<p>Hi, I'm from the Southern California area and am deciding between these two schools for Chemical Engineering.
Financially, both schools are the same (due to merit scholarships, etc.) so cost is not a factor. </p>
<p>Berkeley is renown for chemical engineering/chemistry/engineering in general, but I'm more concerned with the size, graduating in time, and such.</p>
<p>Johns Hopkins doesn't seem to be talked about much with regards to Chemical Engineering (although BME is a different story) and their social scene seems to be more quieter than Berkeley or USC. However, they do offer more attention with smaller class sizes and also they give the East Coast experience.</p>
<p>ChemE is going to be really tough at either place. You can’t really go wrong with either. That said, I’d go to Berkeley in a heartbeat, which says a lot about the strength of the program there, since JHU is a tremendous university with solid sciences/engineering even outside of bio/med. </p>
<p>Are you going to return to Southern California? If so, Berkeley might be worth it if it’s cheaper. While Berkeley’s engineering is more famous (overall undergraduate prestige might be more debatable), you won’t be at a disadvantage when it comes to engineering employers and especially not grad schools should you choose JHU since both schools are research powerhouses. This would be an easier choice were it graduate school.</p>
<p>The College of Chemistry at UC Berkeley is small and has its own sort of a small college feel. It is separated from the College of Engineering. I never heard anyone from CoC complained for not getting attention from faculty and staff. </p>
<p>RML is right, the College of Chemistry is small and only has chemical engineering, chemistry and the newer chemical biology majors. While definitely not quite LAC level, you will get a bit more personal attention within the College of Chemistry. You’ll take a separate chemistry sequence for general and organic designed for just chemistry and chemical engineering majors. </p>
<p>I haven’t heard any CoC students complain of not getting classes. Waitlisted, sure, but not shut out of classes that were neeeded to graduate on time.</p>
<p>The lower division math and physics courses will be your largest courses. If you have AP credits (usually a 4 or 5), you may waive out of these. </p>
<p>Being from Southern California as well, I thought Berkeley was the perfect distance from home.</p>
<p>Although I respect JHU in providing an excellent education…in chemical engineering or engineering as a whole…only a few other schools compete at Berkeley’s level. I would strongly recommend Berkeley even if you were not from California.</p>
<p>Compete on what level? Undergraduate engineering curriculum is unlikely to differ much in content between JHU or berkeley. What could be different is the pace of instruction, research opportunities, and the quality of your classmates. Remember, we’re talking about undergrad here and not graduate school. Even if berkeley is the better grad school, it’s not like the undergrads will be doing doctoral research. I can speak from personal experience as a professional engineer, but i did not see former berkeley undergrads outperform others on the field or in graduate school.</p>
<p>^ I don’t see any difference in academic prestige between Berkeley undergrad eng’g and Berkeley grad eng’g. Oftentimes, the undergrad eng’g students at Berkeley collaborate with grad students in doing research, giving the undergrad students a leg up in getting into top grad eng’g schools. </p>
<p>Most people in this thread are advocating Berkeley because they have some connection to the school…=). Definitely a good idea to visit. Ask all the JHu engineers from cali why they turned down Berkeley…=).</p>
<p>So, if class size is one of your concerns, you can compare sizes for the departments and courses that most interest you. The overall student:faculty ratio does not tell the whole story, nor does the distribution of classes with 50+ or 20- students. </p>
<p>And you’re advocating for JHU out of the goodness of your heart? Almost everyone on CC does this. People who went to LACs, public universities, and private universities advocate for those schools because they have personal connections to those types of universities, and they enjoyed their experience as undergraduates.</p>
<p>If ever they do exist, I doubt if there’s many of them. I would venture that there would be more students picking Berkeley over JHU for engineering. </p>
<p>I have no connection whatsoever with UCBerkeley nor do my kids…but, I have the utmost respect for engineering grads from Berkeley…and I have known many students and grads who have chosen to attend Berkeley over many of the so called “elite” private schools back east…</p>
<p>RML, go ask all the engineers at JHU,Hopkins,Duke,Northwestern,Rice etc etc. You really think the majority of engineers from there got rejected from Berkeley instate for engineering when the former four have more stringent requirements for admission? Hardly.</p>
<p>^Students at those schools are smart enough to know undergraduate engineering at Berkeley vs some of the elite privates do not differ as much as you would like to suggest.</p>
<p>Last year, Berkeley COC had 13% admit rate. SATs significantly higher than university average. How is Duke, JHU, NU and Rice “more stringent” than Berkeley’s then? </p>