I genuinely need a strong advice. I have been accepted to both University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and University of Maryland, College Park. I wish to study Computer Science. When I searched for the college rankings, University of Maryland ranks much much higher than UNC. But UNC has much larger endowment!
One of the factors which is making me consider Maryland more is that I am an international student and there is only 2% international community at UNC, so it might just make it difficult for me to adjust at UNC.
Please give your thoughts people! Really confused.
Maybe you are looking at Computer Science graduate school rankings? What rankings are you looking at? UNC is really nice, considered a bit higher level overall. UMD is a good school and has good CS, but I think UNC - CH is more selective, harder to get in if out of state and even instate. A big elite public like UNC will not be shabby in CS. What does the endowment matter to you directly? 2.6 vs 3.0% internationals is not so different but UMD has 10,000 more undergrads.
As an international student, what matters is whether or not employers in your home country prefer one of these universities. If either of them will get you a job once you go home (and yes, even computer science majors need to plan to go home after their OPT expires), then go there. If neither one is preferred in your home country, you can safely choose the one that is the least expensive/easiest to get to/best weather/cutest students/whatever. The difference in ranking really doesn’t matter at all. Truly.
UNC-Chapel Hill is a great school. I think you would love it there. Good professors, smart students and the campus is very nice. BUT in terms of international students (and food), you’re right. There aren’t that many international students and it shows. NC State in Raleigh has more international students and larger community than Chapel Hill.
UMD-College Park is very well respected. It’s been on the upswing now for several years. College Park is no where as nice as Chapel Hill. It has many more international students and community and it shows. Not just international students but even among the American students, the population is more diverse. So you have the Asian Americans, the Ethiopian Americans, the Muslim Americans and so forth. I don’t remember seeing this diversity in Chapel Hill. This means a wider variety of food available (grocery stores as well as restaurants) in the surrounding community.
@Vishal6669 I went to Maryland. It is a GREAT place to go to school. For an international student I would think it would be a much more comfortable atmosphere and more accepting than UNC. You are right outside Washington DC with Embassy Row area and the international flavor! There is so much culture in the area and it is so accessible. There is a metro strop right on campus to take you to downtown dc and the international airport! What more could you want!? Plus access to Baltimore and Annapolis is easy as well. There is no end to the opportunities for internships with major corporations and government and the on campus opportunities are great as well., I had a friend who had a job working in the computer department and got a job straight out of school based on that job! He still works for Johnson and Johnson after all these years! Employers respect a Maryland degree and the computer department is very well recognized. Have you visited the school? The professors are very hands on and welcoming. They like interaction with students and I even had a professor attend my wedding and my baby shower years after graduation. You can also get into well respected graduate schools. I was accepted to Georgetown Law from Maryland. I highly recommend it especially for an international student. Taking my daughter around to colleges we looked at both UNC and Maryland. UNC is a much more regional school. They only are allowed to accept 18% of their students from ot of state as dictated by their state legislature. As a result they have a very narrow view of the world. I don’t think that is a positive for a university. Good luck to you!
Maryland is much more diverse and I agree with fbhsmom about the proximity to DC. My son went to UNC-CH. Had a good four years but was happy to leave North Carolina and come back up north.
Kids can be very different. My son thrived at a small school and my daughter is thriving at her large school which is a lot like U I have a niece at Elon who was very shy but is blossoming there and loved her semester abroad.
I would suggest your daughter taking s couple days off from high school and revisiting UNC and Elon. This really helped my son with is decision on large versus small. Great choices for your daughter to have. Good luck to you and your daughter.
In general, yeah, kindasorta. For private universities, definitely. For public universities, it’s rather different, since the funding mechanism is different—and some state governments have rules in place that encourage the building of endowments, while others actively or passively discourage it. (And then there are endowments tied to a system rather than an individual institution, making it yet murkier.)
For public flagships, it’s worth looking at the funding climate. You can’t predict the future, but North Carolina’s legislature has taken a pretty overtly adversarial stance toward the public colleges in the state lately, while Maryland’s hasn’t. That’s at least as important as the current state of the endowment, really—so now we’re at one financial point for UNC (the endowment), one for UMCP (the legislative climate).
^I agree. Then again, the NC legislature has been acting weird for a while, the culmination being the law on transgender people, forbidding non-discrimination in public universities (or, encouraging discrimination). Chapel Hill is a great college town and UNC-CH is overall more selective, but your major + the current adversarial view of universities by the state representatives give me pause.
(On the other hand, I’m very sensitive -probably more than students - to officials feeling adversarial toward universities, as historically it’s been a very negative harbinger but our superiority over the past is our democratic system. The current NC legislature could be voted out and things could go back to “NC is proud of its world-class university system”.)
UMD’s college of CS (CS has got its own college!) is among the best in the country. In particular, Cybersecurity is an area of specialty where they have few rivals among all public universities.
Did you get Honors College a UMD? It’d make your life easier there.
However, College Park is not as nice as Chapel Hill.