<p>From UC Berkeley memes on facebook, there's a meme (perhaps an exaggeration) that says there are three choices 1. good grades 2. social life 3. enough sleep</p>
<p>College students only get to choose 2, Berkeley students only get to choose 1, and Berkeley Engineering students get none.</p>
<p>Ya, I know this might sound silly, but is this really the case? From what I've heard, the engineering classes are competitive and the curves are harsh.</p>
<p>Is Berkeley Engineering worth it in the end if you end up with a 3.1 GPA? Is a 3.1 from Berkeley better than a 3.8 from SJSU? </p>
<p>How do Berkeley Engineering grads fare when the graduate? Are a lot of them unemployed, or is that berkeley engineering degree basically a ticket to a job?</p>
<p>In addition, what about for industrial engineering? How do IEOR grads fare?</p>
<p>What about for graduate schools? Do grad schools know that Berkeley is harder so a lower gpa from berkeley works out to be better than a higher gpa from a CSU or similar school? </p>
<p>Is Berkeley worth it as an undergraduate engineering school?</p>
<p>Also, what if you're an out of state student? If you have enough financial aid and can afford to pay the tuition, is it worth it meaning does it make that much more of a difference than say going to an average state school in your home state?</p>
<p>I just want to know if it's worth it, if it's harder than in other places, and it out of state tuition for engineering, and IEOR worth it. Thanks.</p>
<p>Maybe if you graduate at the bottom it wouldn’t be worth it. A 3.1 is pretty average and with relevant work experience, you’ll get a job. </p>
<p>The difficulty of engineering (for a reasonably smart, hard working person of course) is vastly exaggerated by the memes. Yes, there will be a couple weekends where all you do is code/do problem sets/study, yes finals/dead week is going to suck, yes a bunch of exams are going absolutely destroy you no matter how hard you study, but you can definitely manage to have fun and get decent grades at the same time.</p>
<p>seen that site before. what worries me is the 10-20% seeking employment demographic within many engineering majors. so 10-20% can’t find jobs?</p>
<p>Those unemployment figures are pretty standard across the board. Other fields of study may have a larger or smaller percentage that are currently seeking employment. Some graduates may have found employment in a field not related to their own. Just ask yourself if this field is really what I want to focus in. If not, shop around, you really can’t go wrong (unless it’s poli sci, haha, jk).</p>
<p>There is no way to directly answer your question if Berkeley Engineering is harder than other school’s since not too many attended two different universities.</p>
<p>One thing I can tell you is that the content learned will be not much different. So if you find the content of the classes in Berkeley engineering to be difficult, it will be hard anywhere else. I have no idea if other schools would also give harsh grades for it.</p>
<p>If you just don’t like the idea of struggling to understand the material all day/all night and barely finish the problem sets in time under heavy pressure, then engineering in general isn’t the field for you and there are several other majors that will earn you good income if getting employed is what you care the most about. </p>
<p>Again, there is no way to tell if Berkeley Engineering is worth it over other schools since I only attended Berkeley so far and I do not know how other schools work.</p>