<p>Hey everyone,
I have the choice between the two universities. Can you give me some advice? Maybe some Pros and Cons?
I'm an international grad student in computer science.</p>
<p>CU Boulder is much stronger in computer science. Same is true for most science and engineering fields.</p>
<p>For grad school, go to CU. It is a no brainer.</p>
<p>Ahem, based on what? Just about all the published compsci ranking (not mine) have UMass ahead of CU by a lot.</p>
<p>Sorry, I was mistaken. Please ignore.</p>
<p>thanks, so academically Umass is the better choice?!</p>
<p>i’m also interested about pros/cons besides academics if someone can tell</p>
<p>You can look at rankings but in addition, you really should be informing yourself about specific areas of research activity at each school, faculty strengths, and how they align with your own interests.</p>
<p>You can start by visiting faculty web sites (example: [Andrew</a> McCallum’s Home Page](<a href=“http://www.cs.umass.edu/~mccallum/]Andrew”>Andrew McCallum Homepage)). Then perhaps read some cited papers and investigate ongoing projects. Email faculty for information about what they are working on. Find out how much federal research (and other grant money) each department is getting, and what’s being done with it. Etc.</p>
<p>Some interesting CS work overlaps with work in other fields; it may be collaborative across department and institutional boundaries. (Example: <a href=“http://www-psych.nmsu.edu/~pfoltz/reprints/Edmedia99.html[/url]”>http://www-psych.nmsu.edu/~pfoltz/reprints/Edmedia99.html</a> ; <a href=“http://ics.colorado.edu/index.html[/url]”>Institute of Cognitive Science | University of Colorado Boulder). </p>
<p>Amherst Mass and Boulder Colorado must be two of the liveliest college towns in America, so you probably can’t go too far wrong with either on that score. I’d give a strong edge to Boulder, though (especially if you are interested in winter sports and other outdoor activities.)</p>