@sbballer thanks for the insight! Which would you pick if you were in my position? 
I’m really stuck, complete 50/50 about which school right now. I have to make the biggest decision of my life in 9 days 
I agree with you on the social aspect of Berkeley… it is awesome… very very lively… just look at the daily Californian… always lots going on. Berkeley is very competitive… and it’s easy to get lost if you’re not on top of your game. I think there will be more pressure at Berkeley honestly… but you’re in Silicon Valley so that’s major bonus points.
and Berkeley is very prestigious especially in engineering circles, internationally… it is a world class research institution and more prestigious than Princeton in that respect. Princeton ranks tops in the USNWR US rankings… but ranks below Berkeley globally.
personally I think you can’t go wrong with either. whichever one you choose embrace the school and never look back.
one thing I would do is track down students from each school and talk to them… figure out which school you fit in better with culturally… that may be the best way to go.
both awesome schools. you have a great future!
To understand University rankings you should take the time to understand the methodology of the rankings. I have never recommended that a student chose Princeton based on the fact that many organizations rank Princeton as the number 1 university for undergraduate education. A student may be happier at a big city university like Columbia or a rural university like Dartmouth. Department rankings are generally based on graduate school educational opportunities. Even graduate school rankings may not be helpful for an individual student since the best specialty area may be at a lower ranked university. For example, Carnegie Mellon may be ranked lower than Berkeley but still be superior in robotics.
It is almost guaranteed than Princeton will climb in the computer science department rankings in the future. Historically English, Politics, History, Economics, and Public Policy were the most popular majors at Princeton. Today there are more than twice as many computer science majors at Princeton than History, Politics, or English. Today Computer Science is the largest department at Princeton in terms of number of students. A computer science course has the largest enrollment. The president of the university has committed to expanding the number of professors in the Computer Science department and the Neuroscience department.
Here is a video of the history of the computer science department at Princeton: http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S33/59/04A71/index.xml?section=featured
Berkeley and Princeton are two very different institutions.
Berkeley
Number of undergraduates 27,126
Student-to-faculty ratio: 17 to 1
SAT 75% Reading, Math, Writing 730, 770, 750
4 year graduation rate 72%
Princeton
Number of undergraduates 5,391
Student-to-faculty ratio: 6 to 1
SAT 75% Reading, Math, Writing 800, 800, 800
4 year graduation rate 90%
Good luck in your decision. My best friend in grad school at MIT was a Berkeley graduate & he liked Berkeley very much. For an undergraduate experience I appreciated the opportunities that I found at Princeton.
For undergrad, it’s an easy decision, as long as money is not a major factor…Princeton. I have a kid at Berkeley. It is very easy to get lost in discussion of rankings, proximity to googles and facebooks, weather, etc… Nothing against Berkeley. Princeton just offers one of the best undergraduate experiences in the country…small, strong community. If your goal is to get into one of the top tech companies or startups, nothing will stop you from Princeton. There is a pretty good chance, after going to Princeton, you may decide to pursue other avenues. Not because majority of students change their major at least once, but because Princeton can open doors to many more avenues. Good luck!
Berkeley
- better comp sci
- silicon valley
- social scene
- huge alumni network
- big can get lost
- tough grading.. probably lower GPA
Princeton
- small undergrad. more personal education (I think there is a thesis requirement for seniors?)
- good network
- good in humanities if you change your major.
- easier grading?
- weaker comp sci ...getting better - good for ivy school
In the startup world Princeton is more like the odd duck… you just don’t see that many Princeton grads in startups. may be an advantage for you actually. more Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, U of Waterloo believe it or not…and from the ivies it’s more Harvard - not programmers though more soft stuff like marketing… biz dev… and trails off after that. In silicon valley though it doesn’t matter where you are from. and prestige is less of a concern… it’s a brutal meritocracy in many respects… if you’re good (ie. Python or Ruby) you will be highly sought after even if you graduated from Hamburger University…
Not sure there is much of a startup scene around Princeton but NYC is seeing a lot more VC money and Princeton is close so there may be good opportunities there for you too. A lot of startups are started during school at places like Berkeley and Stanford… so being in proximity to a strong startup scene can be very helpful and maybe NYC can be that catalyst for you at Princeton.
tough decision… good luck.
