Please Help!! UC Berkeley vs.Williams College

College Search & Selection
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<p>l have been accepted to both Cal and Williams, and l am torn between the two. l am an international student and l can't afford to visit both campuses. l have full rides to both schools, so money is not a deciding factor. l didn't think l would be fortunate enough to get into any of the two schools.</p>

<p>l intend to do a double major in Computer Science (CS) and Econ (or Physics). l hope to go to a top 10 CS grad school or business school. l also want to learn Mandarin Chinese. l am interested in debating, financial clubs, and quiz. l am not that much into sports.</p>

<p>l have received advice that ranges from "Dude, are you mad? UCB has the best CS department in the world; You should go there" to "Cal's CS classes will weed you out. At Cal, you will be just a number".</p>

<p>l am slightly leaning towards Williams because of the small class sizes and individualized attention.</p>

<p>l have little CS background.</p>

2

<p>For CS interests, Berkeley is a great place.<br>
You are choosing between two of the best examples of very different environments. Have you visited both?
You won’t go wrong at either. Choose for the environment you prefer. If that’s a smaller, bucolic environment with more care and feeding, choose Williams. If that’s a larger, urban environment with plenty of opportunities to discover on your own, choose Berkeley.</p>

3

<p>For CS, Berkeley is the better place. Broadly speaking, Berkeley has much more to offer to their CS students. It’s also right close to Silicon Valley. </p>

4

<p>Thank you so much. Your advice is making me look at the colleges in a way l have never have.
@UCBChemEGrad , l can’t afford to visit both campuses because l am continents away.</p>

5

<p>Unless you can show great initiative, Berkeley isn’t all that great. Williams have a stronger alumni network, as do most small schools, that will help you find an internship for summer. Also, studying at Berkeley is likely to be more stressful. However, if you want to study Chinese, Berkeley could be great because there are so many Chinese people there and in the area. </p>

<p>Overall, I would choose Williams. I am fearful of the stress at Berkeley, and I love smaller classes. The area around Berkeley can be dangerous. Williams is in a great, peaceful environment. </p>

6

<p>as an international, the prestige of Cal’s name will serve you for a lifetime. This one is a no-brainer.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Unless you are trying to say that Williams has rampant grade inflation, your assertion makes no sense. The bottom quartile of Cal students – who tend to make up the bottom of the curve – are much less accomplished than Williams’s students.</p>

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<p>^I think the poster meant that Berkeley’s environment is more cut-throat/competitive that Williams, which is probably an accurate assessment. I have several friends at Cal-- one in business, one in chemistry, two in comp sci-- and all complain of the stressful, highly competitive environment. A lot of pressure to beat the curve (which is difficult, especially in challenging majors. Lots of <em>very</em> accomplished Cal students in business and the sciences.) There are many great opportunities but you need the grit, independence, and thick skin to make them work for you. Of course, my sample size is limited so YMMV.</p>

<p>IMO, the decision doesn’t come down to “which school is better” (both are superlative) but rather, which environment do you feel most comfortable in. Would you prefer close relationships with professors, small class sizes, and a small, intimate community right off the bat? Or do you like the excitement and variety of an urban campus, hundreds upon hundreds of class options, and large sporting events?</p>

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<p>No brainer, Williams! By some measures in recent years the most difficult college to get into in the country and with good reason. You will likely go to a big University for grad school anyway.</p>

9

<p>I would vote for Williams too. Eventhough I rarely worked with anybody graduated from Williams. The state schools like Michigan, Berkeley, UIUC, UCs tend to be the majority at tech companies.</p>

10

<p>Williams seems to be the better fit. You say you have little programming background. You will look like fresh meat to a sea of Cal programming sharks. Williams will allow you to grow into the compsci field, if that’s what you choose to do. It will also offer you an excellent education if you decide not to go compsci. Williams compsci is small, only 9 professors, and that’s a concern, to be sure, but the fit for someone who is going to need a lot of help at the beginning of compsci is better at Williams. You’re in a great position to get a great education.</p>

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<p>OP posted the same question in the Williams and Berkeley forum sections; it appears that the responses to those threads give more detail on each school which may better help the OP determine which is the better academic and social fit.</p>

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<p>You have great choices but it seems you applied to colleges without regard to what fits you best. As an international you can’t beat the Berkeley name. But for flexibility I’d choose Williams. You can explore both finance and econ quite comfortably and you will be in an environment where you will get a lot of attention and support for your goals. </p>

