Is cal poly slo just a “meh” “whatever” school or is this a good school for that major?
What do you even mean by that? What do you really care about? Getting a job? Bumper sticker pride? What is it that you want to know?
I want to know that if I get a degree from cal poly slo for engineering, is this easy to get a job? Would I get lots of respects from other engineers? @eyemgh
And thanks
The answer is yes to the first and probably yes for most on the second. Respect is a VERY subjective thing. One of the dads who is an engineer was replying to my question as to whether it would be worth leaving Cal Poly and going to Stanford for his masters. He said at one company he worked for that they preferred Stanford grads, but at the other, Poly grads. He himself wasn’t so enamored with what Stanford produced. It’s really a matter of perspective. Go on LinkedIn and pull up Cal Poly and you’ll find alumni at every company you can think of, SpaceX, Tesla, Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, you name it. This is the bottom line, what you do, meaning having good grades and getting meaningful club, research an/or internship experience will mean FAR more than the school name on your degree.
@eyemgh I also have gotten accepted into cal poly SLO’s computer engineering and UC Irvine’s computer engineeing program with campus wide honors. I was wondering which one I should choose based off just the strength of the program.
Honors at UCI means something because it gets you access to smaller, professor taught classes. ALL students at Cal Poly get small, professor taught classes. They don’t use TAs for instruction. Essentially, honors tries to make your experience more Cal Poly like.
I would defer to @NLinsanity to further clarify, but will link a response of his on another thread.
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/21308803/#Comment_21308803
My answer does not apply to Cal Poly specifically, but to any school decision generally: go to the school where you are most likely to be happy and engaged. Your grades are a direct reflection of your happiness at that school. If you go to a school with a great reputation but struggle in your classes, it would have been better to attend a different school where you truly shine. A school where you are confident, take risks, start projects, become involved is where you will have the most networking opportunities to land a great starting job. A school where you feel lost and unsatisfied will mean less social interaction, less confidence, etc. This more than anything is what will determine your success 5 years from now.
As for respect, once you start your job, NOBODY cares what school you came from. You will be promoted on the job based on your performance, period. The founder of Y-Combinator famously said that his most successful startups were by grads from Waterloo (Canada), and strangely enough, he’s been deeply disappointed by the lack of success from graduates of his alma mater, Stanford. If you really want go get a diploma from a respected program, do well at the undergrad you love then leverage those great accomplishments into a graduate degree from Stanford, CMU, MIT, etc.