UCSD Jacobs vs. UChicago

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
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<p>I received a full-ride at UCSD as a Jacobs Scholar. I was also accepted at the University of Chicago with 10k in merit aid and 15k in financial aid BEFORE the merit aid was awarded, which may change the financial aid amount.</p>

<p>I've been advised to "negotiate" for more financial aid. On the other hand, I've also heard that this is bad, but everything has been very vague. Is there any way to use my full-ride at UCSD to get more financial aid money at UChicago or other schools? </p>

<p>I'm sorry if the notion of bargaining offends anyone. My family can afford to pay for college in full if needed, so my question is if UChicago is worth the extra cost.</p>

<p>Which school should I choose? Is the prestige of UChicago worth more? How do both of them compare to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford?</p>

<p>My intended major is Computer Science but I'm very likely to switch.</p>

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<p>My situation was incredibly similar to yours (4 years ago). I received a full-ride from UCLA Engineering and also received the same financial package from the U of C (both the merit and financial package). I don’t think the financial aid ‘negotiating’ will work (you could try—my parents and I did—but they are pretty insistent on what they’ve calculated).</p>

<p>As far as the extra cost goes, yes, yes and yes. I came into college without really knowing what I wanted to do in spite of my declaration of engineering at the UCs I applied to. I don’t think I would have been very happy entering engineering. I will also say the intellectual experience I’ve had at the U of C along with the people I met and the career opportunities I’ve had have been amazing. I’ve worked in the city during the school year, I’ve grown through being in a new place away from home, I’ve hung out during the summers here with my friends and made new friends—the list goes on and on and on.</p>

<p>I feel incredibly fortunate to have had this opportunity—It was worth every penny. I’d say, come during the prospective students weekend, let the current undergraduates show you around and be prepared to have a wonderful, wonderful 4 years here.</p>

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<p>alreadydone – I am a parent and I wanted to say thank you for your clear and helpful response. Our family is in a situation very similar to yours and anonman. I would greatly welcome and appreciate any more input from you two or anyone else viewing this topic. Thank you.</p>

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<p>Kaukauna, absolutely—glad I could help. If any questions do come up regarding student life, employment opportunities, undergraduate focus, etc., feel free to ask.</p>

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<p>Thanks Alreadydone! Your advice was fantastic. I’d like a few more opinions if anyone else out there has extra insight into this situation.</p>

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<p>CaleySmith – thanks for the response. I saw your comments posted on another topic and I was very impressed with your reasoning ability. If you can, would you expand on the statement you made in this topic? Have you made this calculation for yourself? If so, what were the factors you weighed? I would appreciate any constructive thoughts you might have. Thanks again.</p>

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<p>kaukauna, carly claims to be a wait-listed student in this admission cycle. All her post here are downgrading the University, and the accepted students. I think you can find more unbiased advice. I’m a parent of a student, Class 2016. Good luck and Congratulations. UChicago is a superb school.</p>

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<p>Thanks Realeducation. Did you face the dilemma of having to pick between Chicago and little or no money and the State university and perhaps a large or full scholarship? If you did, how did you decide? Even if you didn’t face the dilemma, I’d appreciate your thoughts.</p>

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<p>kAUKAUNA, we did not apply for financial aid. But, I do understand your dilemma, it is so expensive. Good luck, and again congratulations on your kid acceptances.</p>

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<p>CS @ uchicago is a bit more theoretical and the department is quite small compared to other schools. From what I have seen, it feels like an extension of the math department. So, it is relatively easy to do a double major in math and cs - our S1 is doing just that. He thinks highly of the program and I don’t. In terms of rankings, it is wayyyy below UCSD and forget about Harvard or Princeton.</p>

<p>I think the intellectual experience one gets at uchicago is oversold. Our S2 goes to UW and his experience in not inferior to that of S1 in any way.</p>

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<p>I don’t want misconceptions to mislead anybody reading this thread so I’ll try to clarify. I took several CS classes to fulfill my major and they are not at all an extension of the math department. There are two overlap courses: complexity theory and formal languages that double-count as math electives. You will have similar offerings at every other school in the nation. If your concern is how to build hash-tables, self-balancing trees, and do projects like building OSes, python scraping scripts, and the like, you will have this experience. In no way, did I understand the department to be “too” theoretical or an extension of the math department (and compared to my friends at the UCs who were taking legitimate classes, the material was on par).</p>

