My Son got admission to CE at Cal Poly - SLO. Most probably all UC going to accept his admission, Little confusion to about to choose the college. Any suggestion?
I’m a current ucla EE major but have taken the major lower div CS classes here. UCLA is highly theoretical and not very practical. Most of the stuff we are learning from physics to math to CS is all prep for grad school.
I’d add in Cal and SCU to the mix as well. Interesting perspective on UCLA. I’d assume UCB would be very similar. What are the pros and cons of theoretical vs. practical?
UCLA and UCB will have GIANT class sizes and will have a lot of TA instruction in labs and discussions. Poly will be all taught by professors and the classes will be relatively small. SCU will have fewer toys than any of the others. There’s a bit of a myth about giving up theory at Cal Poly for the practical. They get both.
I had a similar choice before coming to Cal Poly as an EE - I was accepted to UCLA, UCR and UCSD. You can find quite a few posts about this topic, but I will reference my own post from 3 years ago as I tried to decide between Poly and UCLA.
In retrospect, I would place much less emphasis on the whole “theoretical vs practical” learning argument. What really made my education valuable was the small class sizes and approachable professors. For computer engineering (CPE) students here, you will have a senior project and capstone. The capstone will be a real world design problem sponsored by a company where you will work in a group as a team of engineers would. Your senior project can be your own idea, the same project, or a different group project. I think this truly makes Cal Poly’s program.
Good luck! See below response from old post…
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Try planning out your courses at both Cal Poly and UCLA - since you are an incoming freshman it may require more work than it did for my three years. You will be surprised in the differences you find. For one, Cal Poly does not offer most major courses as often as UCLA will. This may be a problem if you miss a sequence, or do not pass a class. For myself, this was worth noting because more likely than not I will be deploying during the Fall 2015 quarter.
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As you pick out the classes, pay attention to instructors for your major courses. For example, I picked 5 professors for equivalent major EE classes at both Cal Poly and UCLA and read their reviews at PolyRatings.com and BruinWalk.com.
The reviews were terrible for every professor at UCLA - in fact, they were so bad I kept reading on about other professors and they were equally as bad. As OsakaDad mentioned, it is truly sink or swim. Do not expect help from your peers, and do not expect help from your professors; once in awhile you may come across a helpful TA, but from stories I’ve heard personally and reading these reviews, they usually are not very helpful either.
The grade curve at UCLA for most classes gave the majority of the students around a C. There was one class, however, that is also a requirement for EE and close to 50% of the class failed.
When I read the Poly reviews they didn’t make it sound as though the classes are necessarily easier (They aren’t) but most seemed to really appreciate their professors and the effort that they put in to see every student succeed. Night and day from UCLA.
- Finally, I’ve visited both UCLA and Cal Poly. At CP I unfortunately didn’t get to sit in on a class but it made a great first impression. I personally love the more “country” area - I hate cities, and the traffic that comes with it. Now on any other day besides the weekend, you will hit some good traffic on the 101 if you head down south from Cal Poly.
The UCLA class I sat in on was EE Systems and Signals; an upper division electrical engineering course with the entire sequence of calculus, and differential equations as a prerequisite. I was shocked to see several students sleeping through the lecture, and those that were awake, on their phones or laptop browsing the internet. Maybe they are all incredibly book smart, but I certainly could not get away with that and pass a class. As for the instructor, she monotonously droned on as she scribbled notes on the tablet. She was essentially just copying equations from the textbook and mentioning what the variables meant, then telling the students to “know this.”
@mathis123 My son got accepted into CalPoly SLO last year and chose to attend there over UCLA. He’s a computer science major and loves their “learn by doing approach”, as he’s already writing code. Here’s a great article which may help your son with his decision…CalPoly SLO ranked #1: http://www.satprnews.com/2017/03/08/college-choice-releases-2017-ranking-for-the-best-bachelors-degrees-in-software-engineering/