Hello everyone. Please help me out! I’ve accepted as an ECE student at these universities except UCLA where I’m EE. I love the ECE course but will probably specialise in CE.
I am an intl student and job opportunities are a priority for me. In addition to software jobs, I’m also interested in consulting/banking jobs. Where do you think intl students have the best opportunity? What are the pros and cons of each university? Please give details.
Also, is ECE at CMU worth the cost in comparison to the rest? It is very expensive but what are the pros?
And, how hard will it be for me to switch to CE at UCLA?
All answers are greatly appreciated. Thank you.
The ECE major at CMU is not as good as the College of Computing at CMU. I would say the other schools you list, Michigan, UCLA and GaTech may be better overall experiences than CMU. CMU is the only private school on your list and very small and quite intense. It is not as good for engineering though, as it is for CS. There is some infighting between the College of Computing at CMU and the Engineering College. You would be in the engineering college, if I understand your post. The robotics group was robbed recently of quite a few staff, who joined an Uber research lab in Pittsburgh. Not sure how that is affecting CMU, ask on the CMU CC site.
Among the pubic options, you cannot really go wrong. Georgia Tech is more techy focused, with a outstanding engineering program, and smaller science, business and social science programs. Michigan is very balanced with top musical theatre, top humanities programs and many other top ranked programs. UCLA ditto, its got amazing premedical programs for instance, and very solid programs in almost all majors you can think of.
For jobs, maybe UCLA has a slight edge, only in that there are hundreds of thousands of engineering jobs in Los Angeles, literally. Los Angeles has now surpassed the California Bay area for jobs. California is the fifth largest economy in the World! The jobs out there pay very well. Atlanta Georgia is a high tech and financial center for the southeast US. Michigan as a state is no longer a high tech area, so much with car manufacturing moving to states like Tennessee. A lot less jobs up there, but recruiters are recruiting at Michigan, so not really a worry. Michigan has a lot of out state students as does GT and UCLA. UCLA may have slightly more Asian Americans, African Americans and Latino Americans than the others, if that matters to you. UCLA is a very diverse college.
Here is a discussion of CMU and Uber Research labs in Pittsburgh:
http://www.post-gazette.com/business/tech-news/2016/03/07/A-year-after-Uber-hired-away-researchers-CMU-robotics-center-rebounds/stories/201603070110?pgpageversion=pgevoke
UCLA may have so called" impacted "majors. Impacted majors means that there are limits to transfer into that major, and rules to follow. You should email both departments, CS and EE and ask about transferring into CS if CS is of interest. At all colleges you got into, CS is going to be growing by leaps and bounds so that may limit you if you want to transfer into a CS major now, at all the colleges except Georgia Tech, where you can simply choose your major. You should ask CMU, UCLA and Michigan about this problem, with an email to the department head or department admin. I have heard that you can double major at CMU in EE and CS. Its a lot of work. Georgia Tech does not encourage double majors.
At Georgia Tech, CS majors study in a separate College of Computing from the College of Engineering. As a freshman you are free to choose ECE or CS or EE at Georgia Tech. You are allowed to change your mind at several stages in the Georgia Tech curriculum, but that may add a semester to your studies if you change your mind after say two years of study, but it does happen frequently. CS is becoming more crowded at GT too, but so far I do not think they are blocking transfers into the College of Computing but you may want to look that over now, and decide which college at Georgia Tech suits you better. You have an opportunity as a first semester freshman , of getting into College of Computing should you want to get your degree from that college and not the College of Engineering at Georgia Tech.
At Georgia Tech, you can be undecided major in the College of Engineering. Thats a really nice option if you may want to try EE or ECE classes. But if you want to major in CS, then College of Computing is the best choice. Study these websites:
College of Computing at GT:
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/
College of Engineering at GT:
https://coe.gatech.edu/
Thank you v much for your response!
@sunshine1718 Just curious. What were your stats?