Unsure Engineering Student, Princeton, Harvard & Cal

Colleges and Universities A-Z Princeton University
1

<p>From San Jose area, California
Got into Cal EECS (electrical engineering & computer science), Princeton & Harvard</p>

<p>Not sure if I want to pursue Engineering--may switch to Applied Math, Economics, or even IR...</p>

<p>No financial aid, so cost is going to be a factor...as is distance</p>

<p>I visited all the schools and found Princeton a little quiet (maybe I visited on a bad day)--and I am strongly considering general social scence and how lively a school is, in my decision</p>

<p>Any tips or advice? Much appreciated--thanks.</p>

2

<p>Well if you are not sure if you want to study math/engineering, then Harvard or Princeton would be the way to give you educational excellence in virtually every department. Cal Tech is great if you know you want rigorous mathematics, but I would rule it out if you are looking for a broad liberals arts education.</p>

<p>That leaves Harvard and Princeton. Between the two I picked Princeton and got in early decision, and that was that. Sooo, I am not going to recommend one or the other but highlight the differences between the two.</p>

<p>First off, neither Princeton nor Harvard are party schools, nor are they rowdy/raucous campuses in that regard. Between the two I would say that the difference is negligible.</p>

<p>If you don't plan on going to graduate school, I would tend towards Harvard as it has slightly more international name recognition that Princeton does (and national name recognition to some extent.)</p>

<p>However, Harvard has a higher incidence of TAs teaching classes, in particular the lower level ones (sure, there might be a nominal professor in charge but the TAs do the brunt of the work and instruction.)</p>

<p>At Princeton you will have a lot more access to the professors since you don't compete with graduate students, and you will have a lot more access to do research as well.</p>

<p>At Princeton you will also have a wealth of job opportunities/internships from NY and Philadelphia and a very strong alumni connection (stronger than Harvard's undergrad alumni in many respects.) </p>

<p>If you plan on going to graduate school Princeton is a great choice since it is known as the premier undergraduate institution (more so than Harvard) and you are well trained to go to business school, law school, medical school and all other sorts of professional and graduate schools across the country.</p>

<p>To sum up, both universities are pricey, but the education you get is worth the money you put into it (and hopefully the effort, etc.)</p>

3

<p>
[quote]
Cal Tech is great if you know you want rigorous mathematics, but I would rule it out if you are looking for a broad liberals arts education.

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</p>

<p>Cibbir H: UC Berkeley is commonly called Cal and is different from Cal Tech, though that often does throw people off. Cal is superior than Cal Tech in engineering, though Cal Tech is arguably the best science university in the world. But Berkeley has a wide variety of excellent departments across the board: humanities, economics, etc. though it is a larger, less personal university than H or P.</p>

<p>PB&H: This comes down to fit totally as measured against cost differences and what you are willing to or can afford.</p>

<p>If you wanted to stay in engineering for sure, it's Cal. But with the options you want, all three are tremendous. </p>

<p>If you are smart enough to get into Cal EECS, you could do the quantitative economics track at Cal (there is a non-quantitative track too) and write your ticket to a lot of places. Look into the math required and see if you could handle it. And in this case, H,P, and B will offer you equal possibilities.</p>

<p>Prestige-wise: Well, that's pretty obvious.</p>

<p>Lively? I would think socially interesting and lively would be two different things. I would think coming from California Harvard perhaps Princeton would be a whole different kind of a thing and therefore interesting. But maybe it's not what you want. Cal is lively, though it's not a charm school that's for sure.</p>

4

<p>I would venture that Berkeley engineering isn't significantly better than Princeton's engineering, and with the very cutthroat competition at Berkeley (my school regularly sends dozens of students to Berkeley, so I have friends who tell me that students have been known to actively sabotage each other), I would pick Princeton. With a very much smaller student body at Princeton, you would get way way more attention and resources (academic support, research funding, etc.) at Princeton.</p>

<p>Princeton can be quiet, but it's close to NYC, which is as lively as anywhere can get. I personally like having the option. :D</p>

5

<p>I just advise against Berkeley if you have schools of slightly lesser, equal, or greater caliber because the cutthorat competition as Lord Asquith pointed out. Unless you like that; I don't think that belongs in schools, which is partly why my high school sickens me.</p>

6

<p>
[quote]
I would venture that Berkeley engineering isn't significantly better than Princeton's engineering,

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</p>

<p>As many people have noted, none of the Ivies (with the exception of Cornell perhaps) are tops in engineering, whereas MIT is first followed by Berkeley and Stanford tied for second in EE according to 2008 US News rankings. You could argue that at the undergrad level the vastly superior resources in these disciplines of Berkeley don't matter, but generally B's engineering is significantly better than P's.</p>

7

<p>Whoops, that was an embarrassing mistake on my part! I've usually heard UC Berkeley be referred to as just "Berkeley" but I guess it is the flagship of the University of California system.</p>

<p>In that, case, the subsequent posters have good points about Berkeley: big, impersonal, lots of bureacracy, difficult to change your major, etc. (In fact, I would generally say that for anything remotely mathy, go with Cal Tech over Berkeley.)</p>

<p>So the rest of my advice would remain the same.</p>

8

<p>
[quote]
difficult to change your major

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</p>

<p>Not for someone in EECS. The other way (from L&S to EECS), yes.</p>

9

<p>From each school's common data set:</p>

<p>Percentage of classes with fifty or more students:</p>

<p>Brown=12 percent</p>

<p>Harvard=13 percent</p>

<p>Berkeley=15 percent</p>

<p>Percentage of classes with fewer than twenty students:</p>

<p>Brown=65 percent</p>

<p>Rice=60</p>

<p>MIT=61</p>

<p>Berkeley=58 percent</p>

10

<p>I'd go with Berkeley here. Unless you're immediately drawn to one over the others, it's hard to justify paying an extra $20,000 a year.</p>