a huge crowd of students joined and cheered loudly. The Engineering and computer science building are not as updated as UW’s .

UCSD is also in a nice neighborhood but has a different feel. Personally I like UCSD better, because I can walk to Torrey Pines and the beach. This is the only school that has Engineering and Comp Sci buildings on the main quad. Comp Sci building is very nice. However, the campus looked deserted and not as lively as UCLA and UW.

For us, UW makes the most sense, and the $10K tuition is unbeatable. For your son, he has to decide whether he likes UCLA’s lively scene or UCSD’s quiet STEM focus. If he likes city life, I think he’ll enjoy UCLA and UW more.

9

My daughter goes to rice. I am from New Jersey and at first Houston didn’t seem like a real city to me compared to Philadelphia and New York. But after multiple visits to Houston I now love the city. Houston is known to be great. During the final four I heard one announcer say that San Antonia is nice but as far as he was concerned they could hold the final four in Houston every year. It is full of great neighborhoods and restaurants. It is true that the Rice campus is as bucolic as they come but there is a section of Houston called Rice Village that is vibrant and almost an extension of the campus. Rice does not serve dinner Saturday at the commissary as a way to encourage students to venture out into the city.
And yes there is no place in America more frigid the the center of NY state. New York isn’t so bad in NY city or the Hudson river valley. Even the great lake region isn’t as cold as Ithaca. But Ithaca is a cute little city and there is another college in town too. Great place in The summer.
Attend Owl days. Another thing to consider is that rice is a smallish school were you get much more individualized attention. There is a big difference between the size of rice and the other schools on the list

10

How much will the amounts of parent loans affect your own finances? Presumably, you would take the loans because you do not have the money – how would having to pay them back affect how much you can save for retirement and other things?

Seems like UCSD and UCLA are the financially safer choices with no loans needed for either him or you.

11

Thanks, @robotrainbow. Definitely, we will visit Rice during Owl days and also UCLA during Bruin day… Cornell visit is bit later.

12

Honestly, for CS, these schools are all peers:
https://m.slashdot.org/story/208691

Cornell may have a small edge on the rest (and UW a tiny edge), but really, for software recruitment, which of these he goes to won’t matter. His own skills and experience will matter far more.

Cornell is a target for consulting and finance as well, however. Just something to consider.

But $20K a year ($80K total) is a lot of money. At least to me. I personally would knock UW out because it doesn’t offer anything extra outside of CS, where these schools are almost the same. Cornell offers recruiting possibilities in other fields but also has it’s drawbacks (it’s definitely not in a city and costs a lot more). Rice offers the special residential college experience (UCSD does too in a way) and Rice is much smaller (more attention). And between UCLA and UCSD, you should let it comes down to fit (and maybe whatever special things Regents offers). He’ll have to decide how much fit matters.

13

And here are Payscale’s ranking by salary of CS majors:
Payscale actually has it
Cornell-UCSD-UW-Rice-UCLA.

But really, they’re peers in CS.

14

Thanks, @PurpleTitan. One thing was not clear to me about UW. What do you mean by “knock UW out because it doesn’t offer anything extra outside of CS” Is that related course offerings, job offers (there are tech giants in Seattle), social life, campus, etc?

15

UW doesn’t offer the extra opportunities in consulting/finance that Cornell does or the smallness/residential colleges of Rice and costs more than UCLA/UCSD, and when it comes to employment, these 5 schools are all peers in CS, so that fit stuff (social life and campus) has to be really overwhelming for UW to even be in the discussion.

16

@bogeyorpar, we do share similar concerns. :slight_smile: Hopefully, we can narrow it down to 2 colleges in the coming days.

17

14 Indeed, it is. :)

18

I would lean to UCLA as well, one other thing to consider is if your son changes majors, what would be the best college to explore other disciplines or even if he stays in CS, get a minor or concentration. Most of the depts at UCLA are very good that you can do that.

19

Although if changing major is a possibility, consider whether the other possible majors at each school are competitive admission.

20

I believe it’s easy to switch to any major at Rice. Probably most majors at Cornell.