<p>Berkeley is not dangerous. It is in a great area, one of the many attractions is the location. It is an urban area compared to a rural area like Williams, but you will be fine as soon as you learn to use common sense. Don’t be afraid of it.</p>

13

<p>Williams could only be better if you’ll be majoring in social sciences or humanities and you want to work in the East Coast. But for CS, it’s not as good a school as UC Berkeley. It may also have a slightly tighter alumni network, but such thing isn’t prevalent in the IT world. Furthermore, Williams College does not have any appeal outside of the USA, specially in Africa. For most people outside of the US, even in your country of origin, OP, Williams College is virtually unknown even amongst the educated ones, whereas everyone in your country would be “wowed” by the Berkeley name, as UC Berkeley is famous.</p>

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<p>“Furthermore, Williams College does not have any appeal outside of the USA, specially in Africa. For most people outside of the US, even in your country of origin, OP, Williams College is virtually unknown even amongst the educated ones, whereas everyone in your country would be “wowed” by the Berkeley name, as UC Berkeley is famous.”</p>

<p>Please, just stop with this belief that everyone everywhere in the world just pants like a dog at the mention of the Berkeley name. “What people know overseas” is meaningless, because it’s based off a complete and utter lack of knowledge. </p>

15

<p>Compare the class sizes and instructor credentials for undergraduate courses at both schools.</p>

<p>For example, many colleges require CS majors to take an upper-level course in the theory or principles of programming languages. Williams majors take CSCI 334, “Principles of Programming Languages”. A Berkeley CSE major would take CS 164, “Programming Languages and Compilers” (although this appears to be an elective not a required course at Berkeley).</p>

<p>In Spring 2014 at Williams, CSCI 334 enrolled 48 students. In the previous 4 years, it enrolled 18-31 students (<a href=“Williams College”>Williams College). All students are instructed by Stephen N. Freund, an Associate Professor with a B.S., M.S. and PhD in CS from Stanford. He has 12 years experience teaching at Williams (<a href=“index”>http://dept.cs.williams.edu/~freund/&lt;/a&gt;). </p>

<p>In Spring 2014 at Berkeley, the lecture portion of CS 164 enrolled 91 students for 3 hours/week. The discussion sections enrolled 16-26 students for 1 hour/week (<a href=“http://schedule.berkeley.edu/srchsprg.html”>http://schedule.berkeley.edu/srchsprg.html&lt;/a&gt;). The lecture is taught by Koushik Sen, an Associate Professor with a PhD in CS from Illinois (<a href=“http://srl.cs.berkeley.edu/~ksen/doku.php”>http://srl.cs.berkeley.edu/~ksen/doku.php&lt;/a&gt;). He has 8 years experience teaching at Berkeley. The discussion sections are taught by graduate students, Xi Chen or Wontai Choi (<a href=“Philip Wontae Choi”>http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~wtchoi/&lt;/a&gt;). </p>

<p>In Spring 2014, lower division undergraduate CS lectures at Berkeley had the following enrollment sizes:
238, 598, 927.
Upper division undergraduate CS lectures at Berkeley had the following enrollment sizes:
49, 86, 368, 288, 91, 103, 421, 45, 98, 107,441, 157, 55, 16, 8.
The largest CS class of any kind taught at Williams in the past 5 years had 48 students (CSCI 334, described above).</p>

<p>As this information illustrates, even the instructors who teach Berkeley’s large undergraduate lecture classes (let alone the grad students who lead discussion sections) won’t necessarily be more distinguished than those who teach corresponding classes at Williams. As an undergraduate, you won’t necessarily have any contact with the distinguished computer scientists who drive up Berkeley’s CS reputation. None of the 18 Turing Award laureates associated with UC Berkeley taught an undergraduate class there in Spring 2014 (R M Karp taught an individual research class restricted to graduate students.)</p>

<p>I’m referring only to factors affecting the classroom experience. You may also want to compare internship and research opportunities at the two schools. One would think those opportunities are far better at Berkeley (if you take the initiative to seek them out and compete for them.)</p>

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<p>OK you’ve done the class size thing. In fairness don’t stop there though, now do the other part. </p>

