I am a community college student, so I don’t feel like I can measure up to my peers in schools like UCLA or UCB. Some of the reasons are: 1 - the computer science classes I have taken haven’t prepared me well for being a Cal or a UCLA student because some of them were easier than my kindergarten classes.
2- Even though I have 4.0 GPA with all physics, math, cs classes done, I feel that I don’t have the discipline to study for the EECS major at Berkeley as I heard scary stories about it.
3- Also I heard that there is always competition in UCB and UCLA because of the grading system.
is it stupid to make a decision based on these reasons?
I appreciate your responses in advance.
if you’ve gotten into all three then yes that’s a stupid reason - your grades aren’t going to matter much to an employer and a Berkeley CS grad > UCSB CS grad to the people hiring (source - I run an early stage startup)
It’s not a stupid question. It’s a legitimate concern if you’re trying to pursue a graduate level education. Because the UCs follow the bell curve model, you have to be in the top of your class to get an A. At UCB and UCLA, in the computer engineering program, you’d be competing with the best students in the world for that major. So it might be worthwhile for a student to consider going to a slightly less competitive school, that still has prestige to it, in order to get a higher GPA. I’ve actually known a few students who chose to go to UCI and UCSB when they could’ve went to Cal for the same reason as yourself. But still, it’s not like UCSB is any walk in the park, comp engineering is extremely competitive there as well, and you’d still be going up against very strong students. Because of that, it might be in your best interest to go into Cal/UCLA. Keep in mind that if you get into these schools, they picked you for a reason. Seriously, comp engineering is so competitive that you have to be an amazing student to be able to transfer under that major.