My daughter got into the CS programs at 5 out of the six UC’s she applied to (also to UIUC, Purdue, UW, Mines etc). She has great choices. She loves UCB, which was her first choice.
Now that she has gotten some choices, I started reading up on the campus culture of her options, and I am very concerned about the supposedly “cut throat” culture and high stress levels at Cal. I’m wondering whether I should try to steer her away from Cal and push her to consider her other options carefully.
She comes from very academic high school which was actually very collaborative. She herself is a very laid-back, chill kid. Ideally, I would love for her to enjoy her next four years while getting a fine education (don’t we all
These are my questions:
Is the Cal “cut throat” culture really serious?
Does the Cal name open doors so it’s worth considering? ( I would like her to have job opportunities when she graduates, and don’t want to be blamed for having steered away from UCB if she has less options later)
Did she apply as CS or EECS for UCB? CS is in the College of L&S while EECS is in the College of Engineering. Freshmen are admitted into their majors for the College of Engineering as opposed to being admitted as undeclared for the College of L&S. Declaring CS will be difficult, so keep that in mind.
If she’s really excited about Cal, she should go to Cal. Fit and personal excitement about a future school really trump all. If you talk her out of it because YOU are worried about it, she’ll forever resent the decision. Let her analyze the info. Let the decision be hers. If she did well enough to get in, she’ll be fine.
I know lots of people who graduated from Cal and they don’t seem too mentally damaged from their college experience. I’ve always felt the cutthroat reputation was exaggerated.
At least in the Silicon Valley/San Francisco area, having a CS degree from Cal over the other UC’s on the list won’t be a big advantage (unless the hiring manager went to Cal). There are lots of Cal alumni in the area, so there’s nothing really exceptional about getting a resume from someone who went to school there.
If your daughter has the opportunity and wants to go to Cal, she should.
simba9, I was under the impression that Cal opened doors which the lesser ranked UC’s didn’t in Silicon Valley (hence the fierce competition to get into Cal, as opposed to UC Irvine or Santa Cruz).
Does a Carnegie Mellon CS degree carry any weight? Just curious…
Cutthroatism is reputedly most common in courses and majors populated by pre-meds (this is probably the case at many schools). It may also be an issue in courses taken by students intending to apply for the competitive business major. It could theoretically be a problem in the prerequisite courses for L&S CS, but the first two of them (CS 61A and CS 61B) explicitly state in their syllabus that grading is *not* based on a curve.
Being well known, large, and local to a lot of computer companies does make UCB an attractive place to recruit soon-to-graduate students looking for the first job out of school. Once at the interview stage and for jobs past the first one out of school, school name is much less important.
That’s not really the case. I started working as a programmer in 1983. Back then your school kinda’, sorta’ counted, and when I was working at Boeing they had a list of preferred schools. But as people started seeing there wasn’t much correlation between productivity and where you went to school, they started to pay less and less attention to your school.
There’s enough demand for programmers in Silicon Valley that hiring managers can’t be that picky - thankfully for me. For an entry-level position, companies will be happy to receive a resume that has any of the UCs listed on it. After your first job, your work experience and skills matter more than your school.
