<p>
</p>
<p>I’m guessing the country that he comes from (I think Malaysia or Kuwait, maybe another) pays for his education in the US. They will stipulate particular colleges though, and Carnegie Mellon is probably just not on the list. He’s being intentionally ambiguous for some reason I don’t understand.</p>
<p>This forum has really derailed from its original topic…</p>
<p>If it must be know, I am from Colombia. My college fund, for reasons I am still not fully informed of</p>
<p>Covers public universities more extensively than private universities, for this reason schools like UMich are more viable than CMU. Now, ladies and gentlemen, can we please drop the financial topic and get back to the original premise?</p>
<p>Berkeley or UT will have the greatest access to technology employers. It hard to beat the cost of living in Texas. California is very expensive.</p>
<p>I am a current michigan student who was deciding between cal and mich. I honestly wished I picked cal. Cal trumps mich in regards to a few factors:
<ol>
<li><p>Location. Not going to lie, Ann arbor sucks. Its quaint and all, but if you care about trying to get internships or have lots of cool things to do on the weekend, then you should go to cal. Having all of san fransico in front of you is great.</p></li>
<li><p>Quality of education. This is the only area where mich trumps cal. The quality of education here is phenomenal there are tons of resources, and the professors are always free to talk to you. There is no issue of overcrowding. Lower level cal classes are notoriously large, so if you go there I would highly recommend sitting in the front row.</p></li>
<li><p>Reputation. A lot of kids here like to believe michigan is such an amazing school. It really is not. It is an average quality top 25 school. Cal has the most distinguished faculty in the world and its reputation is excellent. No one outside of Michigan is awed when you tell them you go to U of M. Cal is internationally known as an exceptional school.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I am trying to transfer out this semester. If you have any questions about my experience please feel free to shoot me an email. And please, don’t make any decision until you have visited, sat in on a class, met a good number of students, and considered whether or not you’re willing to deal with stupid instate kids (this is really only applicable to mich).</p>
<p>Everyone else, feel free to flame at me, I go on college confidential like once every 2 months so I def won’t respond to any of your criticisms.</p>
<p>
Cal’s average ACT/SAT are not significantly better than Michigan. According to collegeboard, Cal has more people in the low range 18-23 ACT but a slightly greater percentage in the 30-36 range. A school like Vanderbilt/Harvey Mudd easily trumps both, where as Cal and Michigan are still on the same tier. </p>
<p>
Agree, though Ross/Engineering/CS students do not have much difficulty finding internships.
At Cal, you probably get overshadowed by Stanford kids though due to the proximity.</p>
<p>
Both are large state schools, both have lecture halls of 200+ people. </p>
<p>
true, I taught abroad where I met people from different states and countries. For example, people from Minnesota or Washington don’t really know how good Michigan is. I think the US news ranking for public schools is terrible. Berkeley is #1 undisputed. But Michigan is better than UVA and UCLA. #16 Texas deserves to be before those two. Then UVA and UCLA should be tied at #4. Also UIUC too far down at #11. </p>
<p>But people from places like Minnesota/Washington probably don’t also probably don’t know how high up in the rankings WUST and Pomona are either. </p>
<p>
geez, someone sounds a bit sensitive</p>
<p>“Everyone else, feel free to flame at me, I go on college confidential like once every 2 months so I def won’t respond to any of your criticisms.”</p>
<p>I’m reminded of a little kid sticking his fingers in his years going “lalalalala I can’t hear you lalalalala”</p>
<p>I’m sure there’s plenty of slackers at Berkeley too. Berkeley is definitely more prestigious, no one’s debating that, but how far is that gonna get you? I think it’s more like a bar than a continuum. Berkeley and Michigan are both above the bar that more prestige doesn’t get you anything.</p>
<p>suburbanwanabe. Perhaps this is the real reason why you are so down on Michigan:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/transfer-students/1578956-housing-violation.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/transfer-students/1578956-housing-violation.html</a></p>
<p>Good luck wherever you decide to transfer. Try to be more intelligent than those “stupid instate Michigan kids,” the vast majority of whom would be smart enough to know to never get caught doing what you did.</p>
<p>^ Good find. That said, some of these points still need to be addressed:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This doesn’t make them any less smart than someone who is equally smart and less social.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>People who aren’t affiliated with the university are actually moving in large numbers to Ann Arbor from places like the Bay Area and NYC. They wouldn’t be if Ann Arbor “sucked” or lacked for things to do. I also discussed where one might look for Computer Science internships in southeast Michigan earlier in this thread.</p>
