Hi,
I am a transfer international student.
I got offers from UCSD in math-computer science and Umass Amherst Honors College in computer science.
I am interested in artificial intelligence and plan to go to grad school.
My parents prefer me to go to UCSD since the ranking is such higher than Umass, but I prefer Umass since their CS program is very good and has an artificial intelligence concentration.
Which school should I go to?
What other factors should I also consider?
And how does the ranking of school affect my admission when I apply to grad school and job opportunities?
PS: If I go to UCSD, then what is the chance to switch major to CS?
Thanks!!!
I will take UCSD no question. I just seems a much stronger program for undergrad to me. UMass does have a good CS yes and you will do fine there. There is no need to specialize in AI as an undergrad. In any CS program you will have some electives anyway and you can take them in AI related offerings.
Oops, I only noticed now that you have math-cs at UCSD. I don’t think that matters too much as for AI you will want a lot of math skills so having more than most CS software people is good . My daughter was a math-cs undergraduate and went to grad school in CS theory and machine learning.
Grad school will depend on your getting to do research. So it is important that your find research groups that will take on undergrads. You can find that in CS and computational neuroscience for instance at UCSD. I’m not sure how much each of these uni’s get involved with undergrads. UCSD has a research portal to look for positions but you have to have a login. You should try to do research over next summer. Maybe the AI group at UMass would be helpful with that but I’m sure UCSD has groups in that area.
I think that UCSD will be a bit stronger but either will get you jobs and research depending on you and your abilities, skills, job hunting skills, how much research background you can manage to get before applying to grad school…
ditto-ditto with the above comment.
“And how does the ranking of school affect my admission when I apply to grad school and job opportunities?”
Grad school admissions depend on your grades, your GRE scores, any related research or work experience, your formal statement of purpose, and letters of recommendation from your professors. Rankings barely matter at all. Don’t worry about that.
Employers have their own lists of colleges and universities to recruit at, and they don’t care about rankings either. If you and your parents are concerned about employment, you should contact the career centers on each campus and the CS departments themselves and ask specifically about placement for international students.
I would recommend that you and your parents take another long hard look at U Mass Honors. Not only did you get admitted to the major you want, but the Honors program probably offers smaller classes and better contact with professors so it would be easier for you to get into a research group.
I did a bit researching on transferring to CS major, if you take about 4 CS classes, most applicable to freshman, and get high 3s like 3.8 and above you have a good chance of being admitted, but not guaranteed. There was one poster on reddit that claimed her friend got 3.8 and was rejected. Maybe her friend was not telling the truth but 3.8 is top 4% of the GPA pool for my kids college(Muir).
For straight going from BS to PHD, one kid go 3.9 something GPA but she claimed her research and so so GRE( she didn’t think it was important) was what got her accepted to PHD at MIT.
Thanks for your information!!!