Son got accepted at University of waterloo for mechanical engineering with coop.
We are canadian so pay Canadian fees.
He also got accepted at university of Toronto for engineering science and still deciding between waterloo and uoft but heavily leaning towards waterloo.
He also got Waitlisted at Berkeley for mechanical engineering and though the chances of getting accepted from waitlist are really low, I wanted to explore this as we would only get 1 week to make a decision if this happens.
I heard waterloo and Berkeley ratings are not far apart for mechanical engineering. Is that correct?
The cost for 5 years of mechanical engineering at waterloo is 150,000 Canadian dollars and during this he will work at 6 coop terms of 4 months each, so about 24 months of paid coop and experience expected. I have not accounted for cost of coop accommodation if not close to home.
I also heard that waterloo students are well known in silicon Valley and get coop and jobs opportunities there?
The cost for Berkeley 4 years in comparison is roughly 450,000 canadian dollars. If we do get into waitlist is this really worth the 3 times exorbitant fees? If yes what factors would make it worth?
Will Canadian employers accept students who studied at Berkeley? He is still not sure where he will work eventually so trying to explore both sides.
We live in Berkeley. Among the people that I know who hire engineers in this area, Waterloo has a great reputation.
Take a look at this web site and notice where Waterloo falls: Top Feeders to Tech
I wouldn’t spend time thinking about Berkeley in your case. Apart from how unlikely it is to get off the waitlist, I don’t think it is worth paying another 300k when you have such great options already. Waterloo and U of T are excellent universities.
The financial difference cannot be justified with outcomes.
In addition, Waterloo is preprofessional with its co-ops v. UT, and your son prefers Waterloo (UCB would be closer in atmosphere to UT) so I’m not sure UCB would even be the best choice for him if he were to get off the waitlist.
Thanks so much for replying. Can you elaborate a bit on what you mean by waterloo is preprofessional?
I am still trying to understand differences between UofT and waterloo so maybe what you are saying will help me with that.
He is leaning towards waterloo because its very popular in Canada due to the coop program and 24 months of experience at 6 different companies over 5 years.
UofT on the other hand has 12-16 months Professional Experience Year(PEY) at one company after 2nd or 3rd year, so he is still reviewing both options in terms of academics, environment and coop options.
In terms of the quality of the education, I do not think that there is much difference between Waterloo, versus Berkeley, versus U of Toronto. You are comparing excellent, versus excellent, versus excellent.
Coops are a big deal. Having some experience through coops can help a great deal when looking for a job. In my opinion it also gives students a “real world” perspective when they get back to studying, which can help a student get more from their classes.
Being able to work in the US depends a great deal on having the legal right to work in the US. This is certainly not guaranteed assuming that your son is not already a US citizen or permanent resident. If your son does have the legal right to work in the US, employers down here know how strong both Waterloo and Toronto are. They are well known in the US, particularly for engineering and computer science.
In my experience as a Canadian graduating from very well known US universities, it can be very tough finding employment in Canada. It seemed to me at the time that Canadian employers seem to prefer to hire from the very good Canadian universities. For engineering while many universities in Canada are excellent, Waterloo and Toronto are probably at the very top of the list.
I would not spend the extra money to go to UC Berkeley.
by “preprofessional” I mean that there’s a more direct interest in learning in order to do well on the job v. learning because physics is so exciting and math so cool (the former is common at Waterloo, the latter at UToronto, wrt Engineering - obvs Math at Waterloo is different for instance.)
Co-op means you experience a lot of different professional environments and you must pick and up and go - so you don’t have time to really make friends or find a community but you figure out what environment, what tasks, etc, are the best for you, you become resilient&adaptable, and you develop an impressive resume. PEY allows students to have a college life first, to make friends and put down roots in Toronto and as part of their college, then to learn by doing and show what they’re able to do professionally, with in-depth experience (which may well be in Toronto though not necessarily, but because you stay 12 or 16 months you have time to get integrated into your new city). If your placement is good, great, but if it isn’t, you have to make it work anyway because a lot of further job placement depends on that performance, so it’s make or break. Both systems would appeal to different types of students.
