UC Berkeley vs Columbia (Engineering)

Colleges and Universities A-Z Columbia University
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<p>First of all, I was extremely excited to be admitted to both schools, and I'm not sure I can really make a wrong decision with either one, but there are definitely certain drawbacks associated with each that I'd like to ask you all about. I'll be posting this in the Columbia forum for other opinions as well.</p>

<p>To clarify, my intended major is Chemical Engineering, for which Cal is definitely ranked much higher than Columbia, and I believe is actually in the top 3 or 4 nationally. A caveat - I'm not completely sure I want to stay in ChemE, but I'm pretty certain I want to do engineering.</p>

<p>I'm a Regents Scholar at Cal which definitely quells some of my fears of class registration (priority registration, housing, etc) and all that. In addition, I didn't get much aid from Columbia, so the price difference will be about $30k per year :(</p>

<p>Coming from Northern California, Cal is less than an hour away from where I live, which is actually somewhat nice for the transition to college I suppose. On the other hand, Columbia (and New York) will be a completely new, and hopefully thrilling, experience for me. </p>

<p>I guess one of my biggest worries about Cal is how notoriously difficult ChemE is, although that's to be expected from such a high caliber institution. I think Regents will also make it a little easier to procure research opportunities, but with so many more students at Cal compared to Columbia, I'm not sure if it'll really be easier to do research at Cal than at Columbia.</p>

<p>Basically, if anyone has any opinions/thoughts about this at all, I'd greatly appreciate it!</p>

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<p>It would be one thing if it was simply “normal” Cal vs. Columbia (in which case I would advise Cal), but if you’re a REGENTS scholar, I think the choice is clear.</p>

<p>The worry of not getting attention/research opportunities completely disappears if you’re a Regents scholar at a school as great as Cal, especially in engineering. I’m pretty sure you’d get better research (in the field of engineering) at Cal than Columbia anyway.</p>

<p>And I think Cal is a better choice because of the financial aid factor. You can always go to New York City later but you can’t always go live in a college town/city. I think the experience will be “new and thrilling” anywhere you go.</p>

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<p>In this case, I’d definitely say Berkeley. Not only is it cheaper, it’s better in engineering, equally prestigious in academia and more prestigious in the general public (according to a Gallup poll), in an awesome city with access to SF, etc. Here’s what I posted to someone who is in almost the same situation as you ($30k difference)–replace “Stanford” with “Columbia”:</p>

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<p>Don’t worry about the difficulty of ChemE–Berkeley wouldn’t be giving you the Regents if it didn’t think you could handle the school. You’ll be among the top students there, and I’m certain you’ll do well.</p>

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<p>All those rankings are for graduate students, so let’s not all of a sudden believe something that is not true.</p>

<p>The Gallup poll on popularity is a joke phantas. What about the poll that ranked Columbia the second most searched school in the country only after Harvard
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<p>Anyhow: I think we should bring things back to the fact that your experience will be different at both schools. I am unfamiliar with the Regents Scholar program, but it sounds like it alleviates some worry. In the end it is not sufficient to detract from some of the real personal benefits you might gain leaving the comfort of Northern California and venturing out east to attend Columbia. Not only is SEAS a great undergraduate education, Columbia itself is very good at creating a culture of inquiry, debate and encouraging individual growth in all aspects. </p>

<p>Especially friends of mine that majored in ChemE all were quite happy with their coursework, and have gone on to do just about everything under the sun in terms of graduate study or working usually at Big Pharma (which is very present not far from campus in New Jersey). </p>

<p>I don’t agree with the Cal Boosters that this is an open and shut case. It is very much a question of personal decisionmaking. If you are feeling adventurous, you want a major metropolitan center, you want to go to a school that is more than 75% Californians, with a greater international reach (if equal the international reputation), Columbia is a great opportunity, something that will change your life. Going to Berkeley will be great, but I’m sure you can predict, even now, what your life might look like.</p>

<p>California will always be there
the chance to study somewhere else comes only once.</p>

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<p>I agree with admissionsgeeks that Columbia definitely provides the intellectual and cultural diversity. However, I am thinking that Berkeley might be the better choice because 1.) it’s cheaper 2.) better engineering program 3.) regents scholar. Ultimately, both Columbia and UC Berkeley are AMAZING schools and you cannot go wrong either way.</p>

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<p>For engineering? Columbia is no doubt far behind Berkeley in engineering, so the grad rankings are right. Otherwise the city of New York wouldn’t be handing out hundreds of millions of $ to another top engineering school to set up a campus in the city and would’ve given it to Columbia instead.</p>

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<p>I’m not saying that any popularity poll has significance. But the Gallup poll isn’t a joke–you’d be the first to claim that the Gallup doesn’t know how to do an accurate survey.</p>

