My son got USC trustee scholarship for full tuition and also UC Berkeley regent scholarship. What would you do in this situation and which one would you choose?
Net price at each after applying financial aid and scholarships? Intended major?
UCB will be about 32k after scholarship and USC will be around 17K for room and board.
He applied in UCB as BioEngineering major . Whereas, in USC he applied as Comp. Engg. and CS with pre-professional focus as pre-med.
I’d personally take Berkeley as it is the more famous school between the two, and I think it offers more opportunities for students and graduates as Berkeley’s resources are enormous. But in your son’s case, you’ve got to ask him which program he likes more. The program he got onto at USC is more appealing for me, but it might not be for your son.
My son likes both majors.He applied BioE in UCB because he couldn’t decide between pure premed and engineering.
He intends to be a doctor. In USC he chose CE and CS as he also enjoys that and Viterbi is known for it.
I heard that USC being private has more resources than UCB. Also, the class sizes are smaller than UCB. Also, huge funding from Alumni is being granted to research.
But, by all means UCB has better reputation, thus the confusion!
Both schools have on-line class schedules that show class sizes. USC does have smaller class sizes, but its class sizes (particularly in common pre-med courses) are not that small. E.g. USC general chemistry is 3 lectures of 240-280 students, compared to Berkeley general chemistry with 3 lectures of 526 students and 1 lecture of a few hundred for a version specifically for chemistry and chemical engineering majors.
However, given his plans, in the medical school case, the $60,000 savings at USC would be of some help in reducing the debt he will have after medical school (see https://www.aamc.org/download/152968/data/debtfactcard.pdf ). Computer science or engineering is also more employable than bioengineering at the bachelor’s degree level if he does not get into any medical school (most pre-meds do not get into any medical school), although at Berkeley, he could attempt to change major to EECS (very competitive) or L&S CS (need a 3.0 in prerequisite CS and math courses).
Thanks for your candid response. Being a regent scholar, will there be any preference if he later decides to change the major from BioE to EECS? or can he change major before staring the freshman year.
Thanks again.
Taking CE/CS as premed would be silly. Engineering profs are meager when giving good grades. In contrast, a lot of of bright kids make bioE as premeds and plenty of them get into Harvard, UCSF, JHU Med, Yale and the like. In fact, Berkeley kids count the 2nd biggest group at JHU Med, only second to their own premeds. Berkeley premeds count the largest at UCSF, very close second at UCLA Med School and UCSD Med, and 5th at Harvard Med. USC reps are nowhere near the top list… They’d be lucky to have sent 2 or 3 to those med school.
Class sizes maybe slightly smaller at USC, but still big. Intro classes are big in almost all research universities. If your son avoides such scenarios, he should have applied to LACs, not research-based universities.
As for resources, it would be a big joke for someone to claim USC has more resources than Berkeley has. Maybe Stanford, but definitely not USC. Maybe you confused resources with one-on-one tutorials. I wasn’t talking about that. I was talkinga bout what Berkeley has that the students can tap and use of. Berkeley has them much more than USC has.
UC Berkeley is far better at EECS
(FTFY) with the average (not even median) salary of EECS being 92k
USC on the otherhand would be a far better choice for premed as it’s easier to get a higher GPA there which med school really boils down to (GPA/MCAT).
BioE at Cal generally has high average GPAs. Since he’s already in CoE, he also has the choice of switching into other majors like EECS if he wants to pursue the field.
http://engineering.berkeley.edu/academics/majors-minors/change-major describes the change of major procedure in Berkeley College of Engineering. Being able to change major is not guaranteed. However, L&S CS is also an possibility to change to if he wants to go in that direction (and may have slightly more schedule space to add pre-med courses to).
Here is some Berkeley pre-med information: https://career.berkeley.edu/Medical/Medical.stm
@ucbaalumnus, Thanks for all the information. I had gone through this already.
But, Do you know if he keeps his GPA high, will he be given priority since he is awarded as regent scholar, [in case he doesn’t want to do medical track and focus more on engineering and switch to EECS major since he enjoys CS and Math etc too]?
I am just exploring these options as possibility since kids sometime change their mind. And, he can consider all the facts while making his final decision for college.
He also has got UCSD regent for BioEng: Biotech, UCLA [fast track award], UIUC, Umich and few other. But, currently narrowed to UCB vs USC.
Thanks for your time!
my daughter has also got trustee scholarship and wants to do Biomed eng/premed . She also got into UCB, UCLA regents, UCSD and after much thought and consideration she has decided to take full tuition track in USC. If your son wants to go to Med school then GPA is very important. In USC it will be easier to get high GPA than Berkeley and also being private university and trustee scholar lot of research opportunity.And $60k in the bank for future med school is also not bad option.
I would choose USC given the trustee scholarship. If your son was set on engineering and computer science, Berkeley would be worth the extra cost - if it could be easily afforded. However, given his interest in pre-med, I would save the money and choose USC. I believe as a trustee scholar, he’ll get more care and feeding and a better value for your money.
@entrekenmom , Thanks for sharing your decision. I think main issue with UC’s is to not able to get classes which you want and that can potentially can delay your graduation. But, being a regent scholar and getting priority consideration, that should be okay. After talking to some BioE major undergraduates at UCB, GPA in BioE seems not too bad at UCB.
But, may be other benefits such as early research opportunities, summer overseas study and research etc. are better at USC and probably outweigh UCB.
This is commonly said, but seems to be hardly ever true, unless someone is picky about not taking classes at 8am or some such.
@ucbalumnus, Thanks for your response. Good to know it as I had read it this only on college confidential. S being regent scholar, we didn’t care much to ask this assuming that he will anyway get priority to choose his classes. He liked ROHP event , UC Berkeley campus and overall environment. All students were very positive and enthusiastic.
We are still deciding. We will visit USC one more time and UCB on Cal day and finally decide. Thanks for all your feedback and time to answer me!
Regarding getting classes. I have a lot of friends with kids in college at small schools, big schools, private schools and public schools. Pretty much across the board they have problems getting the classes they want. The thing about a big school, is that you may not get the exact time for the class you want (i.e. you may have to go to school on Fridays or take an 8am class), but you can get them.