<p>you’re dreamin’ if you think the CS kids from Cal Poly are on an equal employment footing as the CS grads from stanford, ucb, and usc. Google hires dozens of Stanford grads each year. Steve Jobs use to walk the CS corridors at Stanford and recruit the brightest CS kids before they graduated. And how about Intuit or salesforce, they look at USC and Stanford, and Cal grads first, after all both companies were founded and are run by USC grads. </p>
<p>this is not a subjective subject, it’s a fact that CS grads from the top Cal universities have much higher employment opportunity than kids from Cal Poly. same goes for cs kids coming from MIT, etc…why is this such a hard pill to swallow?</p>
<p>Another factor to consider is international reputation. If the student wants to/will have to work internationally, the prestige of the school matters greatly. In Asian countries in particular it’s all about the “name” of the school. In that case, UCLA or Berkeley is well, well worth the price, considering few people outside of California (much less the continent) have heard of a SCU. </p>
<p>DH got his degree at Berkeley. A long-term partner/colleague got his at Cornell. Guess which school impresses all his international contacts? Hint: not the Ivy League one.</p>
<p>You didn’t answer my direct question to you. </p>
<p>And no one ever implied/argued Cal Poly = Stanford. You are probably the only one who argued that point. </p>
<p>In fact, I think it is sort of impressive for Cal Poly that you had to explicitly state Stanford > Cal Poly. It sort of show Cal Poly is making progress on the league table.</p>
<p>^Another strange notion as my team in our dreadful economically depressed place supports our relationships with customers in North America, South America, all countires in Europe and some Asian countries (like Malaysia, Vietnam, China, others) at our #1/#2 in a world (not sure) international company with about 30,000 employees all over the world and 3 headqurters in North America, UK and Japan. We are dealing on a daily basis with customers in Europe, Asia that are the biggest corporations in the world. We hire locally.</p>
<p>I am currently working in Asia in technology related fields but on the corporate finance investment side of the fence. </p>
<p>I have to say, the names of Cal, and more so UCLA, do not nearly carry as much weight out here as the usual suspects HYMPS. I can’t necessarily agree that Cal or UCLA really have the heavy duty cache as say Harvard or Princeton. </p>
<p>Well then you are dealing with the issue who suck the least out of the 3?</p>
<p>Then your argument is really a US-centric issue, not a Asia Pacific one. Because out here, the UCs are tier 2 at most, and SCU is tier 3 at most. But once you are tier 2 or 3, it won’t really provide any substantive boost or cache to anyone because APAC companies/people don’t really have insights into that level of ranking granularity. So the argument is moot.</p>
<p>I’m curious how Carnegie Mellon rates with the top tech companies for CS. While I know their US News ranking is high, I put more stock in employment prospects.</p>
<p>ickglue, you’re free to think that Berkeley or UCLA sucks. And we’re free to laugh at that assessment. In any case, it IS a moot point as far as this discussion goes.</p>
<p>I think I have been unclear and you have also misread my statement.</p>
<p>What I implied is that once you are in APAC, the difference between Cal, UCLA, SCU becomes more obscure. It is no longer a race to the top, but rather a race to the bottom. I.e. which university out of the 3 is considered least obscure. Hence, perhaps “suck” was a bad choice of word, rather it should be replaced with obscure.</p>
<p>Asia Pacific community are not going to be overly impressed at any of the aforementioned schools, with SCU being with the highest obscure factor. So if your argument is Cal/UCLA has more name recognition than SCU in APAC, that is true. Is Cal/UCLA considered a major boost on the CV in APAC? That is a definitive no. In fact, UCLA is equated with good basketball team in Asia, rather than a academic powerhouse. </p>
<p>So in other words, once you are not in the tier 1 HYMPS category in Asia, you sort of fall off the cliff quickly and join the ranks of the obscure.</p>
<p>And by the way, people in China knows about Cornell more than that UCs because they are crazy about the Ivy League.</p>
<p>Fine, that’s what you think. However, that has not been our experience working with Asian partners. And no one ever commented on basketball when mentioning Berkeley. They DO comment on the number of Nobel Prize winners.</p>
<p>Well I live here in Asia. And I deal with the Asian I-banks, Private Equity, and hedge fund community on a daily basis. </p>
<p>It is not really what I think, it is what the bankers said to me. And also where the wealthy/aspiring Asians want to send their kids to universities, i.e. Oxford, Cambridge, Ivy League, Stanford, and Little Ivies; Not the UCs.</p>
<p>And by way, it is UCLA that has the good basketball team, not Cal.</p>
<p>ickglue: your assessment sounds right to me. I’d say usc has surpassed ucla with an international reputation although I think Berkeley is better known than both. Interestingly Cal changed the name of its Law school to Berkeley Law from Boalt so people outside of California would know it better. The UC’s are starting to react to the global market place but they’re probably 10 years to late, and unfortunately they are completely out of money. It’ll be interesting to see school recognition and reputation in 10 more years with USC’s recent announcement of its 6 billion dollar development project (facilities, profs, and scholarships) to help move them into the top 10 of nationally ranked schools. </p>
