<p>I'm having a hard time deciding between these four schools. I'm looking to do a double major in physics and computer science, and will more than likely pursue a PhD in one of those fields, but I would also like to enjoy (to some extent) my years as an undergrad. My questions are: what are the advantages/disadvantages of each of these choices? If I choose to go to graduate school immediately after undergrad, will it make a difference? If I don't choose to go to graduate school/decide to wait on getting my PhD, will a degree from a more well known computer science program (the field in which I would more than likely try to find a job) have a huge impact?</p>
<p>UChicago is very strong (stronger than Cornell and UNC) in high performance, parallel computing, due to its affiliation with Argonne National Labs and a faculty superstar in that area. Since this is the area where CS and physics meet, it makes it an especially good place to combine the two. UIUC, which hosts the National Center for Supercomputer Applications, is also very strong in this area of CS. I’m not sure, but I’d guess that UChicago is better in physics. Cornell and UNC have stronger CS departments overall, but UChicago CS students don’t seem to have trouble getting jobs at cool companies. I really don’t think you can go wrong academically or career-wise with any of these choices, freeing you to focus on other things like cost, size of school, core/no core, …</p>
<p>Chicago, the third largest city in U.S., should be a plus if you like arts, museums, concert, musicals and an active social life, while other schools are located in small towns.</p>
<p>Cornell Scholars has the mentoring interaction with a dean or senior faculty and then the funding for independent research. In the fields that you are interested it is important to have a strong mentor to guide you, may be open doors for you, recommend you to a leading scientist in the field, etc.</p>
<p>Bump…</p>
<p>In schools as large as Cornel, UIUC, and UNC, you may need a structured mentoring program to get faculty guidance and input.</p>
<p>At U Chicago, without such fanfare of faculty mentoring programs, my son had absolutely no problem getting hours, hours, and hours worth of mentoring, guidance, chit chat whatever you call. He even got “private” tutoring from his faculty member who let him skip two course sequence prerequisite to jump right into the advanced course he wanted to take. This quarter and summer, he will be working with a faculty on a research project that has a very high potential to result in a published research paper as a second author </p>
<p>This may not be a typical experience, but I got a very strong impression that kids who want to get involved with and get guidance from faculty members have no problem doing so at U Chicago. </p>
<p>Note that in very large universities, even the research focused universities, getting a meaningful research engagement as an undergrad without a structured mentoring program may be difficult. At least, that was the case when I was a PH.D.student at a university rated as one of the top 5 in my field. The so called undergrad research assistants were glorified errand boys/girls, since any juicy engagement with real substance was all done by graduate student research assistants. Now, that was many years ago, so I may be completely off base. </p>
<p>Regarding the OP’s happy dilemma, you will do fine in all of these institutions. If cost is not such an issue between UIUC with a merit award as an out of state student vs. UNC, I would definitely chose UIUC. UIUC is an international powerhouse in your field. UNC is not at the same level. Between the two public schools, I would go with UIUC hands down - stronger program and outstanding international reputation than UNC (somehow, UNC and UVA, though outstanding schools, do not seem to carry much weight in international scene).At cornell, you will get mentoring support,that’s great. </p>
<p>If you are 100% sure about CS and Ph.D. level graduate school, I would say Cornell and UIUC are better bets than U Chicago. However, if your change your major, and your are naturally better fit for U Chicago (the intellectual education, student body less into hardy partying, easy access to faculty of all fields, etc), then it would be a shame that you ended up in a place that was a better fit mostly for your initial direction before you change you mind. (for instance, UIUC is one of the most active Greek schools in the nation. You may like it. However, if you don’t, you may find this rather annoying, if you know what I mean.)</p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>Riemann</p>
<p>I was both a math and physics major a number of years ago so I’ll try answering from a physics prospective. I’ve also studied computer science science, but it was before computer science was a common major. </p>
<p>Firstly, UIUC or Illinois is well known in physics for graduate school. It has nearly 300 graduate students and is possibly the largest Ph.D. program in the US. At the undergrad level it’s strong as far as state universities go. Only UCBerkeley would be named as a better state u for undergrad physics. Illinois is a big engineering university and its computer science is just as good as its engineering. So between Illinois w/ $12K merit and UNC you have to consider the fact that you are out-of-state in Illinois and in state at UNC. Right? So you actually end up paying more at Illinois w/ $12K merit than at UNC, but it may be worth it for your interests.</p>
<p>Cornell and Chicago are private universities and difficult to compare to Illinois. Cornell is unusual for a private university because it operates “contract” divisions for the State of NY. The largest is its agriculture school. Cornell Arts & Science is highly regarded and is comparable to UChicago College.</p>
<p>As far as studying physics, Chicago and Cornell are both great physics departments. I also believe that they are both a step up from Illinois for undergrad physics. It’s really splitting hairs comparing Cornell and Chicago physics departments. Cornell has more of a condensed matter physics bent compared to Chicago’s diversity. Chicago has an edge in terms of history, people and events in physics.</p>
