Rutgers Jumps 13 spots in US News
- Thread starter Sir ScarletKnight
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I take it your tiers are for only public (flagship-level?) schools and potential benchmarking peers for Rutgers-NB. Assuming your above is taken as a first tier, my guess at a second tier would look something like the following (no particular order):
- Georgia Tech*
- UC-San Diego
- UC-Santa Barbara
- Wisconsin-Madison
- Texas-Austin
- William & Mary*
- Illinois-Urbana/Champaign
*GT and W&M could be considered as potential adds to the top tier. If so, the second tier might then include one or more of Washington, Florida, Purdue as honorable mentions.
Yes, most likely.
With the Top 10% Rule still in effect, automatic admission to UT-Austin by any Texas HS grad in the top 10% of graduating class has been somewhat controversial since it makes it more difficult (though certainly still doable) for very good students from strong districts to gain admission in favor of guaranteeing access to very strong students (but perhaps not as strong) from weaker districts. As an analogy, it would grant automatic admission to a top 10% HS student from say a less competitive district such as Paterson or Atlantic City in favor of requiring a holistic application review for a top 11+% (15% or 25%, for example) student from say a very competitive district such as Ridgewood or Millburn.
Separately, though this is not specific to in-state admissions as we're comparing here, the acceptance rate is 20+ percentage points lower at UT-Austin than at Rutgers-NB, suggesting a more competitive admissions process.
That said, UT-Austin is also required by law to cap non-Texas enrollment at 10% (OOS and International combined) so that in-state enrollment is at least 90%, thereby keeping most seats for TX residents. Makes out of state admissions at UT particularly competitive, which is the case at RU too.
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https://www.collegesimply.com/colleges/texas/the-university-of-texas-at-austin/students/
https://www.collegesimply.com/colleges/new-jersey/rutgers-university-new-brunswick/students/
About the same type of demographics in both colleges.
More or less...not surprisingly, the greatest disparity is in the Latino/Hispanic American ethnic group due to the Mexican-American population in Texas and thereby reflected at UT.
Sorry to bump up an old thread.
First, wondering how your son is doing in college?
Second, my son has a similar story. 1550 SAT. 800 on Math SAT II. 4.0 GPA at Biotech High School. Very strong extracurricular activities (doesn't everybody think that?). Has been coding for a Berkeley professor since eighth grade. The Berkeley prof wrote recommendation letters for him (but Berkeley does not take recommendation letters. Results? Denied at Berkeley L&S, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Columbia and MIT. Admitted to RU Honors College and UCLA College of Engineering.
While he was aiming for some very high targets, we would have thought he would have hit at least 1 of 6 of the ones he missed on. And oddly, UCLA's College of Engineering is supposed to be 8% admit rate compared with Berkeley's L&S supposed 15% admit rate.
He is leaning toward Rutgers for several reasons, one of which is they made a generous offer of merit scholarships.
Congratulations to your son on his fine academic record and on his admissions to UCLA and Rutgers He cannot go wrong at either school.
Thank you. While there was some disappointment in not receiving admission to his dream schools, he is excited about what Rutgers and UCLA have to offer.
You're welcome. Both Rutgers and UCLA offer a lot to dream about.
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Hey Knight Shift. My son is majoring in neuroscience at UCR. He graduated HS with a 4.5 GPA and a 1380 on his SAT. This past year was one of the hardest and if I may say cruelest years to apply for college. Just three years earlier, he would have had a shot at UCLA and Berkeley. As you know, he didn't get in. And as mentioned before he did get into UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz and UC Riverside.
I think if he had stayed away from the STEM majors and said he would major in English or Spanish, he might have gotten into UCLA, Berkeley or UC San Diego. As it turned out we learned that his true safety school (UCR) was the third best program in the UC system for neuroscience. We also learned he felt better about staying closer to home than traveling 7 or 8 hours away. Also, as mentioned in my last post, UCR placed him in their honors program and gave him a scholarship, which the other UC schools did not offer.
