Dartmouth vs. UIUC vs. Columbia vs. Berkeley

College Search & Selection
1

Hey guys! College admissions are over for me and I’ve been super lucky to choose between Dartmouth (intended Math), Columbia (intended Computer Eng.), Berkeley (pre-CS LAS) , and UIUC (CS).

I won’t be doing any tours since I already visited these schools last summer.

In terms of CS rankings, history, and prestige I think Berkeley and UIUC win. Berkeley is obviously BERKELEY (it’s been my dream school since i toured). UIUC,carries a ton of weight in the industry and has had some really impressive alumni attend the college (founders of Tesla, PayPal, Advanced Micro Devices, Palantir, Wolfram Alpha, YouTube, Yelp).

My brother strongly recommends NOT coming to Berkeley for the BA in CS for 2 reasons: 1) While it is not insanely difficult to declare CS, it is not worth the risk of being a CS major. A lot of his friends chose pre-CS L&S Berk over similar tier schools (Waterloo, GTech, CMU, UIUC, Harvey Mudd, UT Austin, UW Seattle, etc.) and were unable to declare CS so ended up majoring in math or Data Science instead. This really held them back for internship and even full-time job applications at top BigN / Unicorn companies since they couldn’t make it past resume screening for SWE positions. 2) Once you actually do go through the grueling effort to declare, the difference between Berk and other top 7 CS schools makes no difference in the eyes of recruiters. For context, my brother is a senior at Berkeley EECS so he never had to worry about declaring. But I’m still unsure if declaring CS at Berkeley is as difficult as he claims.

When looking at the curriculum for CS, Berkeley and UIUC have far more technical requirements than Dartmouth and Columbia. The core req for Berk in particular is insanely comprehensive and there are a ton of elective courses to take. While Columbia and Dartmouth were amazing places, I can definitely say the CS resources/curriculum did not compete with Berk and UIUC when I visited. There seemed to be a massive emphasis on the arts which makes sense since ivies are LAS oriented schools.

I’m still torn tho because Columbia and Dartmouth were such amazing places. I’m just afraid of required English and history courses cuz AP Lang and APUSH was a STRUGGLE for me. Also, the general people I felt surrounded by at Columbia and Dartmouth were awesome and the community seemed really close/tight-knit.

Oh and I’m OOS for both publics so everything is essentially the same price.

What do you guys think? Given these criteria what is the best choice?

2

I’d choose between Dartmouth and Columbia, assuming $ is not an issue, depending on fit (including rural/urban, core at Columbia). I would not go anywhere that is overcrowded or where I might not be able to major in what I choose (which it sounds like Berkeley has issues with). I know Illinois is great at CS, but I’d rather to go grad school there vs. undergrad (too big, not sure of how state of IL is doing $ wise, much higher international enrollment than most flagships and that enrollment also could decrease with COVID-19 issues and lead to decreased tuition revenue for school). Being a math major at Dartmouth would do you just fine – can also take CS classes and maybe get Masters in CS somewhere else.

3

Regarding getting into the UCB L&S CS major…

UCB L&S CS requires a 3.3 college GPA in CS 61A, 61B, 70. About half of students in these courses have historically earned B+ or higher grades (B+ = 3.3 in UCB college GPA calculations). Note that CS 61A and 61B are explicitly not graded on a curve.

4

@Sunny66 Can you explain why you would be choosing between dartmouth and Columbia in this situation? From a curriculum standpoint I find that the ivies (Dartmouth and Columbia included) place a huge emphasis on CS theory ie abstract machines, NFA/DFAs, finite automata, grammar trees, etc. since these are the subfields of CS that the school is good for.

In contrast, I can see the core curriculum at Berk and UIUC place a massive emphasis on application (although UIUC seems particularly focused on Systems, especially operating systems and compilers).

While an understanding of theory is important, the ability to understand topics like data structures, software design, concurrent programming, parallelization, etc are ultimately what help you succeed on the job. While I can see that Dartmouth teaches all those things I don’t get the impression that they really push these topics as hard as the high ranking CS schools.

In addition companies know what schools are top for CS and what aren’t … they certainly wouldn’t recruit against dartmouth but they wouldn’t be throwing themselves at them like a UIUC/Waterloo/Berkeley/UT etc equivalent.

I agree with the idea that “being a math major at Dartmouth would do you just fine”, assuming they want to go to grad school. If OP wanted to get a job right after this would be a horrible idea.

5

Data Science is very hot right now. I wouldn’t feel bad about Berkeley students who “had” to declare data science. Check out how Berkeley math and data science graduates do in terms of careers and income. I’d bet that they’re doing just fine compared to software engineers/CS majors. It’s not going to get them software jobs, but there are plenty of other jobs that require the skills that math and data science majors learn. If you’re OK with math or data science, Berkeley would be an excellent option.

If you’re OK with not getting into CS at Berkeley, then I would choose between Berkeley and Columbia, maybe UIUC.

I agree with @woofdawg123 . I would take Dartmouth off the table.

6

I saw @Sunny66 post concerning revenue at UIUC if there is a significant decrease in international enrollment. This may assuage some of those fears. https://www.chicagobusiness.com/education/why-u-i-insuring-itself-literally-against-drop-chinese-students

From the above article: “If all the colleges’ Chinese students left overnight due to geopolitical causes or a pandemic, the insurance policy would pay out $60 million to compensate for the lost tuition revenue. It covers partial losses, too, but only if the schools have a combined annual Chinese tuition revenue decline of at least 18.5 percent. So if revenue drops 20 percent, the schools would get $12 million. For that benefit, they’re jointly paying a $424,000 annual premium over three years through June 2020.“

And a more recent article:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/06/university-discovers-solution-to-drop-in-chinese-students-insurance.html

7

@bouders Taking data science major into account … In my opinion OPs options should be

Berkeley CS(should he be able to declare) > UIUC CS >>> Columbia CS > Berkeley DS(DS is a buzzword NEVER Major in a buzzword) >> Dartmouth CS >>> Anything non-cs that OP is considering doing at uiuc (which doesn’t seem to be the case)

8

If you want to major in CS, I would personally pick UIUC or Berkeley out of these schools. IMO, the Ivies are not the be it and end all, especially for CS or engineering.

Too many people here will respond based on perceived prestige. They won’t be the people doing the hiring.

9

@woofdawg123 My response was based on his express intention to major in math at Dartmouth and the fact that he may not get the CS major at Berkeley (plus his brother’s advice about not attending Berkeley). I do not have the CS background that you have. Given the insurance mentioned in the above post and assuming a CS major, UIUC seems like a good option for CS.

10

@lolk110028 if you’re scared of requirements like that, Columbia would probably be not the nest place for you with its Core Curriculum. I realize this post was a while ago - have you made a decision?

If not, I’m a Dartmouth student so I can help inform you from that perspective if you’d like.