<p>Besides, if Berkeley is so rigorous, how are you going to find the time to travel from Berkeley to San Francisco on a regular basis?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It’s also the most important of the four aspects you list, in my opinion.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This doesn’t make sense. Being in the middle of the top 25 would actually be very rigorous.</p>
<p>What matters is not what the average person on the street thinks about a university. What matter is what top employers and adcoms at top grad schools think about it.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The Michigan students I’ve met here have usually been quite intelligent. And for whatever reason, most of the ones I’ve met have been from in-state.</p>
<p>To the OP:</p>
<p>Canadian universities might be worth considering if you don’t get into either Michigan or Berkeley or if you need to make a financial compromise. Their international tuition is significantly lower than you’d pay at the best US universities, whether public or private. Also, at one time, McGill offered in-province tuition, which is extremely cheap, to citizens of various countries. These countries included much of Latin America. I can’t find any evidence that this is still the case, but it’s worth investigating.</p>
<p>I attended McGill for a year and loved it. I wasn’t in Computer Science but have heard that their program is notoriously rigorous. That said, by all accounts, Waterloo is even stronger in CS. The culture was different from US universities, although there are still plenty of campus organizations and activities to participate in. The campus is just outside downtown Montreal, so there’s plenty to do.</p>
<p>Incidentally, I’ve heard great things about Colombia and would love to visit sometime.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>The OP states: “I am a current michigan student who was deciding between cal and mich. I honestly wished I picked cal. Cal trumps mich in regards to a few factors:1. Intelligence of undergrad body. “</p>
<hr>
<p>More students now take the ACT than the SAT: <a href=“https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACT_test[/url]”>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACT_test</a></p>
<hr>
<p>The Ivy Interquartile (25th to 75th percentile ACT Score is 30-34 [Ivy</a> League ACT Scores Comparison](<a href=“http://collegeapps.about.com/od/theact/a/act_side_x_side.htm]Ivy”>Ivy League ACT Score Comparison for Admission)</p>
<hr>
<pre><code>Total Students/75% and Above-30 < Students
</code></pre>
<p>Brown
6133/4599 </p>
<p>Columbia
8274/6205 </p>
<p>Cornell
13935/ 10451 </p>
<p>Dartmouth
4194 /3145 </p>
<p>Harvard
7200/5400 5400 </p>
<p>Princeton
5113 3834 3834 = Harvard + Yale over 30 ACT=9,234</p>
<p>U Penn
10301/7725 </p>
<p>Yale
5414/4060<br>
Total Over 30 at HYP 16,959 </p>
<hr>
<p><a href=“http://obp.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/pubdata/cds/umaa_cds2013-corrected08292013.pdf[/url]”>http://obp.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/pubdata/cds/umaa_cds2013-corrected08292013.pdf</a>
Total Students 30ACT < Students Ratio(Michigan/(Harvard+Yale))
Michigan 27979 16,367 177.25%</p>
<hr>
<pre><code>Total Students 30ACT < Students Ratio(Cal/(Harvard+Yale))
</code></pre>
<p>Berkeley 25574 15344 166.17%</p>
<hr>
<p>In sum, the upper 75% cohort of the students at Ivy schools who have a minimum of 30 on the ACT totals 16,959 at Harvard, Princeton and Yale.</p>
<p>In contrast: 1) there are nearly as many students on the Michigan campus with an Ivy level ACT score as Harvard, Princeton and Yale combined; 2) in particular, for every 100 students on the combined Harvard/Yale campus with an elite score (above 30), there are 177 such students on the Michigan campus alone; 3) on a smaller student total, Cal has a fractionally higher (1.4%) ratio of students with elite scores, but has more than 1,000 fewer students than Michigan with elite scores.</p>
<hr>
<p>The OP states: “Reputation. A lot of kids here like to believe michigan is such an amazing school. It really is not. It is an average quality top 25 school.” </p>
<p>In fact: 1) were Michigan average quality top 25, it would be ranked 12.5/13 in the country; 2) the ranking referred to is probably the USN&WR ranking, yet all 3 of the major GLOBAL rankings rank Michigan in the top 15-25. Clearly the ranking referred to is an outlier. I believe it was the Princeton Review that ranked the undergraduate teaching 6th in the country…again, clearly not an average school.</p>
<p>After reading, re reading, researching, evaluating, researching some more, and taking into consideration everything I know, I have come up with my final list:</p>
<p>1 - University of California, Berkeley
2 - University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
3 - University of Texas at Austin
4 - University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
5 - Georgia Institute of Technology</p>
<p>This is the end of this thread. I thank everyone who took the time to post constructive opinions and useful information, they’ve been greatly appreciated. </p>
<p>Wish me luck!</p>
<p>Looks like a good list! Best of luck to you 
(BTW, are you applying for Fall 2014?)</p>
<p>"This is the end of this thread. "</p>
<p>Internet 101: Just because you are the OP doesn’t mean you dictate when a thread ends.</p>
<p>If you are thinking computer science JOB right after undergrad, you absolutely come to the Bay Area ---- hands down. You can even go to San Jose State and you’ll be interning at Apple, Google, and the rest by your junior year. Of course, Berkeley is at the top of the group in the Bay Area. To get these positions at any of the other schools you’re considering, you’d have to be at the top of your class.</p>