<p>List and compare the number and identity of the upper-level courses in computer science and related aspects of electrical engineering that are available for juniors and seniors to take at each of these two institutions. Not what is in their catalogs, which list every course they’ve ever thought of, no matter how infrequently offered, but what is actually available to be learned in this field at each school at any point in time.
Suggest provide links to the registrar’s list of courses actually given in these areas over the last two semesters at each school. Not what is listed in their cataolog, but the courses they actually offered. Or provide the actual results below.</p>

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<p>One of the links I provided above shows all the CS courses offered at Williams in Spring 2014. (<a href=“Williams College”>Williams College)
Another shows all the CS courses offered at Berkeley in the same term.
(<a href=“http://schedule.berkeley.edu/srchsprg.html”>http://schedule.berkeley.edu/srchsprg.html&lt;/a&gt;)
From these links, it is easy to find links to lists of courses in other semesters.</p>

<p>Certainly, Berkeley offers many more courses.
In Spring 2014, by my count you had a choice of 7 CS courses at Williams, or 18 Lecture + Discussion combinations at Berkeley (plus an additional 7 “self-paced” courses and 8 pass/fail “group” courses). And that’s not counting graduate courses at Berkeley.</p>

<p>The CS core, as recommended by the ACM, covers a limited number of subjects including discrete math, algorithms, data structures, operating systems, programming languages, database theory, etc. These courses will take up much of your time in completing the major. They will be covered at Williams or just about any other school with a decent CS program. However, if you like having many more choices than you can possibly take, you’ll miss that at a small school like Williams.</p>

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<p>It’s not a matter of “more courses than you can possibly take”. Rather it’s a question of how likely it is that they will wind up having the few particular courses, that, at the end of the day, it turns out you actually want to take. In the advanced level subareas that you wind up becoming interested in, once you know enough about the field to develop such interests. The identity of which you don’t even know yet, right now.</p>

<p>So far example. my D1 developed an interest in a particular sub-area of her major, at a different but larger LAC, and found that nobody on the faculty there had any interest in that particular subarea and they offered zero courses in it.
Whereas most universities she considered transferring to did in fact offer such courses.</p>

<p>This is not done yet, somebody please link the Berkely courses, In both computer science and electrical engineering.</p>

<p>Then we can move on to the next point.</p>

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<p>Once again, here is the link to Berkeley’s course listings for Spring 2014:
<a href=“http://schedule.berkeley.edu/srchsprg.html”>http://schedule.berkeley.edu/srchsprg.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>From that page, to get to a list of CS courses or EE courses,
pick from the “Department Name” drop-down on the left, then hit “begin search”.
Here is a link to all the Spring 2014 CS courses:
<a href=“http://osoc.berkeley.edu/OSOC/osoc?p_term=SP&x=26&p_classif=--+Choose+a+Course+Classification+--&p_deptname=Computer+Science&p_presuf=--+Choose+a+Course+Prefix%2FSuffix+--&y=8”>http://osoc.berkeley.edu/OSOC/osoc?p_term=SP&x=26&p_classif=--+Choose+a+Course+Classification+--&p_deptname=Computer+Science&p_presuf=--+Choose+a+Course+Prefix%2FSuffix+--&y=8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>And here is a link to all the Spring 2014 EE courses:
<a href=“http://osoc.berkeley.edu/OSOC/osoc?p_term=SP&x=61&p_classif=--+Choose+a+Course+Classification+--&p_deptname=Electrical+Engineering&p_presuf=--+Choose+a+Course+Prefix%2FSuffix+--&y=0”>http://osoc.berkeley.edu/OSOC/osoc?p_term=SP&x=61&p_classif=--+Choose+a+Course+Classification+--&p_deptname=Electrical+Engineering&p_presuf=--+Choose+a+Course+Prefix%2FSuffix+--&y=0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>At Williams, 12 CS courses are required for the major. If you’re going to complete a balanced liberal arts program of study (in addition to your CS major), there does not seem to be a whole lot of room to take very many more than those 12 CS courses. So if you think you might want to delve deeply into robotics, natural language processing, or compiler theory, then either (a) choose a big university that offers a wide selection of these courses (and sufficiently flexible general education requirements), or else (b) take it up in grad school. </p>

<p>Berkeley certainly offers the course selection to allow you to go deeper into such a specialty. At least within the College of L&S, the combined major requirements and general ed requirements might leave you enough room to do that.</p>

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<p>ok, if OP cares, next step would be to talk to the career services at each school, and find out how many employers of CS graduates come to each campus to recuit for CS jobs.</p>