My son’s decision in the next month is basically as follows. All great schools and they work with our financial parameters, so it’s a tough choice.
Given his top 2 acceptances, he now figures that to some extent he needs to decide what he wants to do with his life this month. That’s probably overstating it, but he feels like if he ends up in computer science, he won’t want to have thrown away CMU. And, if he ends up in physics, he’d rather do that at Caltech (or one of the UCs) over CMU.
– Caltech: He’d probably major in physics, but he doesn’t need to declare a major for a year. Access to research and a variety of STEM topics are obvious strengths. The CS program is pretty theoretical, but he does like CS theory. He needs to figure out if the social atmosphere and crazy workload are pros or cons for him. People say it is very collaborative, and the male:female ratio has been getting better in recent years.
– CMU for Computer Science: The CS program is absolutely great, but he wasn’t so impressed with the physics department when he visited. We don’t know much about the social aspects of CMU, as his only visit there was in 10th grade to receive a CS-related award. People talk about the workload being high, but it’s difficult to imagine it being as intense as Caltech. Probably lots more practical vs. theory in CS.
– UC Berkeley with Regents, College of L&S: Regents helps with class signup & housing issues. Classes are still really large. He took a 600-person math class at UCSB, and is kind of hoping to avoid classes that large. His impression at the overnight was that it wasn’t very collaborative, and that most of the EECS people he roomed with seemed stressed and didn’t have time for fun robotics teams or whatever.
– UCSB College of Creative Studies in Physics: He loved the classes he sat in on and the quick learning pace. If he attended he might try to double major in CCS Computing. UCSB would be much higher on his list if it weren’t only 4 miles from home.