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CS @ UCLA here. And every UC you listed besides UCSB has "too many asians" (which has some correlation with CSL ranking ).
I also know a little bit about Harvey Mudd. Small school atmosphere is what sets it apart from all the others (the campus is tiny and ugly), but I think admissions are the most difficult among those schools and it's probably going to be the most expensive (if you get in) for all those you've listed, hopefully you will get a good tour.
UCSB is probably the biggest party school out of all those, but I'm not one to ask about partying anyway.
On April 06 2011 14:45 blabber wrote: apparently UCLA has epically awesome food. If you come to UCI you're gonna get mediocre food. But our Starcraft team is better. And we have asians. Which means asian girls. yes ucla has good food (compared to other schools dorms), but it can get old after a year or so. luckily its right next to westwood.
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CA10824 Posts
On April 06 2011 17:00 T.O.P. wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2011 16:42 LosingID8 wrote: i know people here are (mostly) kidding but there may be a couple impressionable high schoolers reading this blog.
please for the love of god never pick your school based on something as dumb as CSL. CSL is an awesome and fun extracurricular activity that allows you to meet some cool people, but that's about it.
you're a smart guy so i know you'll pick your university based on the important things: strength of major, placement into graduate schools, facilities, location, "fit", etc.
also i'm assuming you'll be at USC very soon. have fun, and say hi to tommy trojan for me! How many kids choose USC because of football????? this is a fair point but i think it's very different from CSL.
having a bigtime football program impacts the entire vibe of the school. huge school spirit, saturday gameday atmosphere, etc. that's why i don't think taking div 1 athletics into consideration is a bad thing.
but giving CSL that same weight is the equivalent of choosing a school based on its ping pong intramural club or something lol.
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I'm at UCLA. I think it would be nice to be in the dorms but paying the epic rent around here and the epic commute times would drive you absolutely nuts if you lived off campus. IMO.
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On April 07 2011 04:55 LosingID8 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2011 17:00 T.O.P. wrote:On April 06 2011 16:42 LosingID8 wrote: i know people here are (mostly) kidding but there may be a couple impressionable high schoolers reading this blog.
please for the love of god never pick your school based on something as dumb as CSL. CSL is an awesome and fun extracurricular activity that allows you to meet some cool people, but that's about it.
you're a smart guy so i know you'll pick your university based on the important things: strength of major, placement into graduate schools, facilities, location, "fit", etc.
also i'm assuming you'll be at USC very soon. have fun, and say hi to tommy trojan for me! How many kids choose USC because of football????? this is a fair point but i think it's very different from CSL. having a bigtime football program impacts the entire vibe of the school. huge school spirit, saturday gameday atmosphere, etc. that's why i don't think taking div 1 athletics into consideration is a bad thing. but giving CSL that same weight is the equivalent of choosing a school based on its ping pong intramural club or something lol.
esports is serious. business.
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On April 07 2011 04:55 LosingID8 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2011 17:00 T.O.P. wrote:On April 06 2011 16:42 LosingID8 wrote: i know people here are (mostly) kidding but there may be a couple impressionable high schoolers reading this blog.
please for the love of god never pick your school based on something as dumb as CSL. CSL is an awesome and fun extracurricular activity that allows you to meet some cool people, but that's about it.
you're a smart guy so i know you'll pick your university based on the important things: strength of major, placement into graduate schools, facilities, location, "fit", etc.
also i'm assuming you'll be at USC very soon. have fun, and say hi to tommy trojan for me! How many kids choose USC because of football????? this is a fair point but i think it's very different from CSL. having a bigtime football program impacts the entire vibe of the school. huge school spirit, saturday gameday atmosphere, etc. that's why i don't think taking div 1 athletics into consideration is a bad thing. but giving CSL that same weight is the equivalent of choosing a school based on its ping pong intramural club or something lol.
I honestly don't think it's fair to downplay the presence of a CSL team when it comes to picking a school. It may come off as a bit silly to some but when I arrived in Irvine the first thing I did was go down the halls and asked if anyone played SC in my dorm. The people hang out with the most right now I met through SC related talk and through CSL. Knowing StarCraft nerds has made my college experience pretty amazing - I went to BlizzCon, GSL Parties, and amazing LANs here at UCI and with my homeboy nerds at USC.
Your college experience won't be 100% revolving around StarCraft, but having a community you can turn to and meet new people through SC is a great experience to have. The best part is that you can all relate to each other on some nerdy fundamental level and having people you can easily talk to makes adjusting to a new social scene a lot easier, especially when you don't have to fake interests just to make small talk with new people. The quality of the team doesn't matter too much as long as everyone's friendly and tight knit like the UCSD/Irvine/USC teams.
I don't care about football, but that's just me. I'd say picking a school based off a vibrant StarCraft community is much more beneficial in getting yourself comfortable with your new school, but since the majority of your schools have an awesome SC following anyway, you should be fine wherever you go.
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I graduated from UCSD last year. It's an extremely boring school to be honest. Not much in the way of parties or any of that typical college stuff. There are some, but most people are extremely introverted at UCSD and try to interact socially as little as possible.
Of course if joining the CSL is your thing, you may have fun, but yeah. In general, 90% asians and 0% interesting things to do.
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easiest decision i have ever made in my life
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To qualify what I'm about to say, I did not go to any of the aforementioned schools. However, I had many good friends at UCSD and often visited, so I'd just like to chip in against the "boring" and "introverted" comments - maybe I did run into that small segment of people who interact very little socially, but I had more parties and did crazier things down at UCSD than I ever did visiting friends at UCLA (not as many as at my college, which isn't in the options right now).
The international community (International House aka I-House) is really awesome at any school, but particularly so at UCSD. They party hard. It's wicked. The majority of them are also really friendly and a ton of fun in general.
Off-campus, things largely depend on your group of friends and having a car, since honestly public transit around UCSD sucks hard compared to other campuses. If you have a car, there are a lot of cool places to go nearby (within 15-20 minutes), comparable to what you would find at many other campuses. Given, LA probably has a larger selection of cool things to do and places to eat, but I'd rather deal with beautiful weather and beaches within walking distance than LA traffic anytime remotely close to rush hour.
As always, Sun God = tons of fun. If you have any friends down there right now, try to get them to get you tickets this year (Wiz Khalifa, Jimmy Eat World, Mike Posner headlining) so you can see for yourself. To be honest, it gets kind of crazy, but in a good way.
Make a good group of friends, and I believe UCSD holds its own very well against any of your other choices. Lord knows I heard often enough from my best friend about how a group of them were going out to some party or other every weekend my 2nd year (I'm not exaggerating. We went back and discussed it and realized that there were exactly 6 weekends that year that they didn't go to at least one party).
Good luck!
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I'm not really considering HMC seriously: I want to do some more liberal arts type stuff, along with a more scientific (prob compsci major) My mom just wants me to visit.
I went to USC today, which enraged my brother, who is getting dragged along . (We did the long tour aka Meet USC)
USC was pretty awesome, we got a tour, admissions presentation, talked to people at Vitterbi, our tour guide actually has the CS/BA major I"ve been looking at, and i got his contact which is cool, along with talking to the head admissions officer for Vitterbi. Pretty cool overall, and I'll blog on it more later.
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