<p>Sorry! It's another one of these threads. I apologize in advance!</p>
<p>So I've been blessed to be accepted into two of my dream colleges, Stanford and UC Berkeley(EECS), for computer science. The only problem is, I'm having trouble making my decision.</p>
<p>At UC Berkeley, I'll be a Regents Scholar, meaning guaranteed on-campus housing for 4 years, priority enrollment for classes, and scholarship money. As it stands, I'll pay about $9,600 a year if I attend UCB, which is not bad at all.</p>
<p>But then, there's Stanford. And, well, it's Stanford. It comes with the prestige of an Ivy League. It's also a smaller university than UCB is, so I'll (hopefully) get more individualized attention there. And they're giving me a really good financial aid package. I'm only expected to pay around $5,700 a year. </p>
<p>So, can College Confidential give me any advice? It would be much appreciated!</p>
<p>While priority registration is always nice, I don’t think the pros of Berkely outweigh the pros of Stanford, especially since Stanford costs almost $4,000 a year less and still has outstanding programs in your possible major.</p>
<p>Stanford wins, being cheaper (given the net prices, it does look like you are from a family income level where the price difference is significant), unless there is some specific academic feature of your interest that strongly favors Berkeley.</p>
<p>The only thing that might be of concern is if you want to go into patent law from a CS background. Because Stanford’s CS degree is not ABET-accredited (Berkeley EECS is, but Berkeley L&S CS is not), you need to be sure to fulfill specific course requirements as described in <a href=“http://www.uspto.gov/ip/boards/oed/GRB_March_2012.pdf[/url]”>http://www.uspto.gov/ip/boards/oed/GRB_March_2012.pdf</a> (page 4-6). This should not be a problem if you plan your course selection knowing this beforehand. If patent law is not of interest, ABET-accreditation is not a concern for CS at Stanford.</p>
<p>Haha. Thanks for the responses, guys! Stanford seems to be the overwhelming majority, here. I was leaning towards Stanford a little more, and this affirms it. </p>
<p>@ucbalumnus: Thank you for the link! I’ll definitely look into it. Might I ask why CS at notable CS universities such as Stanford and Carnegie Mellon aren’t ABET-accredited?</p>
<p>By picking Stanford, you will merely follow almost everyone else who was in your shoes. There is a trenendous number of cross-applications between Cal and Stanford. From a substantial number of cross-admits, very few decide to attend Cal over Stanford. Very few people who were admitted to Stanford end up at Cal.</p>
<p>It is hardly a newsflash, UCB. Simply an annoying and pesky fact for the ones who cling to the old wife tale of academic and student body parity. </p>
<p>CS employment does not generally require licensing or have a significant subset that requires or prefers licensing like many fields of engineering (other than the patent exam related issue), so ABET accreditation is not generally considered necessary.</p>
<p>Schools like Stanford, Berkeley (for L&S CS), CMU, and various others of high reputation in the subject are pretty much assumed by everyone to be good, so the use of ABET accreditation as an indication of a minimum standard of quality is not really of value for them. However, lesser known schools often do get ABET accreditation for their CS majors to indicate that they are of reasonable quality (unlike some schools’ “CS” majors that are not very technical and are more like business-based IT majors).</p>
<p>No surprise, given that Stanford out-financial-aids almost every other school including Berkeley in-state for those not from top 5% income families.</p>