<p>What is on point is the size of the department. CS is not the most popular major compared to CS at Berkeley for example. Why this would surprise you, I don’t know. This does mean that there are less fringe offerings–supply meets demand. There’s no mobile application development applications, for example. But if you want to deal with the fundamentals: networking, operating systems, architecture, etc. this is there.</p>

<p>I will say this finally. CS at Chicago will not compete with CS at Cal/Stanford/MIT/Harvard on a certain level. If you are set on doing CS/Engineering, go there; not because it’s impossible to do well after Chicago (because as evidenced by my peers at Google, Amazon, Palantir, and the thousands of HFT algorithmic firms where we place incredibly well), but because Cal/Stanford/MIT/Harvard have existent cultural infrastructure to make your life 30x easier (hackers everywhere, hackathons every weekend, etc.). Rankings make it seem like if you are comparing a kid at Harvard and a kid at Chicago for a job at Google, you’ll take the kid at Harvard. The causality is reversed: more kids are coming out of Harvard because more people have selected for it in the first place. When you are comparing the two kids, the kid at Chicago might be just as good if not better (or at least the better story), but just had a little bit of a more difficult time. On the basics level though, Chicago is not your local community college. Chicago is still an academic powerhouse that it is on so many other things; it’s rare to see the Cal hacker archetype coming out from there, but that doesn’t mean smart, hard-working future engineers at Chicago are doomed to live a life of sub-par engineers. IT just means they had to work that much harder in order to trade for whatever reasons they chose Chicago in the first place.</p>

<p>Regarding the intellectual experience thing, sure. IT’s marketing. IT’s a university. Universities market. I’ve gotten a lot out of Foucault and Nietzsche and Augustine. I’ve gotten a lot out of midnight discussions on apartment porches comparing computer systems to institutional systems and the internet as a panoptic structure that we are all mediated upon. If that sounds like a pretentious waste of time, it is a pretentious waste of time. If that sounds like an amazing way to live your college experience—thinking about the world and developing the intellectual curiosity and empathy to question it, you will have the time of your life here. I did. Chicago does not make kids intellectual. Kids come to Chicago because they want a intellectual experience. So is the ‘intellectual experience oversold’? Only if you believe such an concept/aesthetic was a replaceable commodity to begin with. I think it’s as simple as that. </p>

<p>[As a sidenote and my own personal opinion on x college versus y college with z money: it really doesn’t matter. Some things will make your life easier in some things but you guys are probably already used to working hard to get things that weren’t so easy, anyway. I learned this in college and when I was comparing full-time job offers, I didn’t get hashed about rankings or what other people had to say. I worked all throughout college to help ease the burden that my merit/fin aid package didn’t cover but it didn’t change my life that much; I’ll make back nearly the same amount of money in the next year at my job. What matters is asking the questions that are important to YOU instead of asking everyone else what they think about your offers. Is there a jazz group on-campus? Is school spirit at football games large? Is Greek life integrated or seen as separate? Am I competitive in engineering when I get out of college? Will I have an intellectual experience here? How much am I willing to pay as a premium to my options to have this opportunity instead? Will that opportunity cost matter in my overall salary potential? My own opinion is that your answer to all of the questions will matter little in your overall life trajectory. Even so, life is about trade-offs. Asking other people for their opinions is just asking for someone to make the decision for you. Instead be pointed with what YOU want in your life, and you’ll have an easier time actually getting it].</p>

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<p>Alreadydone - excellent, thanks. You put a lot of yourself into this and I appreciate it. I especially perked up while reading your opinion on choosing. Ultimately, I agree with you that it is the individual’s choice. Your own unique circumstances make it (probably) impossible for someone to design an algorithm (paying homage to CS!) which will do the deciding for you. But what I hope to gain from asking these questions is to get an overall feel and understanding of UC, which will aid a lot in deciding. You, alreadydone, and a few others are helping in this respect for sure.</p>