I need some help deciding on which school to go to for my major - Comp Sci
I currently live in San Jose so commute between SJSU is about 20 minutes away and UC Merced is about 2 hours while UCR takes 4 hours. I’m not too concerned about the campus itself because they all look good to me. Also tuition isn’t a problem for me.
What I’m really looking for is the university that has the best comp sci department (out of those three of course). I’m looking for a balance of in school education and some hands on experience as well. What really appealed to me is some clubs and groups that work together on CS projects and stuff so it would be nice if the school had a well developed club or some group of that nature.
SJSU is really close by and from what I heard about it, it has a relatively “good” computer science program with a lot of opportunities to get some real world experience. Besides that, I don’t know much about the other two.
Feel free to offer me any suggestions and advice, I really need it.
@MYOS1634 Costs are the standard tuition cost of any California residence plus dorm so around $14,000. This goes for both UCR and UC Merced. I got into their CS program at both.
I’d take CS at either UCR or UCM over undeclared at SJSU, because odds are you won’t get that major if you stick to SJSU. :s You can look at the major’s structure, see if they offer breadth and depth of courses, how many students are enrolled and graduate, how big the classes are.
SJSU would be the best choice if you were admitted directly to CS. But admission to the CS major is competitive (see: http://www.sjsu.edu/cs/practicalities/major-change/), so in this case I wouldn’t recommend it when you’ve been directly admitted to CS at UCM and UCR.
As for whether to go for UCM or UCR, the quality will be about equal. So go with whichever is the best fit, and/or whichever department looks better to you.
Unless UCM and UCR are unaffordable but SJSU is affordable, they would be the safer options if you are directly admitted to the CS major there.
Note: UCR is on the quarter system (three 10-week quarters in an academic year), while UCM and SJSU are on the semester system (two 15-week semesters in an academic year).
@MYOS1634 How hard is it to get into the CS program there? The requirements don’t seem difficult. Is there something else that they look into? Or is it the amount of people they can admit?
I know you didn’t direct that at me, but are you referring to SJSU?
Keep in mind that a 3.45 GPA in college in a competitive program that’s actively weeding out applicants is a very different beast than getting a 3.45 GPA in high school. Let me reiterate: A 3.45 minimum GPA requirement is a very high cutoff, and most that want to switch into the major won’t attain that. In addition, it could increase by the time you’re applying for the switch, and I’d consider that possibility very likely with how popular CS has been getting.
And on top of that, just making the cutoff GPA isn’t enough. It’s also competitive on top of that. So effectively you’d need to have a much higher GPA than the cutoff to have a decent chance of getting admitted, and even then there’s no guarantee because it depends on available space.
I’m not trying to say it’s impossible. I’m not trying to say that you personally couldn’t do it. I just want to make it very clear that having to deal with this kind of highly competitive application process when you have direct admit options is a very big downside, and not something to be taken lightly.
If you still want to go for it, then by all means do so. But know the difficulties going in and be prepared in case you don’t get admitted.
@PhantomVirgo Thanks a lot for the reply and yes, I was referring to SJSU.
I looked around for some more information and you’re pretty much spot on about the GPA cut off. According to some alumnus I would have to get a considerably high GPA in order to place myself near the top of the list and on top of that, the program picks the best and goes down the list. Throw in the amount of people that want to get into the program and the available space they have… it looks like a very hard program to get into.
I’m not the person that likes to risky stuff and this scenario is pretty risky in my book.
Please correct me if I’m wrong - You usually re-apply for your major during your sophomore year, correct? If so, if I don’t get in, I would I have to wait another year?
If that’s the case, I could be faced with another year of college which is something I don’t want neither do my parents.
Here are the options I can think of… (I may be over thinking this too much…)
Go to SJSU in hopes of getting into the CS program. If I get into the program, I stay. During that time, as a back I guess, I will apply to a UC. I know the numbers are low but its backup plan.
Go to Riverside/Merced because I got my major but may miss out on a better CS program if I go down this route.
Community College and transfer into a UC after two years. This is my least favorite option because I haven’t looked into this at all. This is more of like a final ditch effort.
Option 1 is a high risk, high reward scenario and it can backfire.
Option 2 is the safest in my opinion but I don’t know much about their CS program, not sure if its good or not.
Option 3 is pretty much a last resort option. Community college is taboo in my family and I know for a fact they would much rather pick the other two over this. They are pretty conservative…
Anyways, its all I can think about my current situation. It’s pretty nerve racking to say the least…
Right now, the demand is such for CS graduates that you should do quite well from ucr /ucm. Look at each university 's CS offerings per term, requirements, number of faculty…
Yeah, it’s a pretty high-stakes and high-stress situation when there’s competitive admission like that.
I don’t go to SJSU, so I’m not sure about the re-applying for your major thing. I just know that more in-demand majors have a strict application process.
Option 2 seems like the safe bet. UCM and UCR both have good CS programs. They just don’t have the advantage of being right in the heart of Silicon Valley.
There’s also option 4: Go to SJSU and attempt to switch into the software engineering major. I’m not sure how competitive it is compared to CS though, so I’m not sure how much safer that would be. And this only really applies if you know you want to go into software development after college (as opposed to grad school, where CS would probably be the better bet).
^actually, CS also leads to all kinds of jobs.
But CS and software development, although they’re in the same “field”, are different, so that OP may prefer being in his/her chosen major.
^ Oh trust me I know; I’m a graduating CS major. I wasn’t trying to imply that CS doesn’t lead to industry jobs, just that software engineering is more specifically tailored to industry while CS covers more theory that’d be useful if you want to go to grad school. Which doesn’t mean you can’t go to grad school with software engineering either, just that CS would generally be the better bet if that’s your intention.
And yes, that’s why I said it only really applies if OP knows they want to go into software development.