As a current grad student here: it's a fantastic research university and a beautiful campus, but the undergraduate experience is terrible. Classes are giant and there's very little faculty/student interaction, because the focus of the faculty is, for better or for worse, not on undergraduate education. Yes, there are some incredible undergrads and some great opportunities for the 0.1% of them who really stand out, and of course the grad programs are great -- if you look at the US News grad program rankings, Berkeley is top 5 in almost every discipline -- but overall the undergrad program is ranked just about where it belongs.
Current CS undergrad at Berkeley. This is the main problem I have with Berkeley. You can interact with the faculty plenty (at least in my experience), especially when you get to your upper division classes. I don't really do that much anyway and care more about how well professor's lecture than anything else.
The problem is that it's becoming increasingly difficult to get into the upper division classes you're interested in. There are just too many people and not enough space. My smallest class is 30 people, but it's a graduate level course, while my other two upper division CS classes have 400 people and 315 with 75 on the waitlist. I thought my classes would get smaller as the semesters went on, but that has not been the case.
The US News rankings have a very negative incentivization for schools also. One of the things that my alma mater, Virginia Tech, used to do to (and I'm sure still does) is lure top tier students into their (admittedly great) engineering program. However, they then use a bootcamp style, much harder than necessary first year "weed out" program for the freshman engineering students. The effect is that 50% of the incoming engineering students fail out or are forced to transfer to the school's less prestigous programs, particularly business. The relatively high SAT scores of these students then allow these other schools to inflate their rankings with US News. By the way, I know for a fact that Perdue and a few other state schools with good engineering programs do the same thing.
The first time I saw videos of top tier freshman engineering, math, and comp sci courses, I was schocked. The problems were manageable, the pace was reasonable, the teachers were engaging..... and when I saw the course material and realized the tests were easier than the ones I took at my much lower ranked school, I realized I'd been had.
The worst, most socially irresponsible aspect of this practice of "funneling" and "trapping" your students into less desirable majors is that students who otherwise would have been engineers end up learning less useful things. Virginia Tech, and schools like it, are responsible for making the world have less engineers than it should.
But its usually just the door that is hard to get into, once through the door its usually smooth sailing. Actually, this occurs in many exclusive programs/institutions over and over again. But in reality, they have to be selective: the world doesn't need that many engineers, especially ones that aren't that smart, just like we really don't need that many doctors (especially ones that aren't that smart). Computer science is the same: sure you could double or triple the size of your program to except just anyone that wants to program, but then you would flood the market with substandard talent and your reputation goes into the trashbin!
Now, would we prefer a hard program where students would fail out instead of being stopped at the door? This also seems like a waste of resources, but it could work given the right technology (e.g. online courses).
Did you continue with engineering after the freshman classes? I also went to VT, and my classes got harder every year, except for maybe senior year but then I was expected to do a senior design project on top of regular classes. But talking to my other engineering friends, it was very dependent on the major. For Civil engineering freshman year was the weed out year, for Aerospace senior year is the weed out year.
The US News rankings have a very negative incentivization for schools also. One of the things that my alma mater, Virginia Tech, used to do to (and I'm sure still does) is lure top tier students into their (admittedly great) engineering program. However, they then use a bootcamp style, much harder than necessary first year "weed out" program for the freshman engineering students. The effect is that 50% of the incoming engineering students fail out or are forced to transfer to the school's less prestigous programs, particularly business. The relatively high SAT scores of these students then allow these other schools to inflate their rankings with US News. By the way, I know for a fact that Perdue and a few other state schools with good engineering programs do the same thing.
That's not a specific university. That's engineering schools in general. "We'll throw you head-first into the ocean, and see if you survive. If you do, congratulations, you've learned to swim!"
The undergraduate computer science program is fucking awful.
1. As you say, the introductory classes are enormous. For the math classes this means less feedback on your assignments. What this also means is that you have other undergrads grading your work. If that doesn't terrify you, then it should.
2. Inadequate preparation. Similar classes in other departments have more prerequisites. I'm currently attending a machine learning class where more than half the class is probability-illiterate. Take a look at how the core math curriculum is taught (algebra, analysis)
3. Professors and graduate students are out of sync about the material and assignments, which leads to situations where nobody can answer your questions. See cs162, cs61c. I've heard similar rumors about 161.
4. Only 5-10 upper division undergraduate cs classes. Interested in type theory? Practical encryption? Computer algebra? You're out of luck. Most other universities seem to offer a lot of variety.
5. Less treatment of the fundamentals. Our systems class no longer goes into any depth about malloc. They've replaced it with a section on map reduce. Similar situation with the operating systems class and I believe the security class.
6. The people who rise to the top are the people who were probably going to be successful anyway. That's just my experience/bias though.
