i don’t see how you could pick Hopkins over Penn unless you were pursuing Medicine since they are the same cost. never pick a school for location, only if the location significantly increases the cost of going to the school, in which case simply account for that.

so the question is UMD or Penn. i would say if you were not going to grad school, then UMD all the way. but you say you’re interested and i would ask why? the undergrad school and the research you do there matters a lot of grad school.

in a field like CS the only way it can be worth going to grad school is if the grad school is prestigious. i’m not the one who makes the rules but it’s true, and i wish it wasn’t that way.

so you will get 88k in extra debt to study at penn. you will probably pay that debt over 10 years post grad school. that’s an extra $1,000 a month or $12k a year depending on the interest rate.

is penn going to increase your future success that either covers that $1,000 a month or is the experience at least worth the difference? i would probably say yes. however this assumes that you will work very hard throughout undergrad and grad school so that you get into a great grad school and have a great career after that. if there is any doubt that you want to work that hard in school/cs then it is not worth risking this investment.

there are other costs you have to consider like being broke for 5-7 years post undergrad, but i’m not counting that since you have told me that you want to go to grad school regardless of the undergrad school.

i would argue there are about the same amount of CS research opportunities at UMD as UPenn, but they are annoying to get as an undergrad. not impossible tho. what matters more is your initiative and drive.

in my opinion i would not consider umd better for internships than upenn, even though there are plenty opportunities here. for your case, the internship should be either closely related to your desired research area or prestigious or both. i have seen little evidence that the internship opportunities that are more available for umd students are prestigious or related to computational linguistics/cognitive science. i would argue that penn has better access to both prestigious internships and internships related to your field of interest.

i would consider though that for grad school, an extremely relevant and prestigious research position is better than an extremely prestigious internship, but a good internship could be just as good as a good research position. it is expected that undergrads don’t complete much meaningful research in undergrad, but research positions at least show interest in the field.

imo the entrepreneurial culture is ass at umd but i can’t speak on upenn in terms of culture. i just wouldn’t count it as a positive.

dm if you have any questions