Princeton has been devoting significant resources to entrepreneurship. The Entrepreneurial Hub opened last year http://www.princeton.edu/engineering/news/archive/?id=15105
Here’s an article about the Keller Center and the E Hub, which mentions that about 25% of seniors in 2014 had taken an entrepreneurship course. https://www.princeton.edu/engineering/news/archive/?id=16487And in connection with the future, the article points out the following new initiatives:
“Princeton Startup Immersion Program in which selected students spend a summer together in a city such as New York, each working for a different start-up company while participating in joint activities and programs”
lols didn’t even know that… damn I’m good:)
For alumni forming startups I would rank MIT near the top or at the top. MIT has had entrepreneurship contests forever with significant monetary prizes. Universities with a large number of engineering alumni will tend to have more alumni in startups and in the engineering field. The important metric is how well is each student prepared for their career.
Princeton is playing catchup to MIT; Princeton has the resources to catchup and compete with the best entrepreneur universities. TigerLaunch is an entrepreneurship competition organized by the Princeton Entrepreneurship Club. Students present their business plans as they would to an “angel” investor or venture capitalist. Venture capitalists judge the student’s “pitch” and award the seed money. Seed money is awarded in two categories: Technology, Products and Services, and Social Enterprises. Students have used the freedom of senior independent work and thesis to develop their new business ideas. The 2013 TigerLaunch competition received over 100 entries for both the entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship tracks. The prize for first place in 2013 was $30,000.
The Butler College Innovation Space, or iSpace, aims to be a hub for budding entrepreneurs. iSpace is for students who are still in the exploration phase rather than committed to a venture. When entrepreneurs get more serious about their ideas and want to invest more in a start-up, they would migrate to the Princeton Entrepreneurial Hub. The Princeton University Entrepreneurial Hub aims to foster entrepreneurial collaboration within the Princeton community. The Hub’s main purposes are to provide a shared working space for students and faculty startups and significant learning opportunities through workshops, roundtables and networking events. Users have access to meeting rooms, classrooms, office hours and information technology support. Many students in the competition have taken courses such as the High-Tech Entrepreneurship course or the course in social entrepreneurship. Dr. Greg Olsen, Entrepreneur in Residence offers researchers and students one-on-one advice regarding potential entrepreneurial endeavors. The Princeton Entrepreneurship Club hosts speakers such as Tom Leighton ’78 CEO of Akamai (Akamai now serves 15 to 30 percent of web traffic today, uses more than 30 terabits per second and gets more than 40 million hits per second.), Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora.com, and Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and founder of Square. (Joe Kennedy BSE 1981 is the CEO & President of Pandora Internet Radio.) Mick Hagen '09 and fellow BodyHype member Jeremy Johnson ’07 started ■■■■■.com a website that connects students to colleges they want to apply to. Jeremy at 24 co-founded 2U with John Katzman, founder of the Princeton Review. 2U partners with universities to deliver rigorous, selective degree programs online to students globally. Tony Xiao ’12 started a company designing Mac applications for personal content management while at Princeton. Josh Miller '12 sold his Internet discussion company Branch for $15 million in 2014. Many start-ups recruit at the University’s Summer Internship Fair. Tiger Trek is a trip to Silicon Valley to visit with companies such as Apple, Facebook, Google, Khan Academy, Telsa Motors, Twitter, Square, Juniper Networks, Hewlett-Packard, and several venture capital firms. The university has an attorney that works in the University’s Office of Technology Licensing to assist researchers and students in translating their technologies into the marketplace.
The Preparing to Lead (PTL) program students embark on international or domestic US internships in which they will receive exposure to mentorship and coaching in an engineering role. Students will gain hands-on experience in a real-world context which will enable them to put their learned engineering skills to work. The Princeton Start-Up Immersion Program (PSIP) places some of Princeton’s most promising students into high-impact internships at start-up companies. Students participating in the summer-long program live together in a Princeton-sponsored residential complex, work at a start-up, visit each other’s employers and take advantage of many educational enrichment and mentoring opportunities. Students who took a Keller Center course called “Engineering Projects in Community Service” (EPICS) won first place in a national competition sponsored by the EPA called “P3: People, Prosperity and the Planet Student Design Competition for Sustainability.” The project called “Power in a Box,” is designed to replace diesel-powered generators in areas cut off from other power sources. The Princeton students won a $90,000 grant from the U.S. EPA to further develop and implement their project.
