If your plan is to transfer, consider going to a community college first. The UCs are set up to take CC transfers. 94% of the transfers into Berkeley in 2015 were from CCs. USC takes tons of CC transfers. I’ve never seen anything that indicates the UCs or USC prefer transfers from four-year colleges over CCs.
Usually there’s not much to differentiate vanilla CS programs among schools, but in this case, I agree that Pepperdine’s CS program does seem a bit weak.
Can you elaborate on why parent loans are not “advisable” ucbalumnus? I am confident that my parents and I will be able to pay off the loans, I’d like some more information because I’m sure that someone with 50,000 posts on this website knows a lot more about this than me.
If your parents have to borrow to pay for your school, then they really do not have the money[1]. Also, they need to consider saving for their own retirement, so if they are completely tapped out paying for your school and for several years afterward paying the parent loans, they may have difficulty building retirement savings.
[1]Except in unusual situations where they own a large indivisible asset that they do not want to sell now, but plan to sell later and pay off the loan.
How did you choose these two schools? Couldn’t be more opposite. About the only thing in common is they’re both universities.
OK thanks for the elaboration ucbalumnus.
And when I applied I wasn’t really too sure on my major, eventually I settled on Computer Science.
Really I never saw myself going to either one of these.
I thought I had a chance at getting into UC Berkely/LA, USC, or Northeastern. Guess I overestimated myself haha. Frankly I think it’s largely thanks to AP classes being weighted the same as honors, they didn’t help my GPA that’s for sure.
Considering none of your choices sound affordable, it might be worth it for you to take a gap year, work/wolunteer (perhaps retake a standardized test), and reapply to more CA universities that’d be affordable as well as others that’d be good for CS and in synch with your stats.
Private loans are not advisable since the interest rates are so high. You pay $1.04 for every $1 you owe.
For example, $120,000 would turn into $124,800.
If all of the choices are unaffordable, then they really are not usable choices.
In this case, if you are a California resident, another viable option is to start at a community college and transfer to a UC or CSU as a junior. You can use http://www.assist.org to check which courses you need to take to cover the frosh/soph level courses for the CS major at your target UCs and CSUs.
If you are not a California resident, check on the community college to state university option in your state of residency.
OK, I appreciate the continued info.
Finally, I will ask some more specific questions before making my final decision:
Due to the more limited CS offerings at Pepperdine, probably worse than at the other schools, since you would have less opportunity to learn the more advanced CS concepts that employers may look for.
Considering Pepperdine’s really not that good for CS (not bad but there are so many better schools in CA : can poly slo, sjsu, cpp, ucsc, etc) and Hofstra’s neither although not in such a competitive place, your best bet is asu, but without Barrett I don’t think it’s worth it especially considering none of them are affordable.
Of course in CS if you work on your own you can succeed *despite * whatever your school offers, but it’s not worth getting into debt for it.
In your situation, either take a gap year, or attend a cc to transfer to a UC as this will be 100 times more efficient for your goals than attending a random university (and keep in mind that if you attend another university, 1)you lose the best scholarships and 2)you’re not first in line for UC transfer and must wait two years.)