//1. As you say, the introductory classes are enormous. For the math classes this means less feedback on your assignments. What this also means is that you have other undergrads grading your work. If that doesn't terrify you, then it should.//
As someone who is an undergraduate TA (for computer science), this doesn't terrify me any more than overworked and underpaid graduate students grading assignments, or overworked research faculty who don't have any incentive to grade well. My anecdotal experience has been that it's generally the top 1-3% of undergrads who end up TAing or grading (in CS, at UVa; mileage elsewhere may vary), and those who do take it pretty seriously (here, at least, we're paid and it's a job). Most of the people I've TA'd with (and myself) take at least one graduate course and actually know the material better than most graduate students (since we've taken the course and universally done very well in it). UVa also rotates graduate TAs out after a year (to research or other things), whereas undergraduate TAs can stay on the same course for two or three years, which offers much more continuity for the professor and fewer TAs who are completely lost. I might be biased (see also: I get paid to do exactly what terrifies you), but I think that if the undergraduates aren't just unpaid volunteers, you get better results than using graduate students for the same things. Unpaid volunteers are much worse: you don't have to pay much, but paying someone for something makes it a job, which switches people's headspace from 'I can drop this' to 'This is my job, and I will do it well'.
4. Only 5-10 upper division undergraduate cs classes. Interested in type theory? Practical encryption? Computer algebra? You're out of luck. Most other universities seem to offer a lot of variety.
I know of almost no university besides maybe MIT where there's no bias in the teaching and research towards certain fields and away from others. It's quite unfortunate, but you have to choose your educational institution based on what specialties you want to enter.
I went to UT Austin, which is a very similar school. All the negatives you mentioned are certainly valid, but U.S News's ranking isn't just an undergrad ranking, it's an overall university ranking.
And even for undergrad, career prospect for a CS undergrad from a UC school is probably SLIGHTLY better than a liberal arts grad from Vanderbilt.
Are you under the impression that Vanderbilt is a liberal arts school without a school of engineering? That's not the case.
I dont think it even has liberal arts major, heck they don't even have an undergrad business degree because they want you to actually pick something to major in.
Agree 100%. I went there as an undergrad and I hated it, except for my comp sci courses, which I loved. The department was young then, and it was a completely different experience being there during the rise of BSD.
Comments
Have you ever been to UC Berkeley?
As a current grad student here: it's a fantastic research university and a beautiful campus, but the undergraduate experience is terrible. Classes are giant and there's very little faculty/student interaction, because the focus of the faculty is, for better or for worse, not on undergraduate education. Yes, there are some incredible undergrads and some great opportunities for the 0.1% of them who really stand out, and of course the grad programs are great -- if you look at the US News grad program rankings, Berkeley is top 5 in almost every discipline -- but overall the undergrad program is ranked just about where it belongs.
> Classes are giant
Current CS undergrad at Berkeley. This is the main problem I have with Berkeley. You can interact with the faculty plenty (at least in my experience), especially when you get to your upper division classes. I don't really do that much anyway and care more about how well professor's lecture than anything else.
The problem is that it's becoming increasingly difficult to get into the upper division classes you're interested in. There are just too many people and not enough space. My smallest class is 30 people, but it's a graduate level course, while my other two upper division CS classes have 400 people and 315 with 75 on the waitlist. I thought my classes would get smaller as the semesters went on, but that has not been the case.
The US News rankings have a very negative incentivization for schools also. One of the things that my alma mater, Virginia Tech, used to do to (and I'm sure still does) is lure top tier students into their (admittedly great) engineering program. However, they then use a bootcamp style, much harder than necessary first year "weed out" program for the freshman engineering students. The effect is that 50% of the incoming engineering students fail out or are forced to transfer to the school's less prestigous programs, particularly business. The relatively high SAT scores of these students then allow these other schools to inflate their rankings with US News. By the way, I know for a fact that Perdue and a few other state schools with good engineering programs do the same thing.
The first time I saw videos of top tier freshman engineering, math, and comp sci courses, I was schocked. The problems were manageable, the pace was reasonable, the teachers were engaging..... and when I saw the course material and realized the tests were easier than the ones I took at my much lower ranked school, I realized I'd been had.
The worst, most socially irresponsible aspect of this practice of "funneling" and "trapping" your students into less desirable majors is that students who otherwise would have been engineers end up learning less useful things. Virginia Tech, and schools like it, are responsible for making the world have less engineers than it should.
But its usually just the door that is hard to get into, once through the door its usually smooth sailing. Actually, this occurs in many exclusive programs/institutions over and over again. But in reality, they have to be selective: the world doesn't need that many engineers, especially ones that aren't that smart, just like we really don't need that many doctors (especially ones that aren't that smart). Computer science is the same: sure you could double or triple the size of your program to except just anyone that wants to program, but then you would flood the market with substandard talent and your reputation goes into the trashbin!
