I can only speak to the situation for Engineering students since I’m a Computer Engineer, and I can only say so much since I’m only a first year student.
- In my experience, there are quite a few local companies that recruit very heavily from the school’s ECE department for interns. The Santa Barbara area’s main industry in terms of tech is mostly for the defense industry. Goleta, CA is actually the closest city to campus and it’s filled many companies, mostly defense contractors, who heavily recruit students. Look on Google Maps, north of campus is Hollister Road, where a lot of the companies are located. For example, Raytheon has a large facility, right outside campus. A ton of those companies I’ve had contact with. Bigger companies like Amazon and Microsoft also come to the career fairs to recruit.
- With that being said, this is a large public university after all and jobs and internships won’t be just given to you. The university does a good job in my opinion with directly sending undergrads job listings, but they won’t apply for it for you. I think it’s very similar to the other UCs.
- I don’t think we have any co-op programs that I know of, but like I said local engineering recruitment is pretty strong.
- UCSB makes it quite easy to get into undergraduate research, ESPECIALLY as an engineer. The school has an unusually low number of graduate students, which actually opens up a lot of opportunites for undergrads. We were told that this was intentional, to give undergrads a richer experience.
Specifically for the College of Engineering, I think one of our biggest strengths is how small the program is! The UCSB College of Engineering is only around 1500 undergrads total, and I believe it’s actually the smallest engineering college in the entire UC system. For reference, UCSD has more than 6000 undergrads. I remember that this was a very important factor when I chose UCSB, and it definitely bore fruit. In my major of Computer Engineering, there are typically only around 60 entering CEs per year! I believe the ECE department also has a student to faculty ratio of 6:1.
I like to think of the College of Engineering as a STEM-focused liberal arts college within the university! Because the program is deliberately kept small, there really is a sense of community among the engineers here. I’ve never felt lost in the crowd, or anything like that. It’s also meant very good class sizes and excellent access to faculty.
I have a friend at Berkeley, and his intro level CS class (CS 61a) has nearly 2000 people! That kind of situation is unthinkable to me. My intro CS class last quarter (CS 16) was only 125 people, with enrollment priority given to EEs, CEs and CS. I feel like I can really access my professors really well here. Meeting with faculty is as simple as going to office hours and talking one on one or sending an email. My Berkeley friend told me a story about having to wait a long time until he could get help with an assignment at office hours.
Please let me know if you have any questions at all 
I’m happy to share my experiences.