<p>If you’re thinking PhD after undergrad, any of the schools can get you there, but again Berkeley has the most CS prestige with the adcoms. Almost every CS grad from Berkeley is PhD material.</p>
<p>One theme at Berkeley. My non-Asian friends at Berkeley tell me the place is too Asian. My Asian friends at Berkeley tell me the place is too Asian. They all tell me the CS workload is brutal and you won’t have a social life.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Not in CS no you don’t. Maybe top 1/3 in terms of employability but not anything amazing.</p>
<p>Well ladies and gentlemen, after many months, I finally got my anwers: Accepted at UC Berkeley, Michigan, Gatech and Texas (and rejected at Illinois funnily enough). </p>
<p>Guess I’m going to Berkeley! Woot woot!</p>
<p>Still: Go Blue! Go Jackets! Go Golden Bears and Hook 'Em Horns! ( And screw Illinois!)</p>
<p>Once again I’d like to thank everybody who posted constructive information and opinions here, they were much appreciated.</p>
<p>God bless you all!</p>
<p>Congrats! Go Bears!!</p>
<p>Congrats AGoodJoke. Your decision was pretty easy once you gained admittance to Cal. Best of Luck!</p>
<p>suburbanwanabe, your points below are incorrect and grounded in ignorance. </p>
<p>“1. Intelligence of undergrad body. Michigan kids are smart, but the vast majority are not intellectual by any means. They are predominantly kids who were social and smart and did not “try” hard to get into college. Their natural intelligence got them there. What this means is that a lot of kids are extreme slackers who complain about not getting good grades. Cal is filled with some of the smartest kids out there. It is much more competitive but I feel like you will be pushed to do better.”</p>
<p>Really? fascinating. Michigan students are not intellectual. Please define intellectual. Quantify it for me. And then demonstrate how you apply your algorithm to an entire student population with over 26,000 undergraduate students. </p>
<p>For the record, according to their latest common data sets, Cal and Michigan’s freshmen classes have almost identical stats:</p>
<p>AVERAGE GRADUATING HIGH SCHOOL GPA (unweighed)
Cal: 3.84
Michigan: 3.80</p>
<p>MID 50% SAT
Cal: 1220-1490 (mean around 1360)
Michigan: 1260-1460 (mean around 1360)</p>
<p>MID 50% ACT
Cal: 27-33 (mean around 30)
Michigan: 28-32 (mean around 30)</p>
<p>Care to explain how Cal’s student body is so much smarter and more intellectual than Michigan’s if they graduate from high school with virtually identical GPAs, SATs and ACTs?</p>
<p><a href=“http://opa.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/2012-2013.pdf”>http://opa.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/2012-2013.pdf</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://obp.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/pubdata/cds/umaa_cds2013-corrected08292013.pdf”>http://obp.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/pubdata/cds/umaa_cds2013-corrected08292013.pdf</a></p>
<p>“2. Location. Not going to lie, Ann arbor sucks. Its quaint and all, but if you care about trying to get internships or have lots of cool things to do on the weekend, then you should go to cal. Having all of san fransico in front of you is great.”</p>
<p>LOL! You are lying. Ann Arbor is awesome. Certainly nicer than Berkeley. Are you kidding? Berkeley is closer to Oakland than it is to San Francisco…and you can feel it. Last I checked, Oakland was one of the most dangerous cities in the US. I think you meant to say that if you want to experience a large city, Berkeley is more strategically located than Ann Arbor. But to say that Ann Arbor sucks is ridiculous. Most people agree it is one of the nicest and funnest college towns. And if being close to a large city helps students find internships, students at many of the country’s finest universities would be jobless. Think of Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, UIUC etc…Students from those universities find internships and full time jobs by the thousands. Major companies do not recruit locally, or even regionally. They recruit nationally and even internationally. You should check the list of companies that recruit at Michigan. It includes virtually every single Fortune 500 company.</p>
<p>“3. Quality of education. This is the only area where mich trumps cal. The quality of education here is phenomenal there are tons of resources, and the professors are always free to talk to you. There is no issue of overcrowding. Lower level cal classes are notoriously large, so if you go there I would highly recommend sitting in the front row.”</p>
<p>I am glad you at least recognize that. I am not sure Michigan trumps Cal here, but it is certainly excellent.</p>
<p>“4. Reputation. A lot of kids here like to believe michigan is such an amazing school. It really is not. It is an average quality top 25 school. Cal has the most distinguished faculty in the world and its reputation is excellent. No one outside of Michigan is awed when you tell them you go to U of M. Cal is internationally known as an exceptional school.”</p>
<p>Are you qualified to speak for the academic or corporate worlds, both of which rate Michigan among the top 15 universities in the country, if not the World. I agree that Cal has the advantage in this department by the way, but that does not make Michigan any less spectacular reputationally. Cal’s reputation matches Caltech’s, Chicago’s and Columbia’s. Michigan’s is more like Cornell, Northwestern and Penn. No matter how you look at it, Michigan is highly regarded in academic, corporate and intellectual circles. </p>