Cal Poly vs UCs vs OOS Colleges

College Search & Selection
1

Hello there. I’m an international student but a resident of CA(green card holder and CA ID). I’m interested in Aerospace Engineering and have so far gotten into Cal Poly SLO, UCD,UCI instate and CU Boulder, WPI(with a good scholarship), RPI, Colorado School of mines, etc. I’m still waiting on UCB, CMU and Umich. As far as in-state is concerned Cal Poly is the best option I have because of placements, quality of education is concerned. Also I qualify for in-state tuition. Thing is, although my parents are willing to pay OOS for Boulder, CMU or Michigan(if I get into these places), I don’t really want to put that burden on them(we are not that well off). I know I can take student loans but I also don’t want to end up paying it off for the next ten years neither do I want my parents to take that up. I’m really happy with Cal Poly but I have a few concerns:

  1. Although I'm interested in AE, I'm not that mature/knowledgeable enough to jump into that straight, so I may want to do ME/EE in my undergraduation. I heard that switching from AE to EE will be easier at Cal Poly because EE is a lesser competitive major than AE. Is this true?
  2. I do want to pursue post graduation after my undergrad, but on an assitantship (working for some time).While Cal Poly is a great school which prepares you for a job is it important to go to a prestigious college for masters? Would a degree from Cal Poly be good enough to get me to a good grad school (apart from work experience)?
  3. Assuming I go on to grad school, is it really important where you do your undergrad as long as the program is ABET accredited?

Sorry for the long post, I’m just scared about college.

2

For #1, change major criteria may be on the school web site.

https://eadvise.calpoly.edu/majors/changing-majors-within-ceng/
http://changeofmajor.uci.edu/engineering/
http://mae.ucdavis.edu/changing-majors/

3
  1. Honestly, switching within the college of engineering is fairly easy, it's only when you're trying to switch in from the outside.
  2. I'm currently at Columbia for grad school, but I also got accepted to some other big named places like Duke/UCB/etc. I went straight from undergrad. If you're an engineer, you don't need to do grad school for like 95% of the roles.
  3. Yeah, those are the basics.

My thread goes pretty deep into my experience at CP and my decision to walk away from Apple to go to New York for Grad school
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/cal-poly-san-luis-obispo/1974105-cpslo-graduating-senior-here-to-answer-any-questions-p1.html

4

MechE can be a safer career choice since you can work in aero if you wish, and if you don’t find an Aero job you have more possibilities.

5

@NLinsanity Thank you for your insight. Yes, the thread was helpful. And your reasons for going to grad school lines up with what everyone tells me. Best of luck with grad school and stand up comedy(from a fan of stand up comedy).