Anyone visited Berkeley?

[hiscoba]

I will not visit but will really appreciate anyone who share his/her visiting experience.

[fifa0001]

nice place but do expect to see many homeless on Telegraph.

[Azazel]

Berkeley is quite a nice place (despite its homeless population ;-).

Visit days were pretty standard, as far as these things go. I was impressed with the faculty and grad students, and Berkeley came across as a quite collaborative place, with a strong sense of community among its grad students. What kind of information are you looking for?

[hiscoba]

Berkeley is quite a nice place (despite its homeless population ;-).

Visit days were pretty standard, as far as these things go. I was impressed with the faculty and grad students, and Berkeley came across as a quite collaborative place, with a strong sense of community among its grad students. What kind of information are you looking for?

Thanks, Azazel. Seems that you also visited Stanford and MIT. How do you evaluate Berkeley comparing to the other two schools? What about the budget cut impact to Berkeley? Btw, Have you decided which place to go?

Edited March 18, 2011 by hiscoba

[Azazel]

Thanks, Azazel. Seems that you also visited Stanford and MIT. How do you evaluate Berkeley comparing to the other two schools? What about the budget cut impact to Berkeley? Btw, Have you decided which place to go?

This observation is limited to my subfield, but I found the professors at Berkeley, Stanford, and MIT to be equally awesome. Everyone was doing good research with a strong focus on "impact", and there seemed available a diversity of advising styles at each school.

For a systems-ish area, Berkeley seemed to focus on larger research projects (e.g. you might find a number of students working within the scope of a single tool or technique). My impression of MIT was that research projects were more individualistic, and Stanford fell somewhere in between.

Stanford and MIT seemed more focused on building real artifacts (software, tools, etc.) than Berkeley, although at Stanford, such artifacts might have a greater tendency to spin off into companies.

In regard to program requirements, Stanford had the fewest, Berkeley had the most, and MIT fell somewhat in between. Stanford also had what they call a research "rotation system", which is unique among the schools I visited. Under the rotation system, you can work for a few different professors throughout your first year, before deciding on your permanent advisor.

Berkeley didn't seem overly concerned about budget issues (in fact, they gave out the most free swag). That said, they simply may not have wanted to talk about this. I encountered grad students at other top public schools who mentioned (slight) changes in the department due to state budget cuts. Berkeley's CS department is insulated to some extent from these budget issues (most money comes from other sources), but I imagine that it might have a bit less to spend than the programs at Stanford or MIT.

Hope that helps. All these schools looked like great places to be. For myself, I'm still deciding ;-)

Edited March 18, 2011 by Azazel

[hiscoba]

This observation is limited to my subfield, but I found the professors at Berkeley, Stanford, and MIT to be equally awesome. Everyone was doing good research with a strong focus on "impact", and there seemed available a diversity of advising styles at each school.

For a systems-ish area, Berkeley seemed to focus on larger research projects (e.g. you might find a number of students working within the scope of a single tool or technique). My impression of MIT was that research projects were more individualistic, and Stanford fell somewhere in between.

Stanford and MIT seemed more focused on building real artifacts (software, tools, etc.) than Berkeley, although at Stanford, such artifacts might have a greater tendency to spin off into companies.

In regard to program requirements, Stanford had the fewest, Berkeley had the most, and MIT fell somewhat in between. Stanford also had what they call a research "rotation system", which is unique among the schools I visited. Under the rotation system, you can work for a few different professors throughout your first year, before deciding on your permanent advisor.

Berkeley didn't seem overly concerned about budget issues (in fact, they gave out the most free swag). That said, they simply may not have wanted to talk about this. I encountered grad students at other top public schools who mentioned (slight) changes in the department due to state budget cuts. Berkeley's CS department is insulated to some extent from these budget issues (most money comes from other sources), but I imagine that it might have a bit less to spend than the programs at Stanford or MIT.

Hope that helps. All these schools looked like great places to be. For myself, I'm still deciding ;-)

Thanks! Your information is very valuable to me. :-)