This is another point in favor of the Canadian universities. UC Berkeley does not have a co-op program. You can do internships in the summers, but if you want to do a co-op during the school year, you must withdraw from the university in order to work, and reapply to return afterwards. This can cause complications for international students since you are not a student while you have withdrawn from the university. Another good reason to just put Berkeley out of your mind
I have a recent U of T grad and a recent Waterloo grad. I graduated from U of T. S23 might end up at U of T for math. I agree with everything that’s been said so far.
D graduated from the Faculty of Math at Waterloo (where CS is housed) a couple of years ago. She’s a dual citizen, so she also got domestic tuition at Waterloo. When she was looking for schools to apply to, we visited Berkeley. We were not treated well by the people running the admissions visits. I felt that if we were to pay so much money for an OOS university, we should be treated better. I immediately crossed it off the list and she never applied. She was accepted to U of T as well but decided not to go there as big bro was a current student and she wanted to do something different than him.
D was quite successful at co-op, but did find it stressful to be constantly applying to jobs and moving (only one was in Waterloo) every 4 months. There’s a lot of competition in co-op applications. I never heard of anyone NOT getting a co-op position, but there’s a Cali or bust mentality at Waterloo, so those who don’t get a co-op in Silicon Valley kind of feel bad compared to those who do. D never got one in SV, but she was not as interested in tech as she was in finance, so she was never that interested in SV co-ops. She now works for a major bank. Most of her cohort now works in Silcon Valley.
You can look at Waterloo earnings for 2022 co-op students here
The only reason S23 didn’t apply to UWaterloo for math was that they require a 5 on the Calculus BC exam for students graduating from a US high school. D graduated from a Canadian high school, so wasn’t subject to that requirement.
As a last minute surprise, my son got acceptance for UCB off the waitlist today.
He has already accepted the offer from waterloo.
Based on all the factors like waterloo coop, Canadian employers hiring from Canadian universities, cost etc. we are thinking of sticking with waterloo, but will appreciate any other input as we have less than a week to accept Berkely offer.
Wow! That really is a last-minute waitlist acceptance.
UCB would be super expensive, and Waterloo is already a great option…
But if he is still thinking about UCB, here are some practical details, given that it’s already July 24. He should know that class registration for first year students has already happened. Many first-year classes are already full with waitlists (for some classes, even the waitlists are full). I’m sure he could make it work if he REALLY wanted to attend UCB, but he may not be able to get everything that he wants in his first semester.
To find out, he could look at the 4-year plan for his degree, figure out what classes he needs, and then look at Berkeleytime to see what is still available and what he might be able to take.
Looking at this… Chem 1A and Engin 26 are full, with large waitlists. I don’t know how much math he’s coming in with, but Math 1A is full with a small waitlist, 1B and 53 still have some space in the early morning lectures. Engin 7 still has space. Physics 7A is full with a small waitlist. If he is coming in with AP physics credit, Physics 7B has some space, but only in the 8 AM lecture, which makes it difficult to combine with an 8 AM math lecture.
As far as housing is concerned, I believe they guarantee it for everyone admitted from the waitlist, but I’m not sure what housing will actually be available.
This late into the summer, I would stick with Waterloo. In addition to the points you made, class registration difficulties, as mentioned by Tamagotchi, would make this 1st semester an un-necessary nightmare.
I’m reading this unfortunately too late, but I sure hope you chose Waterloo. We’re from California - we live about 30 miles from Berkeley
My son ended up at Waterloo (he was not admitted to Berkeley for CS, no surprise given how oversubscribed it is) and now that I see the Canadian system, I am insanely impressed. Berkeley’s classes can be 500-1000 kids, but Waterloo’s lectures stop enrollment at 120 or under. He’s taking the advanced track which maxes out at 60 kids. The process for transferring into CS at the end of freshman year was clear and went smoothly. Only down point was not getting more credits from APs coming in.