My son starts his 3rd quarter (last quarter) of his freshman (I can't believe it) year tomorrow on April 1st. He seems to be happy there. Also another reason why he chose his safety school is they now have a medical school and they admit 24 UCR graduates every year and the other 36 (total of 60 each year) are chosen from over 6,500 applications. So he has a realistic chance of getting into medical school there, if he chooses to go. Right now his GPA is a 3.7. He's hoping to get it up to a 3.8.
If I were in your shoes I would steer my son into Rutgers if they're willing to give him scholarship money and place him in the honors college. Yes, UCLA is fantastic for engineering, but Rutgers is also excellent. What I've learned throughout the process, is in this day and age, one doesn't have to go to a premiere undergraduate school, like I did back in the late seventies, early eighties, because today's kids have to worry more about getting a graduate degree in something and the graduate school is in fact more important than where you go for undergraduate for the better jobs. I know that engineering may be different and you can get a great job with just a bachelors, but from what I'm hearing by talking to some parents whose sons or daughters are majoring in engineering or computer science, they still believe they need to go to graduate school to stand out. That's what they told me anyway.
When my son decided he wanted UCR and not Davis I had to let him make that decision, because I wanted him to be happy. If I forced him to go to Davis, I think he would have rebelled and maybe even done poorly there.
I hope this helps. Oh and btw, my son wanted to stay in California. He was getting a lot of brochures and interest from Brown, Tulane, U of Washington, U of Wisconsin and Rutgers. He just didn't want to go out of state. I wish your son well and I'm sure he'll pick the right school. You can't go wrong with either of them.
That's a ridiculously impressive profile so it's crazy to see how competitive some of those schools are these days. I'm surprised a couple of the others didn't come through for your son but he still has a couple of high quality options so best of luck in his final decision making. I still remember receiving the thin envelope from MIT in the mailbox back in the day (and Princeton, too). In retrospect, I'm not sure I would have thrived at either place but I very well would've planned to enroll had I gotten into either one, if the financial aid was enough.
I'm also curious about the application to the A&S school at UCB versus the eng'g school at UCLA. Was it just where the comp sci or comp eng'g programs/departments are housed at the respective campuses and did the applications require selecting the academic unit(s) to which your son was applying? Could it have been more than one school/unit for the same application fee, and if so, would UCB have been any easier via the eng'g school? I'm assuming no on that last one since Berkeley is ridiculously well known and highly regarded for engineering.
At Berkeley, there are two options for Computer Science. One is through the school of Letters and Science (L&S- not A&S). The other is through the traditional route of EECS, which has some EE and hardware emphasis. My son is pretty adamant that he has no interest in EE and hardware, and he does not want to hear about the benefits of going through some EE torture. :) He seems to know what he wants to do.
UCB Engineering School is an even tougher admit that L&S. This link explains the differences:
https://eecs.berkeley.edu/academics/undergraduate
As far as UCLA, the only option for CS is through their engineering school, but they offer a specific CS option that does not have as many EE/hardware requirements as Berkeley's.
Funny thing about the UCLA admit is that filing the application there was mostly an afterthought. Last summer, we traveled to LAX airport to visit Cal Tech, a school my son said that he did not want to attend, but he agreed to visit so that he was sure it was not for him. We had a 3-4 hours to kill after landing, and I suggested we do an impromptu tour of UCLA. It was actually one of the better and more informative tours we took in our college visits. We spoke to quite a few students who echoed what @camdenlawprof said about UCLA vs. Berkeley. They were also quick to point out that UCLA students have more fun than Berkeley students. The unscripted and unfiltered comments from current students were helpful. And the UCLA campus and surrounding area were spectacular.
For anyone with kids in high school, a lesson learned is never think that your kids is a sure thing at any one school. My son has a friend who was admitted to 2 or 3 Ivies, but waitlisted at Northwestern and Vanderbilt. There are multiples of (usually 5-10X) talented students vying for admission at the top schools, and in many cases, admission can depend on a crap shoot, and an admissions counselor reading something in your child's application that resonates.
As was said above, he has two outstanding choices, and we are extremely proud of him.
Nice to know that, fifty years after I was admitted to Berkeley and forty years after I left the state, I still know something useful about the U.California system. Thanks for the shout-out!