<p>as far as Slo, there is zero name recognition beyond California and the kids test in the SAT 550 to 600 range in math so a tier 1 company (such as Google or Intuit or Apple) hiring for their California onsite jobs they will be much more interested in the usc and ucb kids who score in the 700’s on the math section of the SAT. They know that the kids that got into ucb and usc are higher caliber and that greatly influences their hiring decisions.</p>
<p>The reason to go to one UG vs another is the degree of match to particular applicant. Applicant has to decide based on his fit to certain UG, not on anything else. Miserable 4 years will not lead to success.</p>
<p>Levels of prestige and how much it matters differs between investment banking and engineering or CS (the majors which the student in the OP is interested in).</p>
<p>Even in the US, investment banking is regarded as being much more “brand conscious”, and its favored schools are HYPM. Engineering and CS are less “brand conscious”, and the “top schools” that tend to attract traveling recruiters include a lot more state universities, which often push HYP down the priority list for those fields’ recruiting.</p>
<p>But then this may be moot, since it does not appear that the student in the OP is looking at super-selectives like HYPMS, or even Berkeley-level selectivity.</p>
<p>We sent our kid to her college for a fine education…not so it could rate high on the “not obscure o’meter”. I never said that UCLA and UCB and others…and Santa Clara were in the same league and frankly, I don’t care. Bottom line is there are some excellent graduates coming out of ALL of these schools. And some students do not want to go to a very large research university as undergrads…my kid was one of them. </p>
<p>Different strokes for different folks. And “name recognition” in the Pacific Rim countries was not a top criteria for college selection in our house. If it is in your house, then this should be considered…I guess.</p>
<p>again I have to agree with ickglue for science as well…hypms attract the top S+T students from Shanghai, Hong Kong, Dubai, etc. almost none of those kids go to ucla or ucb, more and more are starting go to usc. And zero go to slo or other scu’s. The S+T leadership at the top 4 universities in Shanghai are watching the new S+T facilities being built at USC, Caltech and Stanford. They’re not watching UCLA. They still watch the grad S+T facilities being planned (no money yet) at Cal aka LBL.</p>
<p>top universities in California or Shanghai = top employers. And in this new world of global competition and work from anywhere a Slo student is competing with CS students from Shanghai or Mumbai as well…it’s tough out there and getting tougher!</p>
<p>ucbalumnus,
Your post reflects what is see in real life in both engineering and CS. I do not know any investment bankers though, most of people who I know are engineers, IT, MDs, lawyers. They are doing just fine after whatever UG they went. Actually the only Harvard trained lawyer that I have ever met was not working at all. She decided to be staying at home mom, not that they were exceptionally rich, but it is the way it is, who cares whatever reason. That is why I am saying that choosing school for potential employment is incorrect, choose place that will make you happy for very important 4 years of your life. It definitely works for pre-meds where UG is very unimportant, and I can see the same for engineers and CS. I believe that college GPA is very important though. What else do you have at graduation? GPA is the only thing that tells if you can work hard or not.</p>
<p>Now this thread is headed off into the usual weeds.</p>
<p>
Actually Intuit hires plenty of UCSD CS grads since UCSD down the street from the San Diego Intuit location. They also hire from UCLA and a variety of other colleges. How do you know who they ‘look at’ first unless you work for those companies?</p>
<p>
If you’re saying that Harvard has a higher cachet in computer science than Cal (or UCLA or UCSD or USC or…) then I’d say someone over there is somewhat clueless. Regardless, I don’t think ‘prestige’ in Asia is very important to the vast majority of CS majors in colleges in the USA. It might be important for someone from Asia who plans to attend college in the USA and then head back to Asia to work but that’s a small percentage of the students.</p>
<p>But the OP was asking about a particular subset of colleges anyway and they didn’t include HYPSM…</p>
<p>OP: My suggestion, which your S will likely do anyway, is to apply to all of the ones on your list and see what results. The app fee is nothing compared to the cost of college. USC or SCU, being privates, may come back with enough money to make them the logical choice over one of the others that on the surface might seem less expensive or that your S might have a slight leaning towards for whatever reason. The other key factor is where your S feels most comfortable since sometimes it’s worth paying a bit more for that aspect of fit. People don’t always attend the ‘highest ranked’ college they were admitted to since there are other factors that are important in the decision.</p>
Priorities, I guess.</p>