I’ve been lucky enough to get admitted into these two amazing schools, with CS for MIT and EECS for Berkeley. Due to COVID-19 I can’t visit either one, so I’d like some advice choosing which to go to. Below is what I already know about each campus.
Reputability: Equal. No one will look at me differently if I say I graduated from MIT rather than from Berkeley.
Price: Berkeley is half the price since I’m in-state. My family can pull through to afford MIT, since it’s MIT. But if all else is equal, I would go to Berkeley to avoid that financial strain.
Undergrad teaching: I’ve heard MIT focuses more on graduate and post-grad, but Berkeley will also leave me high and dry if I need help, given their massive population. Not sure here.
Research: MIT is better. The overall output of research is higher, and more undergrads can participate in it.
Jobs/Internships: Berkeley’s closer to Silicon Valley, so there would be more opportunities there. An article on which colleges tech companies recruit from most puts Berkeley at the top. But MIT does have fewer students and more go to grad school, so statistically they’d be recruited less. Not sure here either.
Campus: I’ve been to Berkeley’s campus a couple times for tournaments, and the gritty feel some people dislike doesn’t bother me. I didn’t love the racial homogeneity and how dull and tired everyone seemed, but that might just be a college thing. I know nothing about MIT’s campus.
Social life/u: Berkeley EECS is famous for having zero free time. There’s a funny saying that during earthquakes they don’t move because they need to study for midterms. MIT might be just as bad, I don’t know.
Cooperation vs competition: Same thing as above. Berkeley has a bad reputation for this, but I don’t know if MIT is any better.
Goals: I want to avoid a toxic, cutthroat environment in college. Of course neither MIT nor Berkeley are going to be stress-free, especially for a CS major, but I’d like to minimize my suffering. My nebulous plans are to join a FAANG company eventually, probably with some smaller companies beforehand because it’s unlikely that they’ll hire me straight out of college. Depending on the economy in 2024, I might pursue a technical graduate degree or an MBA instead of job-hunting.
This is really a no brainer. If there would be financial stress choose UCB. Even if there isn’t, fully considering opportunity cost, it’s hard to justify MIT. The money you don’t spend would add up to a HUGE amount if invested over a career. Your job prospects won’t be any better with a MIT degree. As I outlined on another thread, the top 5 employers for CS majors aren’t even that different if you look at a completely unknown school (Michigan Tech was the example I used). MIT is well known as a grind and the campus isn’t that special either. Boston on the other hand is a very cool town. Congrats. Just my humble opinion.
In neither case you will be fighting for competitive admission to the major after enrolling, and you are not a pre-med. So it seems unlikely that you will encounter a heavily cutthroat environment.
“My nebulous plans are to join a FAANG company eventually, probably with some smaller companies beforehand because it’s unlikely that they’ll hire me straight out of college.”
Why unlikely? FAANG all hire a ton from MIT, Cal, and other top CS schools straight out of undergrad.
Or any decent schools, given their large size. To meet their hiring needs, they need to recruit widely… it is probably easy to get recruited, and you know who they are so that you can apply to them even if they do not show up on your college campus. But passing their interviews may be considerably more difficult.
It’s more likely to start at a large company and then move to a smaller one. They need bodies and have training programs. The smaller companies, especially startups, need people that they can be fully assured will be able to do the work. It’s too hard to vet new grads, no matter where they went to school. My son works for a startup. He wasn’t quite the 30th employee (27th I think). He was the first new grad they hired.
Are you saying that EECS at Cal wouldn’t be cutthroat? I’ve heard horror stories from students about the workload, lack of help, and even the occasional sabotage of fellow students’ work. Is this typical at techie colleges?
Both my parents work in FAANG, and one company’s last hiring wave had maybe a quarter fresh grads. Given a decent GPA and graduating from either MIT or Cal, do you think as a fresh grad I’d make it far enough in the hiring process where it’d come down to just technical interviews?
A quarter fresh graduates is actually a lot, considering that the potential applicant pool is much larger than four times the number of fresh graduates.
You need better than “decent” grades no matter where you go. Those companies are HYPER competitive. You’ll also need extracurricular clubs and/or internships to show your chops.
Those are very helpful, thank you. Quick question- I'm seeing a lot of data entries for pursuing a PhD right out of EECS undergrad. Is that counting a double where a student gets guaranteed admission to a PhD program at a school where they'll do their masters degree?
It’s not easy to maintain a 4.0 at any college in engineering. Cal Poly graduates a College of Engineering (CS and SE are in the CENG) 4.0 about once a decade, as does Mudd.
Here’s a little non-Cal, non-MIT, welcome to college anecdote. My son started in Calc 3 Honors. On his first test, he got a 79. There was no curve, so it was a C. It was his first math test C ever. I asked him about the range. He said, “Oh, there were quite a few scores in the 30s.” It took a 5 on the BC AP test to get in.
Go in hoping to do your best, but know, everyone you will be competing against will have stellar backgrounds and high expectations.
@PurpleTitan, did you see the fine print buried in the OPs first post. UCB is half the cost. I’m assuming full cost at both. That would put MIT at $140k more than Berkeley. They also mentioned that the family would experience financial strain to afford MIT. Does that context impact your opinion?
@eyemgh, huh? Where did I even express an opinion?
I said “check employment reports”. You consider that an opinion? And that was in response more to some assertion that you need a 4.0 to get in to FAANG. Considering the large numbers FAANG take in from top CS schools, I rather doubt all those kids have a 4.0.