By the way, the way Rutgers and Berkeley offers computer science options seemed somewhat unique at least with respect to the schools my son applied to. At Rutgers, have seen recent grads double major or minor with some interesting combinations such as economics, public policy, math, etc. and land some pretty interesting jobs in actuarial science, "fintech" at investment banks and jobs at Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc.
Yeah, the A&S was just a generic reference to "(liberal) Arts & Sciences" school/college while realizing Berkeley refers to their school as L&S (as do a few others I'm sure), or for example, Michigan-Ann Arbor calling their largest academic school, LSA (literature, sciences, and arts).
Being Rutgers-NB folk as we are, my frame of reference for "traditional" route for pursuing a CS degree is actually through A&S (or L&S for UCB) rather than EE/CS, since RU's Dept. of CS is separate with faculty that are not part of the SOE faculty. Within RU's Dept. of ECE, of course, is the traditional EE option or a CompE option.
I would figure there's substantial commonality in CS curricula, particularly in the foundational courses, but I could see how certain emphases or specific faculty strengths/research interests might result in different paths providing a different educational experience if one is more inclined toward one versus another.
My son is closely studying course requirements of Rutgers BS through A&S and UCLA's CS through their Engineering School. There are lots of both happy and disgruntled current and former students from both schools who post on Reddit, Quora and other forums sharing their thoughts and experiences. We were specifically looking at some of the Computer Engineering courses offered at Rutgers SOE, and the prerequisites allowed students taking calculus/math/physics courses through either L&S or SOE to enroll in some of the Computer Engineering courses.
Congrats to your son! An excellent choice to have.
One item he might look at is how RU and UCLA place into grad school if he is thinking about that from now.
Excellent advice. I'd be surprised if there's much difference.
Rutgers is currently ranked number 28 in America and number 41 in the world---https://cwur.org/2018-19.php
And on CSR, from 2016-19, Rutgers is #20 in Computer Science Research Publications:
http://csrankings.org/#/fromyear/2016/toyear/2019/index?all
http://csrankings.org/#/fromyear/2016/toyear/2019/index?all
Those rankings show just how close both schools are. And personally there will not be much difference between a school like UCLA that's ranked 14th versus Rutgers ranked 20th.
Knight, another thing to consider: UCLA out of state is going to cost you around $65K per year, versus the scholarship money plus the honors program your son will be in at Rutgers. Just food for thought.
Thank you. $65K is about what we had figured for UCLA or Berkeley. We were fortunate enough to have the money saved for him to go to any college of his choice. We are leaving the decision up to our son, but he has already said that he did not think going to UCLA would be worth the additional money.
I like your thinking Knight. That was the same for my son. I actually wanted him to apply out of state so that he had other choices, but he just wasn't interested. Ultimately, I'm glad I let him choose, because I never wanted him to blame us for forcing him to go to a school he wasn't comfortable with. BTW in-state is about $37K per year when he's living there. But with the scholarship he received we're paying about $29K per year.
We have been very careful not to let his mother and father's RU legacies influence him too much. It seems he is heavily leaning towards Rutgers, and we are happy about that. Like your son, he is already mapping out where he can go and what he can do with the money saved by going to Rutgers. We have told him that there will be money available to him should he choose to go to grad school (whether that is Masters, PhD or a professional degree). The value of the Honors College cannot be underestimated either. We have suggested to him that we take one more trip to visit UCLA so that he can make sure he makes the choice that is right for him. He may or may not do that.
Very smart especially in regards to grad degree and how most parents, especially NJ ones, don't get it, blows my mind.
I disagree. Of course we've been railing about the flaws in US News rankings for years, but people buy into them. And you know who those people are? Kids planning on going to college and their parents. So if we look better in their eyes, we SHOULD get very excited even if we believe the rankings to be largely nonsense.
I'm excited. I know they're nonsense. Not mutually exclusive.
Yes, we have to worry about them. I was telling my law school dean that at a time when we were ignoring them. All the same, they're nonsense, and the more that's said, the fewer people will believe they're important.
Barchi announced at the Rodkin Center groundbreaking that in the last 7 years, Rutgers’ average SAT score in NB has gone from 1207 to 1300. That’s impressive.
