My child got undeclared major at UCSD and he had kept CS as only choice, he also got in UCI CS with honors (CHP)
Now UCSD is at #14 and UCI is at #29 in ranking
What is better ? join ucsd as undeclared and hope for CS OR join UCI CS ? - Any suggestions
What % of undeclared major at ucsd will get in CS?
He should go with the direct admit at UCI. The rankings are based on graduate studies, not undergrad. It is very difficult to switch into CS at UCSD unless you have an outstanding GPA in the Pre-req classes and even then it is not guaranteed.
What would be best thing to do ? U Washington(major in physical sciences)/ UCSD (undeclared)/ UCI CS Honors
Both Udaw and UCSD would require him to compete in freshmen year for CS
Do you know how “rankings” are done? They’re based on criteria that’s easy to measure such as admit percentage and average gpa of entering students, and answers to surveys. Funny thing is when academics send out these surveys and include a few ringers (eg. they give a list of schools for the recipient to rank, one or two that don’t actually have that major, even though the instructions always say to rank only schools with which they are “personally familiar” the schools without the program end up ranked about where you’d expect based on their general reputation. in other words the validity of the surveys for differences of a few positions is zilch.
I’ll put it simply. It is foolish and uniformed to worry about a difference in a survey with little reliability. Compounding the folly here is ignoring the things that actually do matter!!! Unless your child is fortunate she/he won’t get into CS at UCSD, so bye-bye CS career. But already has the major at Irvine. Furthermore at a large UC where kids struggle to get the classes they need, getting priority enrollment is worth its weight in gold. To say nothing of faculty members assigned to work with the kids, counselors, housing, etc.
But go ahead, push your kid to UCSD. Ranked higher, right?
We visited UCI and compared it with U Daw , UCSD is going to be tough to go in as undeclared and then another year of struggle and compete to get to CS. UCI is not know for it’s CS however they have a separate dept for CS, we did attend the CS scholars day last weekend and it felt good, however How many of students get to good cs internships remains unknown, whereas UDAw doesn’t have that problem. yet again you have to compete again in freshmen year to get into CS with a chance of 30%
If he is only interested in CS, then UCI is the obvious choice, since entering the CS major is highly competitive at Washington and probably even more so at UCSD (there is a post around here claiming that only students with 4.0 GPAs were admitted to the CS major at UCSD).
Go for the direct admit. If he’s really interested in CS, he should not choose a program that he likely won’t get into.
He just applied for CS at all the schools with no second choice, so definately 110% he wants to major CS and has been pursuing the same by taking CS electives CS AP, summer internship and one college course last summer. I kind of agree with all of you , getting a direct admit to major of his choice should be the one .
Thanks !
UCI with CHP should be a no-brainer: great CS program, good location for CS internships, lots of perks.
The odds are really high he wouldn’t make it into his major at the other two: I wouldn’t take that risk since he knows exactly what he wants to do.
Does anyone know what are the popular internships at UCI CS
There are no such things as “popular internships”. Any internship that’s good for you is a good internship.