I’m a international Chinese student currently studying at a small private SoCal high school. I became passionate about the study of the environment after taking APES and have followed my passion since (doing research, volunteering, etc.). Computer science and technology has been one of my favorite subjects since I was 10. So I intend to continue studying both of these subjects in college. I was admitted by JHU in the RD round (ENVS Major in Krieger Arts&Sciences) and I just got off the Berkeley waitlist couple days ago (ENVS Major in College I’d Natural Resources)I’ve been thinking about this and talking to people for a month now and still can’t come up with a strong reason or a dealbreaker to choose one over the other. Here are some pros and cons for each school I came up with.
Pros for JHU: -More academic flexibility, much easier to take the class I want, switching majors and double majoring/minoring
-Smaller size private school, more selective, better faculty to student ratio
-More research opportunity per capita
-Better dorms
Con for JHU: -Less renowned majors, at least for ENVS and CS
Pro for Berkeley: -More renowned majors, both the ENVS and CS department have more breadth and depth to them, more faculty covering more fields of studies
Cons for Berkeley: -Huge public school with larger class sizes, less intimate experience
-Less flexibility in course registration and choosing/switching majors
I don’t wish to factor location, weather, politics, and price into consideration since they are less important to me. I’d love to hear current Hopkins/Berkeley students’ thoughts.
I have to make a decision before May 13th (next Monday, which is within a week) so big thanks to anyone who respond promptly. Insiders’ opinions are really helpful at this point.
have you lived in CA for three years, such that you can receive instate tuition at Cal? Were you admitted to CNR, or L&S? The former has the Enviro major; the latter has Comp Sci.
If attend Cal at instate rates, that’s a good deal.
UCB L&S CS requires a 3.3 GPA in the first three CS courses. About half of the students in these courses get B+ or higher grades.
Having a major in CNR and L&S is called simultaneous degrees. Major requirements for both majors and general education for both CNR and L&S must be fulfilled (but there is considerable overlap).
Recent Hopkins engineering grad - working at Google now and living in the bay area. You won’t have any difficulty getting a top end CS job at Hopkins - google, facebook, and other top tier firms recruit and hire from Hopkins for both internships and full time positions. You will get more attention at Hopkins and opportunities for research on basis of way smaller and intimate CS department (should you choose to get an MS lor Ph.D. later as well).
Berkeley out of state full pay is not worth it in my opinion due to declining resources and increasing class sizes. And this isn’t EECS from Berkeley’s College of Engineering which is where most of the tech companies recruit from.
While its true that EECS is a premier program (and has been for a long time), I question your conclusion. Tech jobs are plentiful and Comp Sci majors at Cal do extremely well. Heck, even CS majors from San Jose State are getting recruited by FAANG.
OTOH, I am not a fan of paying OSS fees to attend a public, unless its a specialized program (EECS and Cal’s College of Chem come to mind.)
But this is still a tough choice. An International might fit in better in the Bay Area than in Bawlamer. And even at a OSS rates, Cal still costs thousands less per year.
Do you have connections to either school? Do you work at a top CS company and know many recruiters personally or have a house hold of people that work in FANG? These aren’t attacking questions, but more out of genuine curiosity. The OP is asking for insider opinions after all.
I don’t think this is a tough choice at all. Hopkins has enough international students where the OP would fit in - their largest international student pop comes from China after all:
Also, the crux of the matter - CS isn’t guaranteed at Cal and is contingent on being in the top half of the class during weed out classes. If I were truly interested in CS and I had to pay full OOS prices, I would choose a top private in a heart beat (which I did when I had cal as a choice when applying for both undergrad and grad - went to MIT instead for my master’s). Cal CS (be it EECS and L&S CS) is no joke - they certainly do well when it comes to career placement. Nonetheless, recruiting is centered around the COE engineering fairs and EECS specific career fairs. There are more resources in EECS.
Cal CS is also not what I would term to be a nurturing environment relative to a smaller cohort at a private.
JHU is private, smaller, academically strong but flexible, higher average GPA, higher ranking, better housing, more research opportunities and much more. If you have opportunity to attend JHU and price, weather or location doesn’t matter then why not?
“FAANG”/“FANG” (the biggest computing companies) mostly recruit widely, since they have more recruiting requirements and resources, so (with the possible exception of F whose recruiting patterns appear more school-elitist) opportunities at these companies are unlikely to differ that much.
Where job opportunities may differ significantly is in smaller companies that recruit more locally. So there will be more Silicon Valley companies recruiting at UCB (and Stanford and SJSU), and more government contractors recruiting at JHU (and UMCP and UMBC). As an international student, the OP will find getting a job needing a work visa more difficult than a US citizen or PR – and the government contractor jobs requiring security clearances would have an additional barrier. The OP may also want to consider how much school prestige matters in hiring in the country of his/her citizenship and which of UCB or JHU has more school prestige there.
Plenty of non-government contractor jobs recruit at JHU, including all the FANGs, investment banks, the top management consulting firms, and down the line etc etc due to relative proximity to NYC and other east coast hubs. From my experience, far more private sector jobs recruit at JHU vs public. government or contractor related opportunities.
Maybe not unsurprisingly, in the bay area, Hopkins has more prestige amongst the parents versus Cal due to JHU being an elite private, harder to get in, and much better financial outlook. Amongst employers, they are likely similar for certain majors due to how strong EECS is (at Google and Facebook (where a close relative works, they know the elite privates well due to a lot of east coast transplants). Internationally, this might vary due to the prowess of Cal’s grad programs.
International students may not necessarily have the choice of staying in the US for work, depending on what the US job market for their intended types of jobs happens to be at graduation, and what the work visa situation will be like based on what immigration politics is or may be like. So international students should consider the job market situation in their countries of citizenship.
Is yoru relative in HW/firmware? Bcos that is really the primary difference between a CS degree from Eng and a CS degree from L&S. OTOH, the CS course work is exactly the same between both majors (the BS in Eng and the BA in L&S). Moreover, with a little planning, a student in L&S could duplicate the courses and CS degree from the Eng school.
If you’re talking rankings for CS it’s not even a matter for discussion, Berkeley is waaaaaaay higher than Hopkins. You’re taking one of the Big 4 versus a school that’s somewhere between 25-50.
There isn’t any difference between the 2 CS degree coursework at Berkeley, as mentioned above you can make the coursework exactly the same in either case.
And whoever said that Berkeley is more EECS centric obviously didn’t go to school there. Many students in the LSCS went that route because they wanted more flexibility in double majoring. My kid for example wanted to leave open the possibility of double majoring in music or Econ or whatever, and indeed he is going to double major in Data Science. And in most cases kids have figured out that it’s just more prudent to play the odds of almost 20% admittance in L&S versus 5% for EECS.
There is virtually no difference in salary between the BA CS in L&S and the BS in CoE.