Now, would we prefer a hard program where students would fail out instead of being stopped at the door? This also seems like a waste of resources, but it could work given the right technology (e.g. online courses).
Did you continue with engineering after the freshman classes? I also went to VT, and my classes got harder every year, except for maybe senior year but then I was expected to do a senior design project on top of regular classes. But talking to my other engineering friends, it was very dependent on the major. For Civil engineering freshman year was the weed out year, for Aerospace senior year is the weed out year.
The US News rankings have a very negative incentivization for schools also. One of the things that my alma mater, Virginia Tech, used to do to (and I'm sure still does) is lure top tier students into their (admittedly great) engineering program. However, they then use a bootcamp style, much harder than necessary first year "weed out" program for the freshman engineering students. The effect is that 50% of the incoming engineering students fail out or are forced to transfer to the school's less prestigous programs, particularly business. The relatively high SAT scores of these students then allow these other schools to inflate their rankings with US News. By the way, I know for a fact that Perdue and a few other state schools with good engineering programs do the same thing.
That's not a specific university. That's engineering schools in general. "We'll throw you head-first into the ocean, and see if you survive. If you do, congratulations, you've learned to swim!"
The undergraduate computer science program is fucking awful.
1. As you say, the introductory classes are enormous. For the math classes this means less feedback on your assignments. What this also means is that you have other undergrads grading your work. If that doesn't terrify you, then it should.
2. Inadequate preparation. Similar classes in other departments have more prerequisites. I'm currently attending a machine learning class where more than half the class is probability-illiterate. Take a look at how the core math curriculum is taught (algebra, analysis)
3. Professors and graduate students are out of sync about the material and assignments, which leads to situations where nobody can answer your questions. See cs162, cs61c. I've heard similar rumors about 161.
4. Only 5-10 upper division undergraduate cs classes. Interested in type theory? Practical encryption? Computer algebra? You're out of luck. Most other universities seem to offer a lot of variety.
5. Less treatment of the fundamentals. Our systems class no longer goes into any depth about malloc. They've replaced it with a section on map reduce. Similar situation with the operating systems class and I believe the security class.
6. The people who rise to the top are the people who were probably going to be successful anyway. That's just my experience/bias though.
//1. As you say, the introductory classes are enormous. For the math classes this means less feedback on your assignments. What this also means is that you have other undergrads grading your work. If that doesn't terrify you, then it should.//
As someone who is an undergraduate TA (for computer science), this doesn't terrify me any more than overworked and underpaid graduate students grading assignments, or overworked research faculty who don't have any incentive to grade well. My anecdotal experience has been that it's generally the top 1-3% of undergrads who end up TAing or grading (in CS, at UVa; mileage elsewhere may vary), and those who do take it pretty seriously (here, at least, we're paid and it's a job). Most of the people I've TA'd with (and myself) take at least one graduate course and actually know the material better than most graduate students (since we've taken the course and universally done very well in it). UVa also rotates graduate TAs out after a year (to research or other things), whereas undergraduate TAs can stay on the same course for two or three years, which offers much more continuity for the professor and fewer TAs who are completely lost. I might be biased (see also: I get paid to do exactly what terrifies you), but I think that if the undergraduates aren't just unpaid volunteers, you get better results than using graduate students for the same things. Unpaid volunteers are much worse: you don't have to pay much, but paying someone for something makes it a job, which switches people's headspace from 'I can drop this' to 'This is my job, and I will do it well'.
4. Only 5-10 upper division undergraduate cs classes. Interested in type theory? Practical encryption? Computer algebra? You're out of luck. Most other universities seem to offer a lot of variety.
I know of almost no university besides maybe MIT where there's no bias in the teaching and research towards certain fields and away from others. It's quite unfortunate, but you have to choose your educational institution based on what specialties you want to enter.
I went to UT Austin, which is a very similar school. All the negatives you mentioned are certainly valid, but U.S News's ranking isn't just an undergrad ranking, it's an overall university ranking. And even for undergrad, career prospect for a CS undergrad from a UC school is probably SLIGHTLY better than a liberal arts grad from Vanderbilt.
Are you under the impression that Vanderbilt is a liberal arts school without a school of engineering? That's not the case.
I dont think it even has liberal arts major, heck they don't even have an undergrad business degree because they want you to actually pick something to major in.
Disclosure- I'm a Vandy Engineering School grad
They have split ratings, schools that only provide an undergrad are in a separate category.
Agree 100%. I went there as an undergrad and I hated it, except for my comp sci courses, which I loved. The department was young then, and it was a completely different experience being there during the rise of BSD.