<p>But again, take what you will from it. Many don’t care about prestige in the general public.</p>

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<p>I’m not a “Cal Booster” by any stretch of the imagination. As you probably know, I’m a student at Stanford. But I’m practical when it comes to issues like this, and Columbia is not worth $120k of debt, not when he has Berkeley on the table, with Regents at that. The person I mentioned in my first post is deciding between Stanford and Berkeley Regents, with a $120k difference, and I told him the same: Stanford isn’t worth that much debt when you have an offer like Berkeley Regents. No school is.</p>

<p>So of course there are personal factors that go into decisions like this, but at the end of the day, telling that to the OP isn’t very helpful. Obviously he/she would prefer to go to Columbia (or Stanford, in the other person’s case), but it’s just not practical or worthwhile when it’s going to put you $120k in debt.</p>

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<p>A) All polling the most important thing is the question you ask, the question itself carries significant bias, and asking a different question yields different results. Being good at polling (aka knowing how to achieve a representative sample size) does not mean your poll is useful. You can still make an excellent poll, and it could be a joke. And particularly there is a tendency in polling for the question to be ‘overly broad,’ and when it is, it renders the usefulness of the poll null.</p>

<p>B) Graduate rankings do not measure quality of undergraduate education, nor does it properly approximate distance between programs. The jump from 2-18 could be large or small. Reading such graduate rankings as absolute truth is beyond laughable. </p>

<p>C) The city of New York accepted multiple bids for the money, but haven’t decided who to select yet. So the fact that you present something as fact when it is uncertain is quite poor.</p>

<p>D) In our tete-a-tete a common theme continues to be your uncritical use of data to explain phenomenon that the data or evidence does not in fact represent. </p>

<p>E) There are opportunity costs for sure that the OP as well as you or I or anyone would have to consider when choosing between various options, it is what makes them properly options. The fact of the matter is that it is not an open and shut case, and the OP recognizes this as such based on his/her desire to seek out more information. You’ve made the conclusion that the OP will go into $120k in debt. Where is your proof? He/she says that the price difference between the schools is $30k, but what if his/her family has that kind of money on hand? What if the OP would have to go into debt anyhow just to go to Cal? Indeed we could presume the actual post-college debt for the OP could be more or less than $120k. WE do not have enough information to make such a claim. Doing so is poor deduction. In the end, the OP will have to determine with his/her family what is a reasonable amount of debt, and what the proper trade off is. Many students face a similar conundrum as the OP and some have chosen Columbia, some have chosen their local state university (and especially well respected schools like Berkeley, Mich, UVa). </p>

<p>F) There are factors that we are missing here when we deal in bare bones idealism. Experience is chief among them. The ability to research at Columbia, especially in ChemE is very easy. Placement from Columbia undergrad despite its perceived lower ranking (which I’ve expounded at length as being undeserved) is very high for ChemE.</p>

<p>Ultimately: this is a family decision and a student’s wish must always be taken into consideration with the family’s ability to pay. Families on the other hand need to avoid a kind of crude cost-benefit analysis trying to optimize the pennies of an experience - you must go to X school because it is cheaper, irrespective of fit. Doing so is a disservice to what makes universities great (and it is why the UC system is in such shambles). The fact is that the choice of where to attend is an unsatisfying one: no one feels 100% certain that it is the best choice. The goal is to make a choice you can live with. </p>

<p>I think the OP can certainly live with the Cal choice. It is in fact an easy choice. Without knowing particulars of his/her situation, I do offer more information about Columbia to hopefully allow him/her to see that as a choice he/she could live with as well.</p>

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<p>I’m sorry but you can’t even go close to saying that Berkeley is not stronger than Columbia in terms of engineering. It was ranked the third best engineering school <em>overall</em> with Columbia nowhere near. And in terms of opportunity, Berkeley is located near other engineering powerhouses like Stanford and Caltech. Pasadena alone is a wealth of opportunity.</p>

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<p>No.</p>

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<p>New York City will always be there too
?</p>

<p>Instead of just trying to say the opposite of what the people who are actually trying to give good advice are saying, you should give reasoning behind your comments.</p>

<p>I personally believe that someone concerned about money, research, and opportunity with a Regents Scholarship at Cal should not even think twice about going. Columbia’s curriculum does not adhere perfectly to engineering majors, and that reflects on the schools performance in that field.</p>

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<p>alwaysstressed: </p>

<p>if you don’t care to read with care my message, why respond to it. First you clearly do not know how to read graduate school rankings. Columbia is a great engineering school for graduate students (let alone undergraduates). In the pantheon of universities that offer engineering degrees it is better than the vast majority. Does that mean it is the top top tier, no. But some how proclaiming uncritically that you know something when all you’ve said is nothing is not useful. There is a trade-off one gains always when attending a lower ranked school, sometimes it is worth it for the experience (less stress), etc.</p>

