<p>I am a European computer science student and I have been admitted at USC, UCSD and UCSB for a master in Computer Science and also in UK's Oxford again for master in Computer Science.</p>
<p>I am very interested in data management, web mining and information retrieval, therefore USC's Data Science master is perfect course-wise and greatly out-weights the other offers I have.</p>
<p>I am torn between USC, UCSD or even Oxford though for my final decision since Oxford is constantly above in rankings and UCSD sometimes has much better reviews than USC.</p>
<p>In order to make my decision I would like some information regarding Cost of life at San Diego and LA. Additionally, extremely important is the employment after graduation issue. Does any of these universities offer better ground to get into a big name company than the others ? I wouldn't mind to work in USA after my studies.</p>
<p>So I am expecting anyone with insight in these universities to help me regarding:
1) cost of life
2) how is life at each area
3) course-wise I think USC has the advantage with Oxford being the worst one since it is very theory-oriented.
4) graduate job prospects (at least for the 4-5 years after graduation)
5) are rankings really important ????</p>
<p>Rankings matter very little in computer science. I’d look for the school that offers you the type of program you’re most interested in.</p>
<p>You shouldn’t have a hard time finding a job with a CS Masters from any of the schools you’ve mentioned. Logistically, it would certainly be easier to look for work in the US if you’re going to school here.</p>
<p>USC is in the middle of a huge city, while UCSD is on the outskirts of a large, but not huge, city. I was on the Oxford campus in 1981, and it seemed pretty isolated. I would guess living expenses are higher if you go to USC and UCSD.</p>
<p>Hey, thanks for the information. This is what I also think about rankings since each department offers different courses and specializations.</p>
<p>As for the prospects I think that indeed usc and ucsd have the same potential but sometimes people mention that EU universities are not so well known in USA but this should be different for Oxford I guess.</p>
<p>In terms of companies established in either of the two us areas, LA or SAn Diego is there one that has the upper hand ? I mean, it could be easier to land an internship or full-time job if I am close to more companies, since personal interviews are much more worthy than distance-telephone ones.</p>
<p>I went to USC for undergrad in CS and did my phd at UCLA, so I am familiar with the program and grad admissions to some degree. </p>
<p>Out of the three schools you listed, USC ranks the lowest in terms of its academic reputation. Its grad school is gigantic, and it reflects in the quality of its graduate class. As an undergrad there, both my peers and I did not think too highly of our graduate school counterparts. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, it is changing, as USC has hired on some really high caliber researchers in the past few years. Although I still believe UCSD to be a better graduate engineering school, for your case since you want to do data science USC’s Information Sciences Institute in Marina Del Rey is actually quite top notch. If you can get a position there that would be a massive resume boost. </p>
<p>Comparing locales, LA is hands down the best of the three. Oxford is in the middle of nowhere, and while San Diego is home to some tech companies, most notably Qualcomm, LA has quite a strong tech scene. You have internet/software companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, defense contractors like Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed, and the second largest cluster of startups in the US behind Silicon Valley. </p>
<p>To answer your questions:
LA and SD will be comparable
UCSD is much nicer than USC, and has an absolutely amazing campus. That said, if you have a car, LA has much more to offer culturally
USC ISI is high caliber, but overall Professors at USC are still lagging a bit behind UCSD. That being said, both UCSD and USC produce more and higher quality research than Oxford.<br>
Job prospects will be the same. Just to correct something you said earlier though - all US companies are very familiar with top European (and Asian) schools.
Yes and no. Ranking are important if there is a huge disparity between the schools (MIT vs. University of Arizona) . But for schools that are close in ranking it doesn’t matter too much. </p>
<p>Wow, thank you for the detailed information uscla100. You pretty much covered all the points I wanted ;p I guess since I already know the specialization I want to pursue it would be best to go to USC and finish the Data Science course since the quality against UCSD is not such big and still offers too much.</p>
<p>I will try to get in touch with the Information Sciences Institute as you suggested.</p>