UC Davis

So I went to opening house at Davis today. Trying to write down my initial thoughts so I don’t forget them later on…

My campus tour guide hadn’t ridden a bike since the 6th grade and had to adjust in UCD. I guess this is one of my concerns since I hear so much about the campus being a total bike town and me not riding a bike since the 4th grade! But I guess this somewhat quelled my troubled stomach dealing with the bikes. Also, the guy from the student panel has never ridden a bike and gets around just fine. If I go to UCD, I would think that the Tercero dorms would be the best since it’s so close to all the CS buildings. This also cuts down on my need for a bike.

While on the topic of dorms and whatnot, I went through the Tercero dorm and it looked pretty damn good. I guess it can’t really compare to the Segundo ones I stayed in over yearbook camp since the building I went into at Tercero were brand spanking new. Also, apparently, the Tercero and Segundo cafeterias are the best. Definitely no Cuarto for me :P Also, I wonder whats with all the Spanish-influenced dorm names? Or perhaps it was just my tour guide with the accent that made them all sound Spanish-influenced.

Now on to academics.. I really only started learning about the educational programs at Davis at the fair. I went first to the Letters and Science fair and was pretty disappointed to see no CS fliers and both representatives have “Statistics” stickers on. I talked to the lady about general differences between the CS in L&S and CSE in the College of Engineer but she really didn’t know much. However, I did pick up a statistics pamphlet. The word “computational statistics” caught my eye and asked the lady about it. She definitely suggested statistics as a minor/double in conjunction with a CS major. The slideshow from Matloff reinforced this claim. I don’t really know much about the stats major, and the lady didn’t really help me much, but I’ll do more research on that.

Now, I found out that the College of Engineering had a special Engineering fair in another building – it helped a TON. I was extremely disappointed initially at being unable to talk to the faculty members there, and merely some representatives to give out flyers. However, the special fair really helped. Prof. Ma and I believe Prof. Liu were both there at the CS table to explain things.

Transferring from where I am right now, CS in L&S to something in the College of Engineering will be somewhat easy. I just need to complete first quarter Calculus, Physics and Chem. Calc and Physics are already pre-reqs for CS in L&S so I’ll be done with those regardless after 1st quarter. Chem might be a problem though, since my AP creds won’t help me at all.

Now, I also asked about the difference between CS, CSE, and ECE. To me, it sounds like there is no difference, merely different course requirements. CSE and ECE are both in the College of Engineering and have 170+ required credits. Basically, your 4 years are already pre-determined for you and there is little flexibility to branch off into specific areas. This is not the same for the CS major which only has 104 credits and is pretty much finished by mid-junior year. This allows me to take the electives in specific courses I would be interested in (for example, security) and focus purely on that. This also allows me to get a minor/double major in another field.
I don’t think there is any downfall to staying in CS, which I would like to do if I go to Davis. You still receive a B.S. and you will still get the same job opportunities (or so they say). I am somewhat scared that employers will look at my courses and see me as too thinned out and then not hire me. But that really doesn’t matter right now anyway since I’m not even going there yet.

Now, onto the whole research vs. industry argument that I have seemed to have forever. I have been e-mailing professors from both fields a lot and have gotten lots of responses. Cal Poly staff definitely seems a bit more helpful, having a much higher response rate. In terms of Decision Day, Prof Ma and Liu basically said it doesn’t matter. Yes, UCD is a research institution with many professors geared toward research, but they also teach. And really, I don’t care as much that the teacher doesn’t know my name, as long as they know what they’re talking about and they teach it that’s fine with me. As long as I come out of the college with the necessary skills to excel in my job, then awesome.

From the e-mails, it does seem like a general consensus that UCD is research whereas Cal Poly is industry. However, since I really don’t know which sector I am going to, I can’t really say I want one over the other. To be safe, Davis would definitely be an obvious choice, as it offers good research and industry futures, whereas Cal Poly is focused solely on industry.

In addition, like I have believed in the past few weeks, it is all about applying yourself and pushing yourself to advance. While talking to Nathan online about how CS is taught in Berk:

(8:54:37 PM) TheDailynathan: so I can tell you here
(8:54:44 PM) TheDailynathan: we rarely ever get to work on projects
(8:54:54 PM) TheDailynathan: most things are just little programming excercises
(8:55:11 PM) TheDailynathan: that just has using testing out a certain theory
(8:55:23 PM) TheDailynathan: you rarely get the chance to work on a whole project where you put that theory to use
(8:55:31 PM) TheDailynathan: vs. cal poly
(8:55:33 PM) TheDailynathan: where I imagine
(8:55:38 PM) TheDailynathan: you do a lot more of that
(8:56:09 PM) TheDailynathan: you do projects where you put all the stuff you learn to use
(8:56:42 PM) TheDailynathan: it's like the difference being in physics and doing problem sets every day, and being in physics and doing a hands-on lab experiment/project every week

So perhaps that is true, that Davis might teach me a bunch of theory with no way of using it. But this is where my independence and my own drive must come in play. Designing my own programs and games for my own use will help me give practical use to my theoretical learnings.

Again, this is simply what I believe right now. This might all change in 2 weeks when I go to Cal Poly and hear all the stuff they have to say.