<p>The student is from California, has roots in California, and the propensity will be to stay in California if he/she attends Cal or the like. New York City is a great yonder, and will open up not just New York, but the East Coast, and the kind of progression will indeed open up considerations of other places. </p>

<p>Provinciality is certainly a problematic of staying too close to home. It is not to say there are not plenty of counterexamples, but it is the vast inertia of experience that dictates that if the student wishes something different, he/she ought to try something different now and not later. As someone out in the real world, I know this much to be true. A lot of my friends have difficulty getting out of the cities they went to college in. This is not an argument of absolutism, indeed he/she can be a screw up attending either school, but it is to offer a proper counterweight in this conversation.</p>

<p>The OP will in the end decide what is best based on the information received.</p>

<p>I still don’t get what you wanted to argue, but I will leave it to the other viewers on this thread to determine if what you wrote above demonstrates your abilities to make a sound argument.</p>

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<p>i obviously think columbia is usually the better choice being columbia-bound myself, but in this situation, i’d say berkeley. you’ll be right close to home, you’ll pay a fraction of the tuition, you have that scholar program, and the engineering is better there. that being said, i still think columbia would provide a more interesting experience, but in this case i think cal is the easier choice.</p>

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<p>2 things to consider:</p>

<p>1) Columbia places better for finance jobs, and finance pays about 2-3 times what engineering does in the first 5 years out of college. Many engineers at top schools realize this and self select into finance jobs. There’s less job security, more risk, but 2x is huge whether you are paying off debt or not. Ask someone at MIT where top kids are trying to work, the answer will be Phd / Big tech company like Google / Tech Start Up / Finance.</p>

<p>2) In terms of class quality Columbia SEAS (Duke SEAS as well) has scores to match MIT.</p>

<p>[Columbia</a> University - 2010](<a href=“http://profiles.asee.org/profiles/5036/screen/19?school_name=Columbia+University]Columbia”>http://profiles.asee.org/profiles/5036/screen/19?school_name=Columbia+University)</p>

<p>2010 SATs:</p>

<p>750-800 on Math
680-760 on Verbal</p>

<p>~97% in the top 10% of their graduating class</p>

<p>I had friends work for NASA, Google, Microsoft, Boeing over the summer, there are top engineering positions available coming out of Columbia. But many tend to do something different like Finance, Law, Medicine, Consulting, PhD, International development research or some unrelated passion like working for CNN. </p>

<p>UCB is generally considered a stronger engineering school with better rankings, but student quality in an engineering school does not necessarily correlate well to engineering rankings on US News. The opportunities to do well are all there at Columbia, but 120k is a lot. If your family happens to be high net worth and 120k is not a big issue, then I would advocate Columbia. If 120k is a big deal to them / if you have to take on debt, UCB is not a bad place to be at all.</p>

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<p>admissionsgeek,</p>

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<p>I think I trust Gallup here–they know exactly how to word a poll (it’s the most important thing when doing a poll), how to select randomly, etc. They’re experts, so they know how to conduct an accurate poll.</p>

<p>Doesn’t matter though, because I didn’t say that it has to be useful–I was just pointing it out (in case the OP was considering layman’s prestige), so please stop making a big deal out of it.</p>

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<p>But they do measure quality of the department, which undergrads are exposed to. There’s no denying that people don’t use graduate rankings in their choices–all the time people say “I chose X because they had a stronger program in Y,” and the only discipline rankings around are graduate rankings (other than the ancient Gourman rankings). And it’s to good effect: there tends to be a material difference between the top and lower-ranked programs. That difference carries over pretty well to undergrads.</p>

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<p>Those opportunity costs are the same if he goes to Columbia
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<p>There’s no proof, but Columbia is not worth an extra $120k when Berkeley Regents is on the table. Not even Harvard is worth that extra $120k. The difference in quality is not that big, esp. for a Regents scholar.</p>

<p>Now, if the OP were super rich, sure, go with whatever you like the most. But judging by the tone of his post and his own agonizing over the cost difference, it seems that it would be harder to pay for Columbia. In that case, it makes sense to go with the cheaper (and equally good) option.</p>

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<p>It’s also easy to research in ChemE at Berkeley
 after all, Berkeley is a major research university with enormous numbers of the highest-caliber faculty, along with thousands of grad students. So again, the difference in the ability to do research is negligible.</p>

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<p>Of course, that’s the whole point.</p>

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<p>I’m sorry, but this is just naive idealism. Sure, it may do a “disservice to what makes universities great,” but the reality is, Berkeley is just as good as Columbia, esp. with a scholarship like Regents in hand. So yes, fit is important, but the ultimate choice often has to come down to cost–not everyone has the comfort of being able to choose on which fits better, esp. when the cost difference is so great. But again, if the OP can pay for it easily, then that changes things. My sense was that it’s difficult.</p>

