<p>I feel like I made a huge mistake and I don't know what to do.</p>
<p>Can you be more specific about your problems with UCSD?</p>
<p>transfer maybe?</p>
<p>There’s nothing horribly wrong with UCSD. I’m just not excited to be here. It feels like a necessary evil, not a life course I’m excited to take. I would have been happy to go to UCLA, for the name recognition alone. There were also more job opportunities for my significant other in LA, and more internship opportunities for me, more culture and things to do in LA, better places to go hiking too (really). I had another year of funding there and I liked the research better.</p>
<p>I also highly doubt that UCLA would accept me again. I went back and forth so many times with them on whether I would be attending :(</p>
<p>Originally, I was trying to just post the title of this thread, but I couldn’t without including a sentence in the description. Mostly I am curious about how bad of a mistake I made in coming here instead of UCLA…</p>
<p>Well, it depends on why you chose UCSD instead of UCLA. So far you’ve only posted the pros about UCLA, but there has to have been some reason you decided on UCSD instead, especially with all the positives about UCLA.</p>
<p>My mom was pressuring me to go to UCSD because she had this impression that LA is dangerous. A lot of people I knew were also criticizing me for wanting to go to UCLA for the name brand. UCLA was the first school I got into, and when I told one of my professors she replied, “well that’s not a very good school for computer science!” and walked off… 
When I told her about UCSD she had a better reaction, and for some reason seemed to think of UCSD as a more serious CS school… I was really hurt by her initial reaction to UCLA. Another of my professors, who grew up in LA county, was very adamant that I should go to UCSD because he though I didn’t have the right personality for LA. He also said something about how since I like running I would have better places to run in the San Diego area than in the LA area and that running LA I would have to worry about getting shot…</p>
<p>One of the grad students in my group at UCLA said that he didn’t like working with the prof because he never gave out compliments and didn’t like to help his students with their work. This worried me since, none of the UCSD prof’s students said anything negative to me about him.</p>
<p>The UCLA research was more theoretical, so the professor there had no grant money to support his students (though the prof is very well known and well respected in his field). I would have had to TA the whole time and would have no support over the summers. Plus it worried me that no one wanted to invest in the research-- maybe I would be wasting my time to spend 5 years working on something no one wanted to invest in?</p>
<p>The UCSD prof’s research is much more practical. He’s gotten tons of grants over the years and his students only have to TA for the required one quarter. He can support them over the summer, but can also get them summer jobs related to his research at a national lab where he has connections. So I wouldn’t be so worried that I was wasting my time studying something I could never use after I graduated.</p>
<p>And again, everyone around me kept saying that LA is polluted and the traffic is horrible which made me sad since when I applied to schools in California my thought was to live in a great location.</p>
<p>It sounds like you chose UCSD because you knew you would have to TA less, which is an excellent reason to choose a school - TAing is a time suck and detracts from research, even though it’s necessary and sometimes enjoyable. You also chose a PI who has connections and can help network you into jobs and support you over the summer. You chose a PI who does work that interests you - more applied than theoretical, and the very real consideration of whether the kind of work you will do after you graduate will be supported by funders. And according to US News, UCSD and UCLA are tied for computer science at #15. There are other, better rankings, but I find that they tend to be relatively similar to US News’ anyway.</p>
<p>So to me, it doesn’t sound like you made a mistake. You made a choice that, like most choices, had pros and cons on both sides and you picked what worked better for you at the time. It sounds like you’re having “grass is greener syndrome,” which is common in graduate students - you made a hard choice, you get to graduate school, it kicks your butt (it kicks everyone’s butt at first) and you start to wonder whether things would’ve been easier/more fun/better if you had chosen Option B. It’s only natural to have these thoughts.</p>
<p>There are things you can do at UCSD to make life better for yourself. If you want to hike, then the city probably has at least one hiking enthusiasts’ club - join it. They probably schedule trips to amazing hiking places! (I know here in NYC there are several of those, and they schedule bus trips into the Catskills and stuff. There are also cycling clubs that schedule weekend trips to cycling trails upstate and in PA.) Your significant other can probably find jobs in San Diego - even if there are MORE opportunities in LA, there are also MORE people and probably more competition for the same jobs. Unless their industry is completely nonexistent in San Diego, or there are significantly less opportunities, they can probably find something. If you want to intern you can do summer internships in LA - but you said that your supervisor at UCSD can more easily get you into labs over the summer, so there is that to consider. And if your advisor is a grant machine at UCSD, he or she can probably help you find funding for the years you need. And if you are planning a career in computer science research, the people hiring you will be familiar with the fact that UCLA and UCSD are about on par for that field.</p>
<p>What is/are your intended area(s) of research? In general, UCSD cs is as good as ucla.</p>
<p>I’ll just PM you, and anyone else who wants to know, so as not to disclose even more about myself to anyone and everyone…</p>
<p>I thought it doesn’t really matter whether you end up in SF, SD or LA. I’m told they’re all the same, with diverse cultures, good/bad neighborhoods, lots of stuff to do…</p>
<p>
as far as I know, theoretical is always harder than practical from a financial standpoint. That’s why theoretical stuff are always more competitive than practical stuff. The folks with money want to invest in things that will make them more money in the long run. So the theoretical people basically don’t get any money from the private sector. And the same goes for jobs</p>