And you’re paying $10K-$16K/year for all this??? And that’s Canadian Dollars!!! Why would you go anywhere else let alone pay $50K USD more for it?
today is the last day to make decision and we are choosing waterloo. He got 2 merit scholarships at waterloo even further reducing our overall cost over 5 years by around $15K CAD.
The regular fees per year for waterloo is ~$18K CAD but with residence and meal plans it lands around 30-35K CAD per year whereas Berkeley is $100K CAD for us per year plus cost of travel few times a year so we could not justify it.
No one we know or in his school is going to any US university, whereas 30+ students in his class are going to waterloo as he was in an enriched Toronto high school program so lot of high performing kids in his class, there will be lot of known faces which I think help.
We dont know how being totally alone in a new country would have felt, we dont even have anyone we know,
He will probably try a coop in the USA while in waterloo or pursue masters if he wants after completing his bachelors. We also think he will get more mature with time while learning to live alone just 150KM way from home so he can come home every weekend if he wants.
Waterloo has 14 study terms of 4 months each. 6 out of these terms are coop terms giving him 24 months of work experience before he graduates.
All these risks and uncertainties and high cost ultimately could not justify Berkely for us. Waterloo is number 1 in Canada for engineering and we are sticking with it. It still feels good that he was accepted at Berkely and will take it as an achievement all our life.
I don’t think the US and Canada are all that different, so that adjustment hasn’t been that big a deal for my son. But I don’t think Berkeley is at all the experience that you really want for college, and my son is having a really good one at UW. It is disappointing to make friends and then have them go off-stream for coop, but he’s been allowed to stay in his dorm for the summer term while he’s on Coop, and is having a great time seeing the people who he met in 1A and were on coop in 1B. (I hear the other drawback is that finding off-campus housing is difficult.)
Maybe it seems like the grass is greener on the other side, but one big difference that your son will not regret missing is walking past tent-cities in SF and Oakland. Both cities are having a lot of serious crime issues plus serious drug issues in SF where the attitude has been that people should be able to live however they want meaning no one gets help to overcome their drug addiction.
There’s also been a spate of violent robberies on women in Oakland that are going uninvestigated despite the assailants dropping ID cards. It’s pathetic. The Bart is pretty sketchy and people have found drug paraphenalia including needles under the seats. I don’t know how much of that is encroaching on Berkeley’s campus, but UW seems overall pretty safe though there seem to be a fair number of bike thefts.
Berkeley may have a good reputation, but it’s difficult to graduate in 4 years (you might be in better shape - I’ve heard that those paying OOS/OOC tuition may get preference in the enrollment), and your classes would be large and impersonal.
I’m so happy your son’s going to Waterloo! It may not seem as exciting as going to another country, but I think you’ve made the right decision.
I have heard both ways about the 4 year graduation - our public high school’s principal specifically said that to us on a tour when I asked what colleges people attend. Apparently they were recommending people go nearby like Nevada to graduate in 4 years.
Off topic for this thread, but you can look up official graduation rates at College Scorecard. UC Berkeley 4 year graduation rate is one of the highest in the US for a public university. https://collegescorecard.ed.gov
Waterloo is a great choice for the OP, but UCB is a fine school as well… no need to bash it.
Graduation rates of a college mostly have to do with:
Admission selectivity. Academically stronger students are more likely to graduate and less likely to need extra time.
Student financial resources (with the college’s financial aid factored in). A very common reason for dropping out or taking gaps or needing extra time because of reduced course loads is running out of money or needing to work more to afford school.
From College Navigator, the four year graduation rates are 22% for UNLV, 41% for UNR, and 82% for UCB. But this is not surprising, since UNLV and UNR are much less selective at admission than UCB. The Nevada schools also have somewhat higher percentages of Pell grant (below approximately median income) students (46% at UNLV, 30% at UNR, 23% at UCB).
Much of an individual student’s academic strength is already baked in by 12th grade. But the financial factor means that choosing a college that is easily affordable reduces the risk of non-graduation or delayed graduation compared to choosing one that is only barely affordable if every bit of financial luck goes the right way.