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<p>I’ll add to the OP that Columbia does not include any of the SAT scores of its nontraditional students, whereas Berkeley does. These nontraditional students are admitted to General Studies at Columbia, but they will be in the same undergraduate classes, with the same professors, etc. They will be your peers as well. Berkeley would have comparably high scores if it only took the top X% of those enrolled in their undergraduate degree programs and reported only their SAT scores.</p>

<p>I don’t think the caliber of your peers will be very different–Berkeley attracts tons of the very brightest students (many have said that the top 25% of Berkeley’s student body is comparable to the student bodies at top-10 private schools), and of course there are those who are “weaker” that bring the SAT ranges down. So I’d say that the undergraduate populations at Berkeley and Columbia are comparable (though Berkeley’s is a bit different since it’s a public school, so it’ll attract a different type of student–often those with lower incomes, etc.).</p>

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<p>phantas: it is for this reason that rankings are bad, they compare apples to oranges when they try to flatten distinctions between columbia and berkeley.</p>

<p>i don’t think your deduction makes sense because you can’t compare. further, columbia only has overlap with general studies in the arts and sciences and not engineering, in engineering there is no age limit of applicants. but once again, a fact you were unaware when you posted.</p>

<p>i have never once said berkeley wasn’t a great option, i have only meant to provide arguments and information to help the OP in making the decision. if berkeley wasn’t a reasonable choice then the OP would not be agonizing over this choice. i know students in his situation that have chosen columbia, and those that have chosen Berkeley (or fill in your awesome state school with merit funding). and no one can put a price on experience.</p>

<p>also: HELLO of course opportunity costs go both ways, that is what makes them opportunity costs. i have never denied there aren’t reasons not to go to columbia, but that isn’t my goal here. it is to provide reasons to go, and allow the OP to make up his/her mind.</p>

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<p>UC Berkley is actually better than all 8 ivies for engineering, I would say UC Berkley, especially with having the Regents Scholar and the financial luxury. Columbia, however will offer more diversity and NYC, you should also consider where you would personally fit better.</p>

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<p>with the regeants scholar
why not berkeley?</p>

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<p>the regeants scholar seems to be the deciding factor, i would say Cal</p>

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<p>admissionsgeek, you keep on talking about how the graduate school engineering rankings do not apply to undergraduate engineering rankings
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<p>so lets try **undergraduate engineering **school rankings from USNWR:</p>

<p>Undergraduate Engineering Rankings
3
 UC Berkeley
26. Columbia</p>

<p>and now for ChE undergraduate:
2
 UC Berkeley
not ranked
 Columbia</p>

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<p>ladygogo:</p>

<p>what is the methodology used for the undergraduate rankings? perhaps because i’m trained to be skeptical at all data and treat it as helpful, but not definitive, i prefer not to engage in silly uses of that data. if anything it gives you a universe of thinking, but not an actual truth.</p>

<p>it doesn’t change the fact that at a head-to-head comparison the data by itself is not helpful. because rankings have biases (they ask individuals who are unfamiliar at times with programs to rank them) and there are individuals who have biases against columbia’s program because of its quirkiness (it is ranking Reed poorly even though it is a better school than most of the other schools). but there are reasons still yet to apply to columbia and attend. the cohort in terms of performance at columbia is top notch - seas admits some of the best, most impressive engineers in the country. this is irrespective of rankings, and most individuals will concede that your cohort makes the experience. they have some of the most impressive outcomes with engineers going on to lead extremely successful lives in all walks of engineering, business and politics. by every metric, seas attracts the best engineering students. </p>

<p>considering that columbia seas doesn’t often lose students to cal eng, or uiuc eng, or a handful of schools with better engineering reputations (rather it mostly loses to schools that are considered peers overall at an undergraduate level - mit, caltech, hyp, stanford), i think it is entirely reasonable to conclude that in this case the rankings seem to be especially irrelevant. </p>

<p>frankly it sounds like a false rallying cry of Cal boosters to prove that it is better than anything real. the fact of the matter is they are different experiences, and the rankings do not allow for nor do they respect this fact.</p>

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<p>Screw rankings and any argument about experiences.</p>

<p>Why would you advocate someone go into debt over school when the free option is just as good if not better than the expensive one?</p>

<p>Do you REALLY think coming out of school with an $80k ($20k/yr) debt hanging over their head is a good thing? Why start off your adult life like that if you dont absolutely have to? </p>

<p>Half of what’s wrong with the (first) world is people trying to live above their means. Don’t lead this kid in the wrong direction.</p>