UNC vs UW-Madison vs UMD for Computer Science

@barrons Thanks ! It seems that you vote for UW-Madison. I am also very fond of this school. There is only one concern,you know, the long cold winter…

@tk21769 Thank you for the detailed reply ! It is really tough to make a final decision.

They are all strong. In terms of faculty research prowess, UW-Madison, UMD, and UT-Austin may have a slight edge over UNC, but all of them are far more than good enough to prepare you for grad school or a job. Remember that for grad school and getting a job, what you do yourself and your own abilities will be far, far more important than which of these schools you choose.

Also, not having an engineering school pretty much doesn’t matter at all for CS (unless you want to concentrate more on the hardware side).

So, IMO, your decision should come down to non-academic criteria. Weather? Fun college town? How international it is?

I will be biased toward Wisconsin as I am a Badger at large, though I was there for grad school. The CS dept is fine and Wisconsin has a relatively strong engineering school. You can take courses in ECE and their stats/math depts are also very strong, well George Box was still teaching when I was there. They also have a large Chinese community so you should not feel lonely ~ I was assigned the number 215? student from Mainland China. :slight_smile:

It is cold, but you will get used to it. Madison area did not enough tech companies when I was there, so many CS/ECE graduates were recruited to SV, especially those ECE undergraduates to Intel.

Time may have changed, but I don’t know. Wisconsin used to be one the most progressive universities in the country.

That has changed with growth at EPIC (6000 workers) and smaller companies around area. But many still go west too.

@PurpleTitan Very insightful !

@ewho HaHa,how do you know I am from china mainland. Nice to meet you!!!

@ewho Could you please give me your wechat? here is my wechat: cqd373658559 .

BTW, I don’t know where in China you are from, but Madison is about as cold as Beijing (yet I don’t hear Tsinghua and Beida students complaining about the weather).

@PurpleTitan I heard its temperature is close to LiaoNing province or JiLin province? Ha Ha~~

?? Beijing winters are about the same as those in the southern part of the DongBei.

@qdchen7878 qidi chen, guess who I am

@plaseletmein888 Pan 富帅 哈哈哈

;

All three are excellent; both Madison and Chapel Hill are quintessential college towns, with Madison having an edge in terms of internships for CS and Chapel Hill having an edge for weather. Note that both are going to suffer MAJOR funding cuts, those to Wisconsin have already been decided (someone calculated that the funding cuts would be equivalent to closing the school of engineering and the nursing school.)
In the end, I’d choose UMD, because for an international student its location is better: major airport, public transportation, easy access to most of the East Coast’s major cities.
Also, no funding cuts that I know of (and in fact there should be some funding influx to the CS school at least).
Will you be allowed to live in a dorm? Does any of these three have a Living Learning Community for transfers, so that you’re acclimated quickly into the university’s culture?

@MYOS1634, UW-Madison has what is essentially a dedicated research endowment (separate from its regular endowment), though. Though funding cuts are a concern.

WARF–(yes related to heart drug warfarin invented at UW) has about $3 Billion dedicated to UW science and research.

The budget has not yet been decided and will not be until next week. Then it goes to Governor who can still make changes.

@MYOS1634 Insightful ! I knew the tuition of UW-Madison will rise 3000$ per year for the next 4 semesters, which comes from the fund cut from the government. This is something that will reduce the attraction of UW for OOS students.

MYOS, I don’t know where you received that info. for Wisconsin, but it is inaccurate regarding the proposals.

I would recommend both Madison and Chapel Hill over Maryland for their campus and town environments. College Park would not be high on my list for ideal campuses, though it is certainly serviceable. While I agree Chapel Hill may be a bit out of the way (it does have Research Triangle Park and is beautiful), Madison has Chicago, and a bit further, Minneapolis. I personally wouldn’t recommend Milwaukee as a destination, but right now, I certainly would not recommend Baltimore either.

OP, are you thinking of deciding anytime soon?

@anhydrite The 14-15 tuition of UW is 26000¥ for OOS including international, 15- 16 is 29000$,16-17 tuition is 32000$ . I will choose from UW and UNC~