shayens

I would go with Case, especially because they have the curriculum focus that you are interested in. You shouldn't choose a school just because of prestige, if they don't have what you want to do, then why spend the extra time and money getting an MFA if you are not doing the focus you really want to do. A Masters program is so you can study something you're passionate about, not just to get a job. Plus the stipend will help you a lot, you might regret not taking that especially when you are forced to work at Arizona to make ends meet, when you would rather be pursuing what you want to do. The only plus you have for Arizona is well know and the POSSIBILITY of getting a job after graduation. If you're good at what you do, you'll still get a job, you might have to look harder for one, but you might still have to look hard if you went to Arizona. Just my opinion

I had to create an account because I really wanted to respond to this. It seems from your post you have already decided to not attend MIT, for every pro you attempted to list for MIT and the end of the sentence it was followed by a con or said something negative about MIT (e.g. "lack of girls"). However, I think I would like to give some more info about MIT/Boston. I'm about to finish my undergrad at MIT, going back home to CA for grad school. There are a lot of girls at MIT (me being one of them) so you should kill that stereotype, and no they are not ugly. As you said Boston is a big college town lots of great bars and clubs with walking distance (0-30min) and the weather sometimes sucks, but as others have stated the weather in NorCal is not the same as SoCal. The snow and the cold aren't that bad in Boston, the worst thing is the rain, which they have pretty bad in NorCal in comparison to SoCal. There are A LOT of EECS buisnesses in Boston, unless there is a specific company in Silicon Valley area that you want to work for, they are both pretty much tied. and the professor and your advisor probably has connections with founders. There are a lot of start-ups in Boston. I'm on the MIT EECS jobs list and today I have literally received 4 emails about jobs in Boston (on average the list sends out 10 emails a day about jobs). Judging on age is in my opinion foolish. Marvin Minsky is 84 and still at MIT and a cool person to talk to. There are a lot of EECS celebrities here and they are easily accessible (eg. Tom Leighton, founder of Akamai still teaches lectures for an algorithm class, Leiserson and Rivest lecture sometimes as well, and Barbara Liskov is my advisor). The EECS department is very open and very flexible. I have done this (I have friends who went to Berkeley) it is more than 5-6 hours one way, especially if it's a long weekend. Counting traffic and rest at least 8 hours one way on a long weekend. So I wouldn't take that into account unless you were going to fly. However, as I said in the beginning it looks like you already made your mind up.