Hi, I am a senior who recently got into Penn State for applied data sciences as my major which means a direct admission into my desired major and I got into UMass Amherst for the exploratory track in the College of Behavioral Sciences but I plan to apply for the major Computer Science through the exploratory program.
UMass offers me a 5 year undergraduate and masters degree however I will have to go and take 4 specific course and get a certain grade in these courses and maintain a high GPA in order to get into Computer Science in UMass. I also got a $10,000 scholarship in this college. I am pretty confident that I will be able to do well in these classes considering I hold an A in my high school AP Computer Science class, but I also want to know if this is a risky chance to take.
Penn State offers me direct acceptance into my desired major of Applied Data Sciences however I know that I want to do my masters so I would have to go through applying for a separate Mastering Program which would be an extra year of studying.
I am very confused as to which college to commit to so any suggestions or experiences or thoughts would help.
Thank you so much!!
It really depends on a lot of factors. If you are interested in AI or informatics Massachusetts is top of the charts great. And pre admit into a stem masters is hard to ignore. And Massachusetts at the grad level is even stronger.
If costs are the same or manageable easily at both. And you like the campuses and activities equally. I would be heading to Amherst myself.
Also it doesn’t hurt that Massachusetts is the number ranked undergrad school in us for dining. It’s really at a different level than what my own d has at her school.
Penn State is a lot bigger and had great research opportunity as well. They have big time football. Massachusetts has the top ranked college hockey team. But football and game day is a big deal for some students.
Congrats you have two really fine options and I am sure you worked hard to earn these. Best of luck to you.
Are both affordable?
At Penn State, were you admitted to University Park or a branch campus?
What’s your SAT or ACT score, especially in Math?
Thank you very much and the only problem I am having with UMass is whether I should take the risk of going in without knowing for sure whether I would be able to get into my requested major. Is it easy to switch into Computer Science in UMass Amherst despite not being in the college for Computer Science?
They both are indeed affordable because I got a scholarhsip from UMass and in the end they both come to be around the same price.
I was admitted into University Park in Penn State and my SAT score is a 1490 with a 790 in math.
No, it’s quite hard because it’s selective AND competitive. You can’t know that even if you do everything right, you’ll be selected. Switching from Behavioral Science to CS is difficult because they try to keep the department manageable and since it’s so well known there are many, many high level candidates. So the risk is non negligible.