Hi everyone, I’ll make a post in UCLA’s thread as well.
I was a candidate for UC Berkeley’s Regent’s scholarship, so I already heard I was offered admission. I applied for Electrical Engineering in the EECS department.
I found out last week that I was offered admission at UCLA with a Regent’s scholarship, and earlier today that I did NOT win the Regent’s scholarship at UC Berkeley (yet am still admitted).
Now, I’m faced with a tough choice as an EE major — Berkeley, with a higher ranked (and frankly, seemingly more robust) engineering department without Regents (which I’ve heard greatly helps with networking, class registration, etc. in addition to $$$), versus UCLA as an EE major with the Regent’s scholarship.
I feel that, given proximity to Silicon Valley and engineering strength, UC Berkeley is a better choice for tech career prospects; however, I have a slightly better “fit” with UCLA, along with being one of only 50 people per class with the Regents.
Does anyone have any advice? Finances aside, will UCLA engineering be up to par with Berkeley’s? How beneficial is the Regent’s scholarship? Has anyone faced a similar choice?
Berkeley EECS requires more lower division CS as well as EE, but does not specify any particular upper division EE or CS courses as required (though credit unit minimums and design courses are required). So a student can select upper division courses from any area of EE or CS for upper division work. http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Programs/Notes/section2.shtml#2.2
So partly your decision should include consideration of how much interest you have in CS. Berkeley will require more CS at the minimum in lower division work, but will allow you to emphasize CS to a greater amount in upper division work if you choose to do that, without needing to change major. UCLA will require less CS at the minimum, but allow for less emphasis on CS at the maximum.
Berkeley EECS +1
UCLA is still a tier below in terms of engineering, usually being
T1: MIT, Stanford, Berkeley
those are the big names you hear about. As for regents it’s not so much networking as much as priority registration which as an EECS major you don’t need to really worry about.
Good luck!
EECS at Cal for sure. The advantage of being in the Silicon Valley is invaluable. Many companies will only recruit software and electrical engineers from Cal or Stanford. Regents’ isn’t all that valuable (I’m a regents’ scholar) in terms of networking when compared to other organizations you can choose to be a part of once you get here.
@ucbalumnus I definitely have an interest in CS and I think that combining CS knowledge with engineering is a great combo these days. Thanks for the info, that’s a pretty important consideration.
@5oviet So priority registration wouldn’t be a huge concern at Berkeley because of being in EECS? Why is that? My mom went to Berkeley and many of her friend’s kids went, and they all agreed it can be very hard to always register and get the classes you need, and since EECS is a good 1,274 students, seems like class registration would still be hard.
@light shining what organizations are you talking about that can help with networking? I wasn’t sure how beneficial Regent’s would be with networking, it was more so the fact that so FEW people had it, that made it seem more ‘special’, but the networking I guess was speculative on my end.
Thanks for the replies everyone! Still a tough choice, but I’m seeing that EECS might be worth it…
The reason that specific majors like EECS limit enrollment is so that the amount of class space is sufficient for all students in the major. However, since they tend to enroll right up to the limit, you may not be able to be very picky about some aspects of scheduling. Students who like 8am class times will probably have it easier, though.
Berkeley has a multiphase pre-registration system, and also reserves space within classes for those with specific class standing, class level, and major. The multiphase registration system lets all students pre-register for about half of their schedules before anyone registers for more.
Choose the earliest orientation to get the earliest pre-registration for your first semester.
hmm… I haven’t had any issues. But the thing is for lower division courses and some upper division courses you’re already declared whereas other CS kids are not declared yet so you do already have priority.
Not exactly, there are different phase periods where declared majors go first. Several L&S CS friends didn’t get into CS70 this semester cause of that lol
UC Berkeley reserves spaces for EECS students in EECS classes. So, for example, you don’t need to phase 1 CS61A because you are guaranteed a spot. You might not get your first choice in section, but you will definitely get all your major classes.