Anyone here comparing data science/ similar programs between any of UCLA, UCSD and UC Berkeley? Would love to hear your opinions/experiences on the topic. If this is not the right thread, please help move to the right group. Appreciate it!
As a general comment, I believe it would be safe to assume that there’s more than one good choice for data science from within this group of schools.
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They are all great programs but Data Science at Cal is outstanding and ranked #1. Since they are all UCs cost is likely similar. On average, I would go to Cal unless there is some unique personal circumstance that make the other choices a better personal fit.
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Note that U.S. News, for example, does not rank undergraduate data science programs.
In any case, data science is typically associated with an applied domain of a student’s choosing, such as from the social or natural sciences. For this reason, any overly specific ranking could be counterproductive for a student with particular interests.
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Not true. Cal DS has an incredible reputation in the industry and its DS outcomes are almost as good as its CS outcomes.
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Perhaps looking at the curricula and courses to see their similarities and differences may help you decide which is a better academic fit for you.
You are correct.
From what we learned UCLA is more theoretical and appropriate for students who are inclined to grad school. UCSD is the only one with a BS and a dedicated building. Berkeley seems to be a balance with a domain emphasis. Our interest is to learn what careers graduates from these programs have chosen, what is the further school investment, and rigor. Just to name a few dimensions of information we are seeking. Rank wise, hands down Cal is 1 per US News, even beating the highest ranked schools in CS, which was bit surprising.
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For the class of 2022, Cal data science outcomes are as follows:
Median base salary - $100k
Top 5 Employers - Amazon (14), Accenture (8), Microsoft (7), Google (6), Meta (6)
I recommend looking up outcomes for UCSD and UCLA. Neither UCLA or UCSD appear to have actual major specific outcomes available. I know the UCSD program is pretty new but you should really try to get at the actual #s on Triton day or directly from the career center prior to making a decision.
I was just recently looking at Data Science at Berkeley. Here’s a few things I’ve learned that you might find useful…
The division of computing, data science, and society is on its way to becoming its own college at Cal. It looks like that division is a combination of the departments of EECS, Statistics, & Data Science combined with several related schools/centers (information, computational biology, AI labs/centers, etc.).
They broke ground last fall on the core building for the new college named Gateway with planned opening for the 2025-2026 school year.
If you want to get a feel for the undergrad data science courses, you can access much of the content online. You can start with the undergrad course list. If you click the link for Data C8 (aka Data 8, the introductory course for all majors and minors), there is an archive of the current and prior versions of the course. I’d suggest looking at the Spring 2023 semester to see the course being taught right now, then click on a Slide or Video link next to a day to see the slide deck or a recording of that day’s lecture. The textbook is open source (creative commons license), just click the Textbook link at the top right of the main Data 8 page to access it.
I don’t understand what is going to happen to EECS when this new college is created. Is the CS side of EECS moving to the new college and EE staying in COE? Or all of EECS moving to the new college? Or EECS staying in COE and L&S CS moving to the new college?
I haven’t dug down that deeply into the plans, but my guess is the full EECS moves. The CS courses for the L&S CS degree have always been taught by EECS faculty AFAIK (were 40 years ago and from what I read still are today). The breadth courses, advising, and degree come from L&S. So that could stay the same (CS courses for L&S CS majors taught by faculty from the new college instead of CoE faculty). Even though it might seem odd to put people whose focus is EE in the new college, I think EECS has always felt that it’s best if the “software people” understand something about hardware and the “hardware people” understand something about software. And it’s always been interdisciplinary (a bio track in EECS was around in the 80’s, possibly 70’s). The AI part of data science wouldn’t be having the impact it does today without the GPUs from the hardware folks and software/data science people who realized those GPUs could be repurposed from graphics to training AI systems. So even though at first blush it might seem strange to include the computing hardware in the new college, I think it would be consistent with the interdisciplinary focus that Cal EECS has always had.
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This appears to me is a DS-centric college. A portion of EECS (perhaps ML related?) may move into the new college, but I doubt all of EECS would.
