UW CSE (Direct Admit) vs. USC Viterbi Engineering CS (Presidential Scholarship)

College Search & Selection
1

I’ve been directly admitted into University of Washington’s CSE program, and also chosen as a Presidential Scholar for USC’s Viterbi Engineering school. At this point, money does not matter. I am a Seattle native so part of me is excited to have a change of environment if I do end up going to USC. I’ll be going to the visit day at UW on 4/17 and learn more about the program.

Below are pros and cons of each school.

USC
Pros:

  • Staying in a dorm exclusively for scholars
  • Scholarship recipients get access to some events/internships (not sure specifically what though)
  • Offered a spot in their undergraduate engineering honors program (access to a few networking events and some seminars)
  • I’d be part of the Quest Scholars network for QuestBridge (get access to some other networking opps and pretty much mentor incoming QB applicants)
  • I can easily switch between different engineering majors (though I’m likely going to stay with CS)
  • Strong alumni network (“Trojan Family”)
  • Flexibility of curriculum
  • Smaller classes
  • School spirit
  • Decent career fairs. I doubt recruitment here is as rigorous than at Stanford/UW but at least a dozen engineering students have been offered summer internships their freshman year
  • It supposedly has a good entrepreneurial vibe
  • Really beautiful campus
  • It’s in Los Angeles!
  • The weather!

Cons:

  • Their computer science program isn’t better than UW’s
  • Farther from family

UW
Pros:

  • Much better CS program
  • Great location in terms of tech companies
  • I live pretty close to the school campus
  • Close to family
  • The link extension at UW will open in 2016 (convenient transportation!)

Cons:

  • Weather sucks
  • A lot bigger classes

If I had not gotten DA at UW, I would have gone to USC (UW was risky without DA). However right now, I feel like UW will give me more career opportunities while USC will give me a better college experience. It also feels a little silly to pass up the direct admit offer at UW when it’s so hard to get.

Which would you choose and why?

2

You can check class sizes in the class schedules. USC class sizes, though smaller than UW class sizes in many cases, are not necessarily small in an absolute sense.
https://classes.usc.edu/term-20153/classes/csci
http://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2015/cse.html

3

Aside from the high USNWR undergraduate and graduate CS rankings, articles such as the following indicate that a direct admission to UW CS/CE is rocket fuel for your career:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/technology/u-of-washington-a-northwest-pipeline-to-silicon-valley.html?referrer=

http://qz.com/343521/18-universities-produce-half-of-us-and-canadas-computer-science-professors/

http://www.computersciencedegreehub.com/50-innovative-computer-science-departments/

http://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-be-a-computer-science-major-at-the-University-of-Washington

(One of the graduate students mentioned in the New York Times article, Franzi Roesner, is now a member of the faculty. http://www.franziroesner.com. Quite a number of fascinating biographies can be found at https://www.cs.washington.edu/people/faculty.)

Congratulations and good luck!