<p>Whats Berkeley's "atmosphere"</p>
<p>Have you been to the school? The surrounding city is crap but the school is nice. And what's with the stereotype on Berkeley? It's not as liberal as you might think, and there's a lot more to the school that would make it the #1 public school in the country...</p>
<p>The very air the students breath there is ionized and smells of ozone from the fierce competition between all the students. Sometimes, if top students sit too close together or pass by each other too closely in the halls, electricity arcs between them, sending flares of plasma into the surrounding air.</p>
<p>yea I've been to the school and I think its garbage. I don't understand how someone can actually enjoy living there.</p>
<p>I personally have never been to Berkeley. I did not apply there and barely considered it because it sounded too liberal and competitive for me to have the best college experience possible. SLO, on the other hand, sounds great. I just visited last Friday and had a wonderful experience. And I must say that they have delicious smoothies. I had a Schroeder's and it was delightful. I'm not sure if it's my top choice or not, but it's definately in my top 3.</p>
<p>i got accepted to UCSD UClA i chose cal poly caz it great in engineering many of the UC don’t eneve have my major</p>
<p>I know this is an old thread starting back in 2005 – but, I love it! Try to keep it alive because all the content is still relevant. Most of the students who commented on it have already graduated. I’d love to know what they are up to today. Since 2005 Cal Poly has done exactly what most predicted on this thread and that is get more competitive and get even higher salaries for new grads. Pretty cool look back into history.</p>
<p>This is an interesting post as stated by OsakaDad. This provides very revealing information about Cal poly and factors that are involved with choosing colleges!</p>
<p>D is choosing between UCLA, UCSB and Cal Poly (among others). Certainly aware of UCLA reputation, but would not be surprised if she chose CP just for the atmosphere, and the “learn by doing” aspect</p>
<p>I have just never toured a school with a better atmosphere than that of cal poly. Great academics+friendly people+beautiful location= the place to be</p>
<p>Just my opinion… haha</p>
<p>A lot of anecdotes presented on how Cal Poly is “better” than Berkeley in engineering. How about this? Check out the top 5% of high school graduating classes. Of that 5%, where do most of those who are planning in majoring in engineering go? MIT, Stanford, Caltech, and Berkeley. Not even HYP, and certainly not CP. How about distinguished alumni? Yeah, Raytheon’s CEO is a CP grad. Who else? CP is a good school - it 's far better than any other CSU in engineering, but accept it for what it is. Most of its students are not at the top of their high school classes, and the curriculum is not designed for those pursuing grad school.</p>
<p>Look at the top 5% of any high school graduating class. Of those planning on majoring in engineering, how many choose Cal Poly over MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, and Caltech? Not many. Like a previous post said, we aren’t comparing the same thing here. The cross-admits alluded to are the lower end of Berkeley’s admits and the higher end of CP’s admits. Living in a high-tech area, I’m well aware of the engineering school pecking order. Most CP students are in the B+/A- weighted range, a far cry from the four schools mentioned above.</p>
<p>While I think that where you go to school is important to an extent, what’s more important is how hard you’re willing to work for what you want. Cal Poly may not be the best school, but there are still a ton of opportunities available to students who want them enough. Everyone I know has been able to find a job they wanted after graduation.</p>
<p>I didn’t see on this thread if someone actually said Cal Poly is on par with MIT or Caltech. Was I wrong? I didn’t read through everything, I confess. But let’s put it this way even UCB is not on par with MIT or Caltech or Stanford. So it is no surprise CP is not equal to the aforementioned schools.</p>
<p>Cal Poly is a B+/A- student school, I would agree with that generalization for most part. It is improving, but it is not yet an A school. But you know, IMO CP is in its own niche segment and should just be concerned with doing its own thing instead of constantly comparing itself to general research universities. </p>
<p>Harvey Mudd is a very well respected non-research undergrad focused school and it doesn’t really care about how it is perceived when compare to UCB or Stanford. It just does its own engineering niche. I think CP can learn a lot from that approach and develop its own unique identity and signature. IMO, there is no point in defining its identity through constant comparison to UCB.</p>
<p>Correct me if I am wrong, my impression is that admission to top schools is based on three things, GPA, standardized test scores and last but not least, ability to pay, approximately in increasing order of difficulty. Lots of kids get A- or better grades, fewer breathe the thin air of VERY high standardized test scores, and then comes the ability of a family to pay the costs at Stanford, MIT, Cal Tech, etc. Any high school kid has a shot at good grades, some have the willingness to work hard enough to approach the 2400 SAT max, but families can not gin up the money for the best schools out of thin air. It’s a limiting factor. There is a strong correlation between SAT scores and family income, that is pretty well established. Now we are talking about how to get the best education for the funds available. Cal Poly seems to do very well on that score.</p>
<p>I have some interesting statistics on pay scales for the California schools. It is from payscale.com and ranks over a thousand four year colleges in the US.</p>
<p>2 Harvey Mudd College
3 Cal Tech
10 Stanford
19 Santa Clara
31 Berkeley
54 USC
60 Cal Poly
65 UCSD
72 University of the Pacific
79 tied Cal Poly Pomona
St. Mary’s
82 University of San Francisco
89 tied UCLA
Davis
94 UCSB
100 UCI</p>
<p>So we can see that the only CA public university that ranks higher than Cal Poly in terms of graduates’ pay is UCB.</p>
<p>I will add to my earlier post the the starting and mid career salaries.
Berkeley<br>
52,100-103,000<br>
Cal Poly
53,400- 97,900
The starting salaries at Cal Poly are higher than any other California public University.</p>
<p>ickglue - you say that Cal Poly is a B+/A- school (true) and Geohud662 you say that the top 5% go to MIT, Cal Tech, Stanford and Berkeley (not always). My kid was absolutely qualified for the aforementioned schools, but had zero interest in them. We had several confrontational discussions about his school choices and finally I backed off and let him be in the driver’s seat. At the end of the day he chose to apply to 5 UCs, both Cal Polys and Harvey Mudd.</p>
<p>With regards to grades and test scores he was clearly competitive for MIT, Cal Tech, Stanford and Berkeley. Culturally, he was a complete mismatch for all these schools and most of the UC’s that he was accepted to. He chose Cal Poly because he loved their presentation and teaching methodology and felt 100% comfortable there. Basically, my kid wanted to get into a machine shop as quickly as possible and get dirty in addition to all the theory and book learning that is needed to be an expert engineer. He is a hands on guy and has little patience or interest in intellectual elitism.</p>
<p>He is not alone either. Several of his buddies turned down Berkeley and other top UCs for Cal Poly. Although I haven’t heard of anyone turning down MIT, Cal Tech or Stanford yet for the school, I am sure that a few of them exist.</p>
<p>My point is that there are top performing kids that really fit at Cal Poly and the school is getting better and better all the time. I also agree with ickglue that Cal Poly should be in its own niche like Harvey Mudd and not care about these comparisons.</p>
<p>For the Engineering School I suspect describing “Cal Poly is a B+/A- school” may not do it justice. True the SAT scores are not in the stratosphere but I bet the number of AP courses taken would compare well with some of the more elite schools.</p>
<p>Preliminary New Freshman Profile Fall 2012<br>
COLLEGE APPLIED SELECTED GPA ACT SAT1*
Engineering 11,082 3,402 3.98 30 1346</p>