Deciding where you can obtain the best education is highly personal for each individual. Students tend to do well where they are happy. Some students desire a football school with an active fraternity life. Other students want intellectual conversations, freedom not to drink, and great professors. I do not say that Princeton is better than xyz University. Each student should visit and decide which university is best for them.
Ranking university departments does not imply where a student will receive the best education. A student may learn more if he is taught by an outstanding professor in a class of 25 students than if they are taught by a grad student in a class of 125 students at a higher ranked university.
The main graduate fellowships in STEM are the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and the Churchill Scholarship. Since Berkeley has five times more students than Princeton you would expect Berkeley to have more fellowship winners. Through March 2006, Princeton University has had the most Goldwater Scholars with 64. Berkeley is not in the top five. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_M._Goldwater_Scholarship
Princeton leads the country in the number of Churchill Scholarships. Berkeley is not in the top 20. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill_Scholarship
It is hard to interpret fellowship numbers. Does Princeton attract more top students? Do Princeton students receive a superior education? Do Princeton students benefit from personal advising? No matter your interpretation it is difficult to state that a student will receive a better education at Berkeley.
I have not meet anyone who has attended both Princeton and Berkeley as an undergraduate. I would not want Tkatana to attend Princeton because he thinks the grading will be easier. Princeton is generally accepted as being one of the most difficult Ivies. The Daily Beast ranked the Most Rigorous Universities in the country. Princeton was ranked #6. Berkeley was not ranked in the top 25. I have no opinion on which university is easier to obtain a high GPA.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/galleries/2014/11/06/20-most-rigorous-colleges-photos.html#3cec010d-0825-4efa-925d-dfa114c42cd7
@fretfulmother Have you decided which school yet? Deadline is approaching and I’m still undecided 
I’m leaning a bit towards Princeton again but I’m still struggling lol. Berkeley is a great option and it’s near my home, and I know I’ll be content if I go here. I’ll know what to expect and it’s less risky if I attend here. But going to Princeton would be the opposite where I don’t have much exposure to the school and it could be the better option, but I don’t know for sure so there’s more risk (but potentially more reward).
I feel at Princeton I would have a bit more opportunity but I would like the atmosphere less than Berkeley. But Berkeley I would have a little less opportunity but I would like the atmosphere better. I don’t know if I should choose success over atmosphere But then again I don’t truly know the atmosphere of Princeton.
For Startups the rankings are
- Stanford
- Berkeley
- MIT
- IIT
- Harvard
- U of Penn
- Cornell
- U of Penn
- Tel Aviv
- U of Texas
Stanford and Berkeley are the clear leaders with regards to startups. MIT is 3rd which is tops for the East Coast. Not sure where Princeton is but it’s not in the top 10.
Princeton is ranked 17th on the list which is good
@sbballer Where did you get the list from?
pitchbook… you can register and get their report I think
here’s where you can find it without registering:
one thing I would definitely do is speak with Californians who are in your considered majors at Princeton looking to get into startups/tech… folks who are in a similar situation to you. I’m getting the vibe you’re not going to be as happy socially and culturally at Princeton… so maybe that will help you out in your decision or at least give you more confidence in your eventual choice.
Rankings are more useful if they are normalized for the number of students. Most students care more about how the university will help me over how many famous alumni are there. Rankings that look only at total numbers greatly favor large state institutions. They ignore the team spirit and synergism that can develop at smaller universities. By normalizing the useful data provided by sbballer from pitchbook you gain more understanding how each university can help each student. I divided the company count by the number of undergraduates and the normalized rankings are as follows:
MIT
Stanford
Yale
Harvard
Princeton
Carnegie Mellon
Univ of Penn
Brown
Cornell
Columbia
Berkeley
Technion
Indian Institute of Technology
Tel Aviv University
UCLA
U of Illinois
Univ of Waterloo
Univ of Texas
Univ of Wisconsin
You can slice and dice the pitchbook data many ways. The end result will generally be that MIT will be near the top, Princeton will be in the top 5 or 10, and large state universities will rank lower than where they rank when the size of the student body is ignored.