Co-sign. The new college simply reflects the growing relevance of data science and has nothing to do with EECS which is fundamentally an engineering department with much broader objectives.
To me it would seem super weird to put EE in with data science. EE isn’t just about computers.
You’all may be right. And, agreed EE isn’t just about computers and CS isn’t just about DS/ML. I believe the proposal for the new college was submitted last year. Which makes me think the division would just become the core of the college. But for reasons you mention it could make sense to restructure. The proposal is probably somewhere online. If anyone finds out for certain, please post.
I dug around a bit more. Can’t find the proposal, but I do see a lot of phrases like “share” (as in share EECS faculty with CoE) and “affiliate” departments/schools. So being able to pull in enough beyond the Data Science to justify a new college may just be wishful thinking. And the current division is much less than I thought it was when I first read it (sucked in by the marketing, sigh ;-). Probably some interesting turf battles going on right now.
I was at Bruin’s day and the Department of Statistics told us they have just been renamed “Department of Statistics and Data Science” . Statistics major under College of Physical Sciences has also been renamed as "Statistics and Data Science major. Class of 2027 will be the first year with this major, previously they’ve all been just “Statistics major” . They are in the process of updating the literature to reflect the new name.
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I found the UC Senate’s response from March 2023:
The senate has “conditionally approved” the proposal, contingent on a few items that need to be rectified in 6 months.
The new college will be called "College of Computing, Data Science and Society " . From the Senate’s response, the new college will jointly administer EECS with COE.
It also states that 40% of COE faculty today are in EECS. Won’t be surprised EECS actually wants this opportunity to have more freedom from COE.
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Thanks @PerePan! As so many of those groups point out, EECS jointly administered by CoE and CoCDSS is a concern, but perhaps that’s the best compromise they could come up with.
Does seem like they do answer @tamagotchi 's question re: where does L&S CS go – it goes to the new CDSS college.
In the letters @PerePan linked here are the two best summaries of the new structure I found.
On page 8…
The organization structure of the new college would incorporate three educational units: the Department of Statistics, the School of Information, and the Center for Computational Biology. Furthermore, the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) will be jointly administered by CDSS and the College of Engineering. Finally, the undergraduate majors of Data Science and L&S Computer Science would move to the CDSS. It is estimated that the CDSS would have an enrollment of ~ 2,900 undergraduates and confer ~1000 degrees annually
and on page 14
The Berkeley CDSS College includes several units that are being moved from or shared with other colleges. One of these, the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) is extremely strong both nationally and internationally and will be shared with the College of Engineering. Two majors are currently offered through this department: (1) BS in Electrical Engineering and, (2) BA in Computer Science. The Computer Science major, which currently has >1700 students, will be moved from Letters and Sciences (L&S) to the new CDSS College (page 16). Three other units (one Program, one School, and one Department) are moving from the College of Letters and Sciences: the program in Data Science, the School of Information Science and the Department of Statistics. The program in Data Science was recently created in the College of Letters and Sciences and offers a popular and growing undergraduate major: the BA in Data Science currently has >1000 undergraduate majors (page 16). The School of Information will maintain its status as a School, but move to the CDSS College from Letters and Sciences. The School of Information offers several graduate degrees and provides undergraduate courses but does not offer an undergraduate degree. The Department of Statistics offers a BA in Statistics. The total number of students in the CDSS college is 2900 (Chancellors Letter, page 5). They expect to graduate 1500 students per year (page 16), making this one of the largest colleges on campus.
I think that should really be BS in EECS (not BS in EE). I translate the above two as saying that the BS in EECS stays in CoE and the BA in CS (aka L&S CS) moves to the new College of CDSS.
One other interesting bit on page 15…
Faculty members of the new CDSS College include 94 in EECS, 19 in Statistics and 13 in
Information (Table 2, page 90). 75% of the voting members of CDSS are faculty in EECS; consequently, EECS will have a determining role in defining both the admissions and the curriculum of the Data Science major.
94 faculty from EECS seems to be close to half the department (EECS department site, by the numbers page says “over” 200 faculty)
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