<p>As for computer science, it is much bigger at Cornell, where there’s an engineering school, than at UChicago. You have to remember there is a part of computer science that deals with hardware and design. However, in terms of employment I doubt there’s much difference between Chicago and Cornell.</p>
<p>I think you have to look at factors other than physics and computer science to decide. UChicago College has a common core of arts and science. Cornell is in Ithaca NY. In any event I’d scratch UNC and UIUC off the list. How fun can Urbana Illinois be?</p>
<p>Have you visited either Cornell or Chicago?</p>
<p>Riemann:</p>
<p>What’s going on with this?</p>
<p>You were named a “Dean’s Scholar” in Arts & Sciences at Ivy League Cornell. You cannot still have UNC and UIUC on your list. Cornell beats Illinois at its own game - both have many frats, are in college towns, have many instate residents (Cornell is about 45% from NY), Cornell is better both in physics and in CS than Illinois. Cornell is a big engineering place too but orders of magnitude better than Illinois. I’ve worked in Chicago. “Urbana” CS majors are everywhere, but a majority of them are not any good as programmers. UChicago outdistances “Urbana” in CS both for a job or for getting into a PhD program, despite what this above Chinese born <em>hyeonjlee</em> claims. The UChicago CS department is a small low-key non-engineering CS department that produces good programmers and does all the theoretical CS curriculum for Ph.D. program preparation. </p>
<p>You have to look at Cornell versus Chicago. What’s the better fit for you?</p>
<p>I would go to Cornell considering the OP’s dual interest in Computer Science and Physics. The fact that he is a Deans Scholar there is just icing on the cake.</p>
<p>Two of my main concerns at this point are research opportunities and grad school placement (grad school meaning PhD programs) in physics and, to a lesser extent, CS. I was also curious about placement/recruiting from organizations other than graduate schools (NSA, Wolfram Research, IBM, basically any large R&D organization that might hire a B.A./B.S.). On a related note, I was able to visit Chicago a couple of weeks ago and loved the campus/faculty/courses as well as the sense that I could change majors fairly easily should I choose to (I doubt I would have to, but its always nice to have the option), although it was very cold, and students seemed very busy preparing for exams (as would be expected).</p>
<p>With respect to research ops in physics for undergrads, Chicago is very unusual. There are a fair number of campus groups with large undergrad representation:
Here’s a selection:</p>
<p>A) condensed matter physics:</p>
<p>[People[/url</a>] </p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://schusterlab.uchicago.edu/]Schuster”>http://schusterlab.uchicago.edu/]Schuster</a> Lab | Quantizing computers one circuit at a time.](<a href=“http://jfi.uchicago.edu/~jaeger/group/JaegerLab/People/People.html]People[/url”>People)</p>
<p>B) particle physics:</p>
<p>[People[/url</a>]</p>
<p>C)astrophysics (click on group members & name of undergrads and you’ll see 3 who got their names on papers)</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“Juan Collar | Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics | The University of Chicago”>http://collargroup.uchicago.edu/]Collar</a> Group, Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics](<a href=“http://hep.uchicago.edu/cpv/people.html]People[/url”>People)</p>
<p>I also attended Columbia in NY, where were no undergrads involved in research. Possibly, Cornell is different.</p>
<p>Getting into a good physics grad school, where you’ll be paid a stipend for living allowances requires a) good grades in major b) a good physics GRE test score and c) good recommendations from profs. You control your own destiny on how well you do. However, there is some snob effect in that big name departments favor students from top undergraduate schools.</p>
<p>CS grad school is highly theoretical, and a Ph.D. in CS is rarely a degree valued outside of academia. I don’t know much about true CS Ph.D. programs except they are much smaller than physics ones. MS in CS is largely for non-CS undergrad majors or foreigners seeking a CS credential. </p>
<p>One thing I should point out about CS at Chicago is that classes are small. After the first year where classes run up to 50-60, all classes are about 20-30. Courses in CS only get offered one quarter a year. Cornell runs a big operation in CS where practically every course for the major is offered each semester. At Cornell you’ll be in very large classes with assorted engineering and science types for at least two years. Here’s what this years courses and enrollments were at Chicago:</p>
<p>[University</a> of Chicago Time Schedules](<a href=“http://timeschedules.uchicago.edu/view.php?dept=CMSC&term=448]University”>University of Chicago Time Schedules)
[University</a> of Chicago Time Schedules](<a href=“http://timeschedules.uchicago.edu/view.php?dept=CMSC&term=449]University”>University of Chicago Time Schedules)
[University</a> of Chicago Time Schedules](<a href=“http://timeschedules.uchicago.edu/view.php?dept=CMSC&term=450]University”>University of Chicago Time Schedules)</p>
<p>You can easily get yourself into NSA, which travels to a lot of major cities for recruiting. They want a resume and transcript. Wolfram Research, I doubt really recruits. You just need to apply directly. As you are probably aware, they are located in Illinois about 2+ hours outside of Chicago. IBM you’d probably want to talk to in Carolina and not in NY. </p>
<p>Both Chicago and Cornell are big name universities. Both are highly regarded in the workplace. Chicago has a very big name in business. A friend of mine who has worked as programmer on Wall Street for 25 years said there would be no difference between the two. There’s also a new placement office program called CCIB Financial Markets to put math/science/CS majors into financial sector jobs.</p>
<p>Again, I think you just pick by your tastes. You need to visit Cornell, if you haven’t already.</p>
<p>Also, you haven’t posted over on the Cornell site. You probably need to hear what they have to say.</p>