Cal Poly Pamona (Mech Eng) vs San Jose State University (ME) vs University of Riverside (Bioeng)

College Search & Selection
1

Hello everyone. First I would like to thank you beforehand. I have done a lot of research on these forums and a lot of you have helped me choose which colleges I should apply to.
Now, I got accepted, and I only have 1 day to make my decision. I’m a transfer student with 90+ transferrable credits from a community college.

It’s either Cal Poly Pamona for Mechanical Engineering, San Jose State for ME, or University of Riverside for Bioengineering. The reason why I’m even considering bioengineering is because, quiet frankly, I don’t love mechanical engineering. I love the human mind and the inner workings of it but I am so far away from speacializing in that field that I am going to stick to my realistic goal of being an engineer. The Bioengeering choice is just an alternative to going fully into the industrial world of ME.

Now for my thoughts on the campuses:

I already made two trips to SJSU. It looks like a great. I can tell it is a fun school. It looks like many of the students make it their home. The area of full of money, the beach is right around the corner, and the people seem pretty down to earth. The experience that will come this choice will be once in a lifetime, I know it. My mother and brother also lives in capitola which is a 45 minute drive so I could always go to capitola/santa cruz (basically the same city) on the weekends if I wanted to get out of the city. I didn’t vibe out with anyone on the campus, I guess because I’m not too outgoing on my first impression but it looks like I sort of will be able to. I already took my WST writing test and got accepted into the dorms. Also, the engineering building looked pretty cool. It didn’t pull me in or anything, I guess because my heart isn’t in this major and I fear I will hate my job, but there were pretty cool projects going on in the elective classes. The school is in the center of silicon valley too, as many of you might know so this is another big part of weighing out my decision.

For Cal Poly Pamona, I just got accepted three days ago under a provisional admission (I was originally denied). I always heard about this school for engineering and never sjsu. I guess it’s because I live in Southern California and Northern Cali. From my understanding is, this is a better school academically. The graduation rates are higher. And it’s a commuter school. The commuter part sort of makes me second guess this choice. I always hoped to go here, but then again it was the only good engineerimg school i knew of. I live an hour away from there so I can always go home on the weekends if I get homesick, which I don’t feel like doing at all since I want to make my life in a university a good one and not a dreadful one. And lastly, like I mentioned before, I don’t love ME, so I feel like the better school is with professors and curriculum, the better my grades will be and the more likely I will get my bachelors degree in 2 years. It’s also where some of the smarter, more determined classmates are attending from my phsics class.

For the University of Riverside, I hear a lot of great things about this school. It’s growing exponentially fast, many of the research found from this school is on television, the engineering building is like 3 stories high. My main thing is bioengineering though. If I don’t love ME, would bioengineering be a better choice for me since I love the brain? I was born with one ear (Microtia) so maybe having thing major would also help me love my career as I would help future children who were born with the same birth defect.

I am pretty stumped on deciding what I want to do at this moment and it does not feel good. I want to follow my heart but I don’t know where it sits. Please if you could all share some of your insights about these schools, I have until tomorrow by midnight to choose. I will sincerely and greatly appreciate it.

2

I made a few dyslexic errors… Lol. I think most of you can fill in the words that I forgot to put in. One thing though - I live in Southern California, NOT Northern California. Haha.

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CPP has 47% of frosh living in the dorms, while SJSU has about 56% of frosh living in the dorms. This indicates a substantial number of commuters at both schools. UCR has 62% of frosh living in the dorms.

Mechanical engineers may design things like prosthetic limbs, replacement joints, heart valves, wheelchairs, hearing aids, and other “bioengineering” items.

You may want to find out how difficult it is to change major at each school (try searching for “[school name] change major [new major name]”.

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ucbalumnus - thanks for your quick reply. That is useful information. It just felt like everyone at SJSU lived on campus though. I felt their school spirit in every corner. Maybe it’s just because I went there on the “Spartan Day” and the other time to take the WST. Although both were on Saturday and didn’t feel dead at all.

I’ll look up how difficult it will be to change their major name too

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Note that, like most California public universities, most upper class resident students at SJSU move to nearby off campus housing. SJSU does have a compact well defined campus, where the dorms are on one corner: http://www.sjsu.edu/map/ .

