<p>Hello all,
Recently I visited all four of the colleges listed in the Thread title. I was not impressed with Cornell or CMU and I really want to get out of state. Also, if I attend Berkeley EECS as an undergrad, it will be hard to get into their grad school. Consequently, I'm currently leaning toward UIUC for Computer Science (I wasn't accepted at CMU for SCS but for ECE) with a 12000 merit scholarship which is cheaper than all of the schools listed. Would it be wise to give up an Ivy League/private/other elite engineering public school for Illinois. Will I be able to get similar recruitment opportunities from companies such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft (I know they recruit the most from Illinois), and Apple. Also, if I don't want to go directly into industry, is there good grad school matriculation to other top engineering schools like MIT, Stanford, CMU and Berkeley. Thanks a lot.</p>
<p>thanks for the reply metehan…anyone else</p>
<p>UIUC is a destination for companies that travel to do on-campus recruiting, but some companies do recruit mainly locally due to convenience (Berkeley and Stanford and some lesser known schools like San Jose State and UC Santa Cruz would be the local stops for “Silicon Valley” companies).</p>
<p>thanks. bump…</p>
<p>I think it is a great move if you are positive that you definitely want to go into CS. I’ve recruited at UIUC for EEs and I can tell you the career fair was enormous. Microsoft and Google definitely recruit there. I don’t think you have anything to worry about unless you want to change fields to an area where the ivy prestige matters more. The other consideration if it matters to you, are who your peers are going to be. I would think that you’d meet a much more diverse and international crowd at an Ivy. I’ve heard that UIUC can be a little parochial at times. Nonetheless, it is a first rate education with world class faculty, and if you do well and find good research, going to a top grad school is not at all unreasonable.</p>
<p>I do not think that there is any risk with UIUC - it is well regarded, although not quite as much as Berkeley, and reduced cost is always a helpful thing in the long run. I am not sure I would personally pass up undergrad at Berkeley for UIUC, especially for the indicated reason - you may find that Berkeley is not a desirable grad school for you. I had looked at applying there, only to discover that they had essentially no presence in my areas of interest! Indeed, when you graduate you are likely to find that only a handful of schools that are researching what you want to pursue, and may find that the best schools are not even highly regarded overall - this is one of the many reasons why graduate rankings are interesting but not actually useful.</p>