<p>Go to CMU SCS if you can. A lot of students at CMU have very good social lives, you just have to find them. Berkeley’s class sizes are too crowded so you won’t be able to receive much help if you know practically nothing about coding. Both schools have similar types of students with CMU students a little bit smarter. Cost will be your main factor, if it is even a factor.</p>
<p>Well CMU just posted today: 6000+ applicants for SCS and only ~360 were offered admission. Good luck with that. (I mean I applied there too but just saying). EECS is easier to get in when compared to SCS (but is still extremely competitive). Personally, I would choose CMU. You can work in silicon valley or really anywhere you want after you graduate. Most SCS students get offers in silicon valley over the summer even. First off, getting into SCS is the hardest thing ever these days (it has about Stanford’s acceptance rate!). Plus like people are saying, you get all the attention in the world. Seriously, SCS aims for about only 130 or so students per year (most of them who decline go to HYPSM)</p>
<p>yes but I think 100% of the Berkeley grads who got jobs, stayed in the silicon valley</p>
<p>^bump. are there any other current Cal/CMU students who can give their opinions on this? CMU is an excellent school, but Berkeley in-state tuition is really tempting. plus, with the Regent’s Scholarship I get help in getting classes. do you think CMU is worth it?</p>
<p>Have you got any aid from CMU? If not, join Cal…</p>
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<p>A lot of Berkeley students have good social lives…</p>
<p>Also, Berkeley’s class sizes might be bigger on average, but 1) past a certain point (e.g. 150+), larger classes don’t feel that much different and 2) large classes can have a lot of help available for students.</p>
<p>To expand on the second point, not only are the professors receptive to students seeking help, but the TAs are as well, and there have to be a lot of TAs for a class to become large (we saw this firsthand when a class had to decrease in size due to a lack of TAs). In addition to this, we use Piazza for every CS class I’ve taken (out of nine), which is an online forum where students and instructors can both ask and answer questions. For CS classes in particular, Piazza is very active, and people are really helpful – I was working on a problem set during the wee hours of the morning, and a TA answered my Piazza question at 4am! (This also brings up the point that EECS here is absolutely not cutthroat, which is another common misconception).</p>
<p>So please don’t hesitate to choose Berkeley because of incorrect beliefs spread about how large class sizes make everything impersonal, because chances are that help is available when you need it.</p>
<p>I also agree that cost can be a deciding factor if you’re in-state. As a CA resident, I chose Berkeley EECS over CMU SCS because my family would have basically been paying full price for CMU, which would have been ~$25k/yr more – that simply isn’t worth paying for when choosing between high-caliber CS programs like these (not to mention the Bay Area vs. Pittsburgh…)</p>
<p>@energize Yeah, Bay area has a lot more than to do than Pittsburgh and for me CMU will cost almost $10,000 more. I will not mind large classes and large school (In fact I love these), the climate of California + proximity to the silicon valley, Are you currently an undergrad of EECS at Berkeley? The thing that matters most for me is the job oppurtunities and internships, I just saw CMU’s 2013 placement of SCS and ECE, they were pretty cool almost 20 offers from Google, 15 from Microsoft and 8 from Facebook. Do Berkeley EECS graduates get this number of offers from this very big companies? and do EECS undergrads get internships in Apple, Oracle, Google, Twitter?? (Do Freshman also get?)</p>
<p>I think you are looking at accepted offers at CMU from these companies, not just offers. </p>
<p>The number of offers made by each of these companies to students at CMU was very likely much higher.</p>
<p>For example, my son went to another college, had an offer from Google, but turned it down to work at a smaller company in Silicon Valley. He wouldn’t show up in a report such as the one CMU issues.</p>
<p>I don’t have a horse in this race, but the CMU placement figures are amazing. I would also agree that if one school has a 90% plus return rate for the senior class placement survey and another has a 50% return rate, I would find that worrysome. </p>
<p>@Dadinator, Yeah that’s a worrying factor for me…</p>
<p>I would also agree with the advice about taking $90,000 in debt to attend either of these schools. </p>
<p>Just too much.</p>
<p>Don’t like hearing that it is not a problem, because your family has a lot of property. You are still taking on $90,000 in debt (if you can even get loans in that amount).</p>
<p>Is there a lower cost alternative?</p>
<p>Yeah, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (if I get more than 95%, they’ll give me a full ride) but seriously I don’t want to go there…</p>
<p>There are indeed a lot of new grads and students from Berkeley getting positions at Google, Facebook, Apple, and the like – I know (and know of) several such people. I don’t think whether you end up at CMU vs Berkeley will significantly influence your likelihood of getting positions at tech companies like these.</p>
<p>@energize and what about the internships? And also I think that more than 20 EECS grads will be working for Microsoft, Guessed right or not?</p>
<p>I was including internships in my reply, so sure. I wouldn’t be surprised if at least that many got offers from and are going to Microsoft, though I don’t have numbers. I think that once you get to the level that Berkeley and CMU are at, your own profile (especially internships and side projects) are far more important than the school you went to for getting jobs in the tech industry.</p>
<p>Thank you @energize ,I have a question in my mind, Can I get in every class at EECS??? I’m worried due to California Budget Crisis.</p>
<p>@mak1702 I won’t guarantee you’ll get into every single class you want, but you’ll almost certainly get into most of them, especially later on in your college career, and the vast majority of people don’t have problems graduating because of classes that they couldn’t get into.</p>
<p>@energize what time it takes to complete EECS normally?</p>
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<p>Actually, the bigger companies are the ones that recruit more widely, but local convenience also matters. Another poster noted that the one of most common colleges listed among Apple employees on LinkedIn is San Jose State University, a local (to Apple’s headquarters) not-very-prestigious university.</p>
<p>@mak1702 4 years is typical and expected.</p>
<p>
In case you haven’t seen it, here are the Berkeley employment survey results for EECS majors:
These are the 2012, 2011 and 2010 reports.</p>
<p><a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/EECS.stm”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/EECS.stm</a>
<a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major2011/EECS.stm”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major2011/EECS.stm</a>
<a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major2010/EECS.stm”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major2010/EECS.stm</a></p>