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Yeah a couple of the engineering students told me that this is what they were doing. Another good thing about SJSU is that they have a dorm full of transfer students so I feel this would help with the acclimation part of transferring.
Do you know anything about the academics of SJSU and CPP. How one compares with the other. CPP places higher in the rankings than SJSU so I feel the academics must be better also.

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You may want to check each school’s ME courses and curriculum to see how many in-major electives of interest are offered, and how much space in the schedule there is to take additional bioengineering type electives, if that is your interest.

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I would strongly recommend taking Bioengineering electives while studying MechE. The job market for Bioengineering isn’t exactly blooming at the moment. Plus, whatever Bioengineers can do, Mechanical Engineers can do it as well, and in some cases, do it better.

So I’d choose between SJSU and Cal Poly. I’m leaning towards Cal Poly.

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ucbalumnus - that is a great idea.

DarkEclipse - yeah I think this is what I will do. From what I hear most bioengineering jobs hire mechanical engineers to do them. Cal poly too man… Ahh. I want to go here and I feel like it is the smarter choice, something is telling me not to though. I don’t know why :frowning:

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@catnhat Happens, everyone has to face a choice that’s difficult to make.

Yep, MechEngineers do most of the jobs BioEngineers apply for. The problem with BioE is that it draws too little information from too many fields, which makes it very hard to develop any real skills. I know a few people who graduated with a BSBioE, and they all regret the choices they made.

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It’s hard to get job with an undergraduate degree in Bio Eng, unless you are at the top of the class of a strong school.
Most jobs with a BS in Bio Eng are not in design positions. They are usually test engineers, research assistants. You need a master degree to get good positions.

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@coolweather Even with a master it’s hard to find a good job. ChemE, MechE, MatE and ElectE all do a better job than BioEs. BioE is just too general and lacks depth.

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Coolweather and darkeclipse - hmm. Yeah that sounds like bioeng is out of the picture then. I’ll just stick with my ME major and take some electives in bio or anything else that interests me. I’m on my way to CPP to get a feel for the school. Any suggestions that I should do while i’m over there?

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Alright so I’m over here at CPP and it is hot. I talked to a couple people and they seemed nice. It seems like the heat is wearing everyone down though. The campus is a Lot bigger than SJSU. I guess this is 1 of the 7 Polytechnic schools in the U.S., the vanpys is not ad clean and visually appealing as sjsu. There aren’t as many pretty girls either (sorry if this offends anyone).

I’m just walking around trying to feel everything out. It seems alright but not as ‘chill’ as sjsu.

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I looked up all the yelp reviews. It seems SJSU is a lot more fun and lively, but its harder to get a job because of how easy it is to get good grades and because they are all competing with berkley students. Its dead center of the metropolan city.

Cal Poly Pamona is in the center of a lot too. The vibe is different though. It seems like career wise, I’ll be better off with Cal Poly, and experience wise I’ll be better off with San Jose.

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UCR!!! My sister attends there and I am waiting reply from UCR myself! It’s an amazing school with a beautiful campus and kind people! It’s getting harder to get in! D: Trust me, if you choose UCR, you won’t regret it.

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@catnhat You can change major at UCR. I think it’s not difficult to change since you are already admitted to College of Engineering.

http://www.engr.ucr.edu/undergrads/majors/

http://chassstudentaffairs.ucr.edu/majors_minors/#changing

http://chassstudentaffairs.ucr.edu/petitions_forms/major_change.pdf

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@foodisawesome and @coolweather hey thanks. I heard a lot of great things about UCR but after visiting the cal poly campus today I think I am going to stick with it. I hear graduating from ucr is good for going into research and bioengineering is still a young major. Cal Poly Pamona seems like my best bet since they have accepted me for mechanical engineering and since they are in the top 25 engineering schools in the nation. Life won’t be as fun as sjsu and it might not be as exciting as the expanding ucr, but it has its name in the market and businesses are going to like it when they hear I am coming from cpp. Sjsu has better job opportunities and a way funner/chiller/cooler area but according to the yelp reviews, competing with berkley students for jobs is going to have to be a little tough.

I hope I will learn to love CPP. I don’t think it will be that great, but at least I will have a good name for myself in the future. Thanks guys for all your help. I really appreciate it.

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I wish some of you would have told me more about SJSU… :confused: i still want to go there :frowning:

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Sorry, I wish could, but I don’t know anything about SJSU.