<p>Curiosity killed the cat.</p>
<p>Some ideas offhand…finances (could you qualify for need based or merit aid if you need it), size (small, mid-size, large) , location (geographic as well as city/suburban/rural), overall “vibe”, Greek Life (do you want it or not?), sports (do you want big time sports or don’t care?), religious affiliation (do you want it, not want it, indifferent?), male/female ratio, food on campus, on campus housing quality and availability, are there clubs and organizations on campus that meet your interests…</p>
<p>May sound odd but I am that kind of person who likes a college based on its campus beauty xD</p>
<p>I think @happy1 pretty much nailed it for the non-academic aspects of schools. I think one also wants to look for schools that have a peer group that matches up well in intelligence and academic accomplishment. That falls under academics, I suppose, but not in the sense of the academics the school itself offers. It is more about the intellectual atmosphere of the school, and also how much your peers will force you to work hard because they do such good work.</p>
<p>IMO, the ability to get a great undergraduate education from the professors is similar at any of a hundred schools or more in the USA. They are competent in their subjects, and teach from the same or similar texts, and the schools will have lab facilities to teach freshman chem, etc. What really makes the experience at school X different than that at school Y are the factors mentioned by happy1, as well as the quality of your peers.</p>
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Not as odd as you might think. It kind of goes with what I was saying that, when deciding among the dozens and dozens of good quality schools there are in the USA, it is really mostly the non-academic factors that prevail. Weather, size of school, and sure, how aesthetically pleasing the school is to you. After all, it is a place you will be living for 4 years, generally speaking. These factors should be taken into account, because the happier you are with your overall situation the better you are likely to do, not to mention the better memories you will have of your college experience.</p>
<p>@fallenchemist you are right ^_^</p>
<p>Finances, ofc, are the first constraint: I’m not going to take any loans because debt can really screw someone over.</p>
<p>I go to Quora and see what sort of questions are being asked about the college + how the alumni/outside community members are answering them- and I encountered a few gems, like this:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.quora.com/Why-would-someone-choose-Carnegie-Mellon-over-Harvard”>http://www.quora.com/Why-would-someone-choose-Carnegie-Mellon-over-Harvard</a></p>
<p>It also gives you a really solid idea of what a school’s culture is like and how it fits in to the world as a whole, like this one:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.quora.com/Carnegie-Mellon-University/Why-does-CMU-not-join-in-the-MOOC-open-course-wave-as-actively-as-Stanford-Berkeley-or-MIT/answer/Kevin-Shi-21?__snids__=457430051&__nsrc__=2”>http://www.quora.com/Carnegie-Mellon-University/Why-does-CMU-not-join-in-the-MOOC-open-course-wave-as-actively-as-Stanford-Berkeley-or-MIT/answer/Kevin-Shi-21?__snids__=457430051&__nsrc__=2</a></p>
<p>Beyond that, I look for interesting projects being done by students and faculty- for example, Rice University’s engineering design kitchen increased the efficiency of the bicycle racks on public transport buses (in Houston) by 50% with some simple tweaks. MIT/etc. are ofc working on nanobatteries, and Stanford’s the source of some solid research on Brain-Machine Interfaces. Since I’ve already made it pretty obvious that I’m going to CMU next year- and at CMU, the HCI department/lab is working on the next-generation touchscreen which differentiates between knuckles, thumbs, fingers, etc., and lets you perform a broader variety of actions. Basically- are the projects there something I can get excited about? Would I want to hang around with the people working on projects like Duolingo and reCAPTCHA- and try to join them? If the college isn’t exciting, it falls to a lower spot on my list.</p>
<p>I also check out the alumni + the entering class of the year before me- and after admissions, my incoming class. The Facebook groups are really useful because there’s often content on there that bothers/disturbs/disgusts me and content on there that really attracts me. It’s a good way to get a sense of what’s right and wrong and, in my case, realize that a university is just perfect.</p>
<p>Of course, I’m only going to college for 4 years- maybe 5 if I need to or go for an IMB program. Salaries + jobs matter, but colleges more often that not leave the data pretty vague and non-specific, even when they’re as large as Berkeley (which doesn’t differentiate in its data between ECE and CSE grads just because they’re all technically EECS- and don’t even get me started on L&S CS being mixed in with the rest of L&S). I care about the job I end up with in the long run, and whether it’ll be fulfilling (i.e., whether I get to meet my goal of “making things that are worth making”) and worth getting excited about- and then I want to end up with a decent wage as well.</p>
<p>@dividerofzero - Yes, finances are the first “barrier” to be considered. Everything else is secondary to that. I don’t go so far as to say that a student should shy away from all debt (although that is ideal of course!) but it has to be very limited. Personally I think no more than $25K total after all 4 years, but of course others might have a bit different opinion. However, anyone that thinks it is OK to go $50K or more in debt for undergrad is just wrong IMO. Anyway, not to get off track.</p>
<p>I really wanted to say CMU is an amazing school. Best of luck there, and congratulations.</p>
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<p>While it is true that Berkeley’s career survey lists all EECS majors together, it lists L&S CS majors separately from other majors, as with every other major listed.</p>
<p><a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/EECS.stm”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/EECS.stm</a>
<a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/CompSci.stm”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/CompSci.stm</a></p>
<p>However, survey and reporting methodology vary between schools, so used caution when comparing career surveys between schools.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus Looks like my memory from that time period is pretty fuzzy. My bad. >_<</p>
<p>Yeah, for example, CMU’s data had a 100% response rate while other colleges had theirs going in the 40’s. It’s hard to predict which way that data would’ve gone, but in any case salary wasn’t a big concern for me as long as it wasn’t ridiculously low.</p>
<p>Edit: so that CS listing was for L&S CS only? I thought it was CSE (or EECS) + L&S CS.</p>
<p>Yes, the CS listing is L&S CS, not EECS. Note the full list of majors in the career survey:
<a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/Major.stm”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/Major.stm</a></p>
<p>@ucbalumnus That’s interesting. People always say that L&S CS and EECS are basically the same but it looks lik there’s a salary gap- is that just a result of sampling? Or does it demonstrate a real gap?</p>
<p>Probably a result of sampling variation. If you look at previous years’ surveys, some have higher average pay for L&S CS compared to EECS.</p>