Thank you guys all for the advice! I read each and every response very carefully and really appreciate the advice. I want to add that I prefer a more hands-on and applied learning rather than theoretical (I know Princeton is more focused on theoretical but it’s not a big deal). I do also like the hardware aspect of computers (I want to code and be able to engineer). If I go to Princeton I would probably get an Electrical Engineering certificate to supplement my CS.
I want to post my final updated Pro/Con list here. I will be making my final decision tonight. I am still strongly leaning towards Princeton, but I will appreciate more opinions (I would really appreciate unbiased opinions)
Berkeley:
Pros:
- Closer and nicer weather
- Near silicon valley, internships should be easy to get?
- High ranks in engineering
- Regents scholarship
- More social and lively
- Lots of AP Credit (Almost received max)
- Less liberal arts?
Cons:
- Large class sizes and large population (less opportunities for research and internships)
- Was admitted as MechE so I have to switch into EECS (Must maintain a 3.4+ gpa in EECS courses is what I’ve been told at Cal Day). Needing to switch would degrade my first year by adding extra stress and less opportunities in EECS department since I’m technically not EECS yet.
- Experiencing budget cuts
- Tough to get high GPA (lots of competition)
- Expensive to live in silicon valley/bay area (if I work there after)
Princeton:
Pros:
- #1 Undergraduate teaching (5k undergrads and 2k grads as opposed to Berkeley’s 27k undergrads and 10k grads)
- Ivy Prestige and connections (alumni network)
- Not bad for engineering (best out of the ivy leagues)
- Admitted as B.S.E. Computer Science and can easily change major to anything I want
- Small class sizes (more contact with professors), Princeton’s entire CS department is only about 200 per graduating class and 800 in total while Berkeley is about 700 per class and 2800 in total (counting both CS and EECS majors).
- Highest endowment/student in the country
- CS department is growing (I heard it’s the most popular major at princeton right now)
- Can get good letter of recommendations for grad school
Cons:
- Weather is not as nice as Cal, also I live 2 hrs from Berkeley so Princeton is much less convenient to travel to.
- I liked Berkeley’s atmosphere and campus better, however Princeton wasn’t bad (a justifiable sacrifice since I would get more help and professor time at Princeton)
- Can’t come home as often (expensive plane tickets)
- Engineering is not as good as Berkeley
- I don’t really like liberal arts
- AP credits don’t apply as much
- Less desirable testing schedule (not a major concern but finals are after winter break however we get 9 days of “reading period” where we have no classes and we just study for finals.
Tkatana, I think that you have a good idea of the two great universities. However, I think that you are placing too much emphasis on the size of the engineering departments. Rankings give weight to large departments. Large departments do offer more courses and specialties for grad students. Most rankings show that the individual professors at Princeton are equal to their counter parts at larger departments. See: http://eqn.princeton.edu/2007/12/princeton_engineering_at_top_of_ranking_for_schola/
You have stated several times that you do not like liberal arts. Students that are sure that they will not change their minds may be better suited to MIT or Cal Tech. It is my personal belief that many STEM majors are better prepared for the job market if they have some liberal arts courses. Here is the viewpoint of the Executive Chairman of Google: https://admission.princeton.edu/multimedia/eric-schmidt-engineering-after-princeton
Bloomberg Magazine rated Princeton number 1 for alumni CEOs of high tech companies. See: http://www.bloomberg.com/slideshow/2013-08-29/top-10-colleges-for-tech-ceos.html#slide11 I think that may be due to encouraging all STEM majors to take liberal arts courses. Non techies hire the techies for the highest positions. You need to talk in English; not tech acronyms.
It is hard to comment on your favoring the Berkeley atmosphere. I have visited the Stanford campus but not Berkeley. Berkeley may be better for you. Princeton has a slight edge in the per cent of returning freshman and graduation rates. A higher percent of Princeton alumni contribute to the university. All I can say without knowing you is that Princeton students like their university experience, graduate in four years, and show their appreciation through alumni contributions.
Good Luck at either institution. You have given this appropriate consideration. Make your choice. don’t look back or second guess your decision. You can obtain a great education at both universities.
@TKatana - My DS went with Princeton - let us know what you pick!
@fretfulmother I picked Princeton too! 