<p>Just wondering what the differences in EE and CS at Pton and EECS at Berkeley are.</p>
<p>As you noted, in Pton they have 2 separate programs, whereas at Berkeley they have it merged into one but you can specialize either in EE or CS or both. Although Princeton has the best undergraduate education, Berkeley has the best EECS program, probably on par with MIT. </p>
<p>That said, you should go to Berkeley if you want to work straight after college in the tech industry in Silicon Valley; a lot of EECS kids at Berkeley get more offers than Stanford engineers from high tech firms like Intel, Nvidia, Google and so forth. That’s where all the jobs are</p>
<p>However, if you aren’t 100% sure about doing EECS or want to have a better general undergraduate education, then Princeton is probably the best route. It will also open up more doors for grad school or working in finance or whatever area you want.</p>
<p>If you want to work in silicon valley right after school, Berkeley is probably a better option for EECS, but for everything else Princeton rules!</p>
<p>^ agree exactly</p>
<p>or…you can get your EECS degree from UC Berkeley, a fabulous school, and work in Silicon Valley as an engineer, or you can attend Princeton and eventually become CEO of Silicon Valley companies such as Amazon, Google and Ebay…</p>
<p>^ lol true…Meg Whitman, although I do dislike her bid for California governor</p>
<p>pompus is probably german_car, another CCer attempting to post anything against Princeton, probably got rejected lol…</p>
<p>But JohnAdams is right, management positions at high tech companies are more likely to be given to Princeton grads than Berkeley grads…Berkeley is good for grad school, but for undergrad they mostly produce engineer grunts</p>
<p>I think people are thinking about this decision in the wrong way. From a quality of education perspective, 99% of undergrads will not be so specialized or advanced in their discipline that they’ll find Berkeley’s or Princeton’s department strengths a barrier to their education. (On the PhD level, a school’s specialization becomes hugely important, and Princeton’s strength in subdiscipline A vs. Berkeley’s strengths in subdisciplines B, C, and D is much more important.)</p>
<p>The biggest thing I think you should think about is department size: the number of undergrads in Berkeley EECS is simply massive. On the plus side, this means a larger EECS community and courses are offered on a more regular basis. As a negative, it means class sizes are much, much larger (there are classes at Berkeley with more students than the entire Princeton EE and CS departments combined). This also impacts how well you get to know your professors and which professors you get to know, the importance of which can’t be overstated. In EE/CS more than most fields, profs are gateways to grad schools, industry, and general mentoring.</p>
<p>A second thing to think about is your certainty about pursuing EECS. Do you want a school that offers courses on every random topic in EECS? Do you want a school that has fantastic departments across the board if you don’t want to study EECS? This is, of course, an exaggeration - Berkeley has good departments in many fields and Princeton has no shortage of courses in odd CS material. But it’s a distinction in focus, and so something to think about.</p>
<p>In terms of post-grad opportunities, in most cases, they’re pretty similar. The biggest CS recruiters at Princeton are also the Googles and the Microsofts, and every year, a sizable portion of the CS undergrads head out to Mountain View and Redmond. Differences emerge at the fringe - startups with smaller HR budgets may only stop at Stanford and Berkeley. Princeton probably gets more banks and quantitative hedge fund recruiting.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>i just think all ivies dont have the best engineering programs. berkeley is great for engineering as well as other non ivy league schools such as stanford, UCSD, UCSB, Cal Poly SLO, copper union, the list goes on and on</p>
<p>pompus, thanks for you post, but we are talking about undergraduate school aren’t we?</p>
<p>so the CEO fo Google, Eric Schmidt, Princeton EE class of 1976,might have gone to UC Berkeley for graduate school, but it was Princeton undergraduate that he attended and graduated from.</p>
<p>and, by the way, the founder of Dean Wiiter, which later merged with Morgan Stanley, could hardly be called the founder of Morgan Stanley, as you have stated.</p>
<p>good try though</p>
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