I was recently admitted (in-state) to both UCLA and UC Berkeley as an applied math major in the colleges of letter and science.
I understand that I would need to maintain a certain GPA threshold to declare my major. I was wondering if this process would be easier at Cal or at UCLA?
Furthermore, I was wondering which school would give me the most opportunities for an internship (particularly in data science/analyst)
Thank you for the advice/help!
@Mystrick77 . . . I don’t see anywhere where there is anything other than a 2.0 needed to continue to the major. Neither will be easy; Applied Math from what I hear is very difficult, with a good amount of mathematical theory.
I don’t think you’d have difficulty in internships from either school. As far as Data Science and Data Analysis, I know that people use these almost interchangeably, and from what I gather, they’re different. The first is more CS related, and the second is more analysis of, say, company data to help it implement programs to become more profitable.
Anyway, they’d both be great.
Thank you for your input? If it were you to make this decision, which school would you choose?
@Mystrick77 . . . my opinion is pretty irrelevant. You haven’t had a tug for one school or another beforehand? If not, proceed on…
Here’s what you can do. If things improve with the virus, hopefully you can go to Cal Day and Bruin Day, even though they probably occur on the same day. Check that. They’re not going to have either because both campuses have been shut down at least to the beginning of summer and you have to make a decision by May 1st. (They really should set that date back, but obviously not too late because Cal begins the 2020 year in mid to late August. UCLA starts in late September. And hopefully they won’t have to extend the online classes into fall.)
Make yourself a list of what things are important to you; we’ll call these qualities. You can assign weights to them because some will be more important to you. You’ll assign two columns: one for Cal, one for UCLA. Go through each quality and assign points to each university, and the university that is better in a particular quality, assign more points – or if you want, you can assign a max number of points, say, 10 to each of them. Those which you value most, assign more points to the one that is better in your eyes, say, 10 v. 2 for one school over another. It’s never going to be objective, because you’re only concerned about how you evaluate each school. Go through your list and then add up the points at the bottom. The one with most points wins.
Too methodical for you? Then go by your gut, and at which university would you be most disappointed in not attending if you chose the other.
All the best!