Berkeley or Cornell Dyson

I am currently a student in California who has been accepted into Cornell Dyson School of AEM and Berkeley. I am looking into study business and possibly data science as well. I got into Berkeley as a Regents and Chancellor's scholar which comes with the following benefits 

Priority Class Enrollment: Faculty and Peer Mentorship: Scholars have access to UC Berkeley faculty and fellow scholar mentors to provide guidance on academic and professional endeavors. Research Fellowship: ​Guaranteed Housing: Regents' and Chancellor's Scholars Association: Financial Aid Advising: Financial Literacy Counseling: Monetary Award and Scholarship Tenure: In my case my Cost of Attendance dropped from 35k to 17k because of the scholarship Alumni Network: 

Along with this I will be finding out if I will be receiving the African American Initiative and several other scholarships that would make my tuition be practically free.

For Dyson I will be finding out my financial package and opportunities they offer sometime next week. I was born just a mile from Cornell and it has been my dream school growing up. I would also be a legacy because my mom also attended the school. 

As of right now my biggest concern is if Berkeley would give me a higher quality education and would it be worth taking the risk of trying to get into the business school, rather than attending Cornell.

6 Comments
 

Where do you want to be post graduation? If east coast, Cornell. If west coast, Berkeley. Cornell will be more employable on the west coast than Berkeley will be on the east coast though. 

Cornell is stronger for finance, Berkeley is stronger for tech/SWE. Similar to the first thing I said, Cornell lands you tech/SWE more easily than Berkeley lands you finance.

The other stuff you listed doesn’t really move the needle IMO. Cornell probably wins across the board except maybe reputation (ironic because one’s an Ivy and the other a state school).

 

Main decision to make is cost and east coast vs west coast.

One caveat: banking is not as hard to break into as WSO makes it seem at Berkeley. If you can get into a top finance club or business frat, recruiting will not be hard, plus you will have more opportunities in the tech sector.

Therefore, the decision mainly comes down to where you want to work and cost

 

Sounds like you are personally leaning toward Cornell?  Not exactly data science, but you could look at a minor in information science or computer science there as well.

As others have suggested, if you want to work in NYC, I'd vote Dyson easily.  If West Coast, then go with Berkeley.  Can't go wrong with either.  Congrats on the acceptances!

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