Davis vs. World

So it’s been a few months since I actually decided on college, but I thought about the whole “college” thing again this morning and felt like writing the blog post I always wanted to. So here was the reason I chose UC Davis as my destination for the next four years. Over Cal Poly, the only other 4-year I was accepted to, and even the CCSF option.
Starting off in early march/april or whenever the thing came out, I had to decide where I wanted to go. One of the main things that troubled me were the vast differences between Cal Poly and Davis in teaching method. The whole research vs. industry teaching standards. I e-mailed every single available professor from both sides questioning them on their ideas. I compiled all the responses and general summary and analysis in a word file that eventually reached 9 pages! My general conclusion was that yes, Cal Poly “taught” more to students, there was more hands-on projects and learning. However, I felt that at Davis, while the school might lack in teaching, I could help myself by joining various clubs and simply applying all the stuff I learn myself. If I took the initiative to code my own programs and apps, then my “hands-on” knowledge from Davis will be the same as from Cal Poly. In the end I did not think that whatever increase in teaching that Cal Poly had over Davis was a large amount. Basically, yah, I might learn more, but not much, and this small benefit, being the only one on Cal Poly’s side was not enough to override Davis’ overwhelming benefits.
The next point, and probably the most important one in my mind, was the plethora of opportunities that Davis offered over Cal Poly. Cal Poly is solely dedicated to industry, which is perfect for students who want to go in 4 years and then go out and get a job. Davis might be a little less geared for that, but it still allows the opportunity and skills for students to go in 4 years and get out and get a job. However, Davis trumps Cal Poly in that it also gives the opportunity for graduate work and experience. Davis offers a PhD program, and Cal Poly only offers up to Masters (which IMO isn’t a “real” masters anyway). If I ever wanted to go do research, Davis would benefit me a lot more. If after 4 years of working my ass off I wanted to go to an elite school for Masters or PhD later on, Davis would be more beneficial simply because of the research-geared teaching style. I wouldn’t know enough theory at Cal Poly to be successful at elite graduate CS schools, it just simply isn’t what the school’s teaching program is geared for. Davis gives me this opportunity. It still allows me the chance of the quick 4 years in and out AND the option of graduate work, whether at Davis or elsewhere. The fact that Davis is a PhD-offered school also has many benefits. One, there are a much higher variety of classes. The mixture of more students and more faculties allows for a lot more variety in CS classes. There are a lot more subjects covered and a student can really choose his own path there. As an undergraduate at Davis, you could even take graduate-level courses, something obviously not offered at Cal Poly because their max education level is not as high. In addition, it’s without a doubt that Davis faculty is more prestigious. While the teachers themselves have great educations, the Davis faculty is paid to do cutting-edge research at the forefront of technology. They make the new technology that Cal Poly uses.

I also liked Davis in their flexibility in the CS major. The CS major had very few required courses and a lot of electives to choose from. While my dad did not like it because he thought I was irresponsible and would take the “easier” route, I thought of it a lot differently. I thought of the flexible CS major as a way to specialize yourself in specific areas. If I wanted to be a network security specialist, I could reconstruct my class schedule to take courses specific to that topic. Forget about software engineering courses and whatnot, just focus on networking, security, cryptology, etc. At Cal Poly I would be forced into their pre-defined 4-year class schedule. I would have no freedom to expand. Also, the CS major at Davis had a very small amount of required credits. Only like 130 or so, whereas after 4 years, students have 180. This meant I would have 50 “free” credits. With this, I could have double majored or perhaps start ahead of others and get my masters degree in the 4+1 program. The small credit amount was no necessarily a “bad” thing, because nothing would stop me from spending the remaining 50 credits on CS courses I would have taken anyway, but the OPTION of using those 50 credits as I please was very appealing to me.

A big downer for me at Cal Poly was the fact that many students did not graduate in 4 years. I did not know this was even a problem until I went there for the orientation. The general consensus was that CS majors graduated in 4 1/3 years. This was very un-appealing to me. No other school I know of has this chronic problem. This was a very big negative for me as it disrupts your ability to grow. One, you miss the “hiring cycle” of employers. Yes, companies hire year round, but without a doubt summer is the main hiring period. Many kids graduate in spring and start working in the summer. In addition, even if you are not a graduate, tons of companies hire summer internships during the SUMMER. These internships are usually very good segue to eventually being hired full time by the company. By going to Cal Poly and graduating in 4 1/3 years, I miss out on this cycle. I would need to go back to school in the summer or fall to finish up the courses. I miss out on the wide openings for jobs in my field. Also coupled with the hiring season is the graduate school admissions. Graduate admissions are identical to undergraduate admissions. You apply the year before and wait their decision to come out in April. Then you attend the following Fall. Again, if I go to Cal Poly and decide to attend graduate school elsewhere, the elongated graduation time will be a big problem in my admissions. I might have to wait a whole other year to go to school.


Now, I probably should have talked about this first, but whatever. The next option was whether or not I should go to the community college for 2 years and then transfer. This has always been an option for me, and I definitely thought about taking this route in my early years. However, as of late, I started seeing this less and less as a viable option for me. The first reason why is because the course structure at CCSF does NOT match up well with Davis, Cal Poly, Berkeley, or any university. Whatever you learn at CCSF’s CS 111A/B/C is nowhere close to what you learn in the 4-year’s “equivalent” courses. So sure, you can get transfer credits, but how much will you really know once you transfer? Will you have to retake all of those classes anyway? Will you fail all the future CS classes because your foundation sucks? This doesn’t even necessarily apply to only CS classes, but math and science too. While many believe that CS is just coding programs, a high level of math and science is needed – especially in upper-level courses. The Calculus or Physics from CCSF might not match up well with the 4-year, and the same problems might appear. The uncertainty was scary and a risk I was not willing to take.

Another problem with community college was the dearth of transferable courses. At Cal Poly, the best you can enter in terms of CS is a 3rd quarter freshman taking CS 103. Davis is a bit better coming as a 1st/2nd quarter sophomore. What this means is that even though in terms of “age” and GE requirements, you are a junior, the amount of Computer Science you know is far below your peers. So although a large majority of your GE’s will be completed as a transfer student, you are very behind as a CS student. Either you need to increase the number of CS courses you take per semester or just take more time to get all of those classes filled. Squeezing more courses into your schedule causes problem. Not only overloading on too much computer information, but most classes have prerequisites. You can’t take all the classes at once even if you wanted to, you need to take the natural process upward. Also, simple extending your time in the university is somewhat redundant, as the whole point of going to a community college was to “save” money by skipping 2 years of a 4-year university. What’s the point if once you transfer, you need more time to graduate?

So this has been my general rant about why I eventually chose UC Davis as my college of choice. I hope you followed along the whole way and understand at least 50% of what I actually said. Cya later.