<p>Hey!
I have applied to Cal Poy for Mechanical engineering and I have a few questios about their engineering school so I was wondering if anyone here could give me some insight.
How difficult is the engineeing program there? Are classes taught by professors or TAs and are they generally helpful?
I was also wondering if anyone knows the average class size for Mechanical Engineering? </p>
<p>Here is a little about myself:
I am a transfer applicant . I have previously attended UCI for ME and completed all of my lower division classes and a few upper divs. I am taking a few cources at community college during spring and planning on transferring to a state college. A few things I did not ike about UCI was that professors usually cared more about their research and were less interested in teaching. I had to really teach my self all the concepts and it got really difficult as I started taking upper division classes. Also, I didn’t like the class size of 300+ students. So I am just wondering if Cal Pol is different. </p>
<p>Any information will be greatly appreciated. Thanks! </p>
<p>I’m a little late, but I will try to answer your questions as best as I can since I was ECE.</p>
<p>Like you, I originally went to UCI for computer science and left after one year. Many of the classes were 100+ people, some even as high as 300. The labs were mostly taught by TA’s and did not match the lectures. After leaving UCI I started going to the local community college and started from scratch with my classes. Finally, after completing most of the general ed courses and math (advisor from Cal Poly recommended taking all math at the CC) I transferred into CPP’s ECE program. </p>
<p>I cannot speak for the ME program, but from what I’ve seen the engineering programs will push and challenge you. Unfortunately, “difficulty” is subjective here. I excelled in programming courses but EM theory kept me up many nights and majority of the time I felt lost in the class. I had a great professor for the class, but even then trying to wrap my head around some of the concepts was difficult. </p>
<p>All classes I believe are taught by professors. Personally, I never had any course (engineering or otherwise) taught by a TA. All my labs were taught by a professor, on many occasions, it was the same professor who conducted the lecture so the topics lined up perfectly. I cannot speak for ME professors (the only one I dealt with almost all ECE students despised, Dr. Dashner) but the professors were very helpful inside the classroom and outside. </p>
<p>Majority of the classes in engineering seemed to be ~30 people or less. Moving up in the division courses you’ll get less students in many of the classes. In a couple engineering courses there were less than 10 people in the room.</p>
<p>I probably omitted a lot of info that you might find helpful so if you have more questions feel free to reach out to me. </p>
<p>It’s been a couple years since I finished (Bachelor’s 06, Master’s 10) but I don’t think too much has changed.</p>
<p>Thank you for your respose, its was very nformative and helpful 
I’m messaging you with more questions. </p>