Yes I read a lot about it while applying. Although attractive at first, the biggest caveat is that I need to conduct research in a field that is not closely related to my field while also incorporating my current knowledge. Since I am interested in things like robotics, AI and HCI, I don’t think I fit that bill very well.
@coolGuy2000 1. better peers
Um, how do you figure that? GT is the smartest public school in the US.
Also, GT’s total student population 22k is 54% OOS/international 46% instate.
Remember that GaTech has a razor focus on engineering while UC Berkeley offers undergraduate degrees in various fields. This naturally lowers their overall SAT (as used for the “Smartest Public college” rankings published here: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-105-smartest-public-colleges-in-america-2015-9)
I don’t think I can “prove” to you that UC Berkeley has better peers, but according to this (http://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/committees/boars/BOARS-2017-Report-to-Regents.pdf) document, UC Berkeley EECS has an acceptance rate of 6%. GaTech’s acceptance rate is lower than their 25% institute acceptance rate but it is certainly not as low as 6% (no hard evidence here sorry). I personally think acceptance rate here would be a good indicator of how intelligent my peers will be because a very similar applicant pool is applying to both the universities for CS.
Also @Greymeer please check your facts again. According to this website: https://www.irp.gatech.edu/enrollment, GaTech’s Undergrad Population is 15572 and Total population is 29367.
Here is my updated pro/con list in no particular order:
UC Berkeley EECS:
Pro:
- Better peers
- Better professors (maybe)
- Better location for internships and jobs
- More prestigious/higher reputation and ranking
- Better in fields other than engineering
GaTech CS:
Pro:
- Easier to get research assistantships (maybe)
- Senior Thesis (I will probably not do honors at UC Berkeley)
- On-campus housing all 4 years
- Smaller class sizes and more personal attention
- “Techy” campus
Neither will have small class sizes in popular CS courses.
For example, here is the upper level AI course in fall 2017:
GT: 303 students, https://oscar.gatech.edu/pls/bprod/bwckschd.p_disp_detail_sched?term_in=201708&crn_in=82436
UCB: 603 students, http://classes.berkeley.edu/content/2017-fall-compsci-188-001-lec-001
Upper level machine learning course in fall 2017:
GT: 146 students, https://oscar.gatech.edu/pls/bprod/bwckschd.p_disp_detail_sched?term_in=201708&crn_in=89469
UCB: 276 students, http://classes.berkeley.edu/content/2017-fall-compsci-189-001-lec-001
I would caution against assuming “better peers” based on fine differences in admission characteristics. What you may notice more about your peers at each school may be what their academic interests are – specifically, do you want your peers to have diverse academic interests including humanities and social studies (UCB), or do you want your peers to be concentrated in engineering, with some CS and business and very few other majors (GT)?
I said “smaller” not “small”. It’s relative, not absolute. Clearly, even the data you have provided seems to suggest that GaTech’s class size is smaller than that of UC Berkeley.
@ucbalumnus what do you think about differences in professors (specially given that none of the 23 turing award winners will be there teach at UC Berkeley)?
@coolGuy2000 “Undergrad Population is 15572 and Total population is 29367.”
Check again and select “Atlanta” for the campus.
That # is very wrong. 29k number includes satellite and international campuses. Students enrolled at the main campus in Atlanta is 21k.
Using the 29k number is like saying UCB has 250k+ students because UCSD, UCD, UCI, UCLA… are all part of the UC system.
That you should always take anecdotes comparing teaching quality at one school versus another with skepticism, since few take the same courses at different schools.
If you are interested in joining research projects, you can check the faculty rosters and their research interests.
@Greymeer I guess you got a point there!
“Um, how do you figure that? GT is the smartest public school in the US.”
GT is good, it’s not Berkeley or Michigan, two far more prestigious universities.
I saw some mentions of UT. UT and UCB are very similar. You would get the same kind of CS engineering education, environment, and student peers at UT as you would at UCB. They attract the same kids. Though UCB has a much nicer campus than UT… UT’s campus is actually not nice at all, but UT has Austin… so people ignore it.
STEM schools like GT have a different environment than the standard university. It’s a nerdy place. The average student at UT or UCB would not be admitted to GT, nor would they want to go there.
Amongst tech people who know these schools, trying to differentiate the worth of a CS/engineering degree from any of these places is splitting hairs. The only way to gain advantage for grad school is to do meaningful undergrad research & projects. And each of these schools have ugrad research programs.
@Greymeer your comment makes the most sense. Thanks for the information! I guess I’ll break the tie between GaTech and UCB after visiting them (I didn’t like UT campus either so I am probably not going to take that). Regardless, I have one last query for you (and this might be somewhat repetitive): would there be any specific advantages/disadvantages of going to UCB in terms of academics, professors, peers, undergrad research, extra-curricular (academic competitions), and student support?
Both schools are great. One thing to keep in mind in the whole “better peers thing” is that you’re going to get genius kids in both schools who study a lot and love engineering and you’ll get kids who are also in engineering but just want to party all day and barely skate by. Both schools are large enough that their populations aren’t homogenous. You’ll get a good mix of different personality types no matter how well they did in high school.
IMO I would choose Cal over GT. Cal will give you a better mix of interests solely because it’s a big state school. There are a lot of student clubs thancome with such a huge school plus the recruiting that come with EECS there is second to none except maybe Stanford and mit. GT is a fine school but for me at least the concentration towards stem as a school is unappealing.
Yes. I drive the route from Cal to Stanford often. Off commute/weekends 50 mins. During commute hours will depend on morning versus afternoon traffic. Stanford to Cal in the AM is considered reverse commute. In the PM, Cal to Stanford is reverse commute. And I would rarely take the Bay Bridge. Traffic through SF and Burlingame is almost always terrible. The San Mateo or Dumbarton Bridges are much better bets.
However, I’d personally would take Cal Train from Palo Alto to Millbrae, about a 20-25 minute ride (baby bullet trains have less stops), and then transfer upstairs to Bart, which to downtown Berkeley, will take about 50-60 minutes. And then you will have about a 7 block walk to Lower Sproul Plaza from the Downtown Berkeley BART station.
Reality check. No one in Wisconsin has ever said, “Wow, you went to Michigan!” Ever.
It is no more prestigious than any other decent state flagships UT, UF, UVA, UNC, Wisc, UW,…
A quick comment about student teacher ratios…
17:1, 18:1, 20:1…
For CS those are all bogus stats.
CS is quite popular at all schools. UCB, UT, GT, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, UIUC… can have 150-300 students in CS courses. Students outside of CS are taking these courses too. Class sizes run 60+ in less popular and upper level honors courses. So inside of CS you will not have small class sizes no matter where you go.
I think the exception is CMU which has the largest CS faculty and has a small incoming CS class size of 150.
I think ballpark faculty sizes are:
CMU ~140 for about 600
UCB, UIUC, GT ~80 for about 2000
UT ~50 for about 2000
UC Berkeley once had 1098 students register for their introductory CS course (http://www.dailycal.org/2013/09/03/how-big-is-uc-berkeleys-biggest-class/). I don’t think that has ever happened at other colleges mentioned above.
I don’t think it really matters much if your intro CS course has 100, 500 or 1,000 registered students. 
What does matter is how easy is it to get registered for the classes that you need, especially in engineering where courses have to be taken in sequence. That sometimes tends to be an issue at large public universities. :-??