My son was accepted to Cal Poly for electrical engineering, and UIUC for chemical engineering. I’m looking for advice on where he should go.
He doesn’t have a strong preference between chemE and EE, he cares most about flexibility so he has options once he has taken some beginning eng classes and has more exposure to it all. Right now he thinks he prefers chemE because he is strong in math and thinks chemical engineering will play to that strength. Cal Poly doesn’t have a chemical engineering major; EE was his second choice.
He was also accepted at University of Washington direct to engineering, and Oregon State, but he’s really choosing between Cal Poly and UIUC now. Cost doesn’t need to be considered.
UIUC’s engineering program is really strong, but I’m worried about chemE being in the LAS college. Do I need to worry about this? I’m also worried about the larger sizes of the classes and the school. Cal Poly is touted as having smaller classes, and more access to professors. I’m from IL, so I have a sense of UIUC (at least from 30 years ago). I’m less familiar with Cal Poly, but the people who are there sure do love it. We live on the West Coast and I anticipate he will want to be on the West Coast after college, so I’m interested in knowing if West Coast companies hire from UIUC chem engineering. Similarly, how do companies outside of the West Coast perceive Cal Poly? I assume it doesn’t have the prestige of UIUC eng, but is it known at all? Right now he does not plan to go to graduate school.
Any advice for us?
Pre-Engineering | Division of General Studies (go to the bottom and look at “major capacities”) shows criteria for changing into engineering majors at UIUC.
Changing Majors Within the College of Engineering - Engineering Student Services - Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo shows criteria for changing into engineerng majors at CPSLO.
CPSLO is regionally well known for engineering, but perhaps less so outside the western region.
See if class sizes are visible on each school’s online class schedule.
Thanks for the info! It’s not clear to me if the requirements for PREP transfers to engineering apply to students accepted into the Chemical Engineering major. We were reassured that chemE being in LAS is only a historic/organizational difference, but that ChemE students would have equal access to all Grainger engineering resources. Is that not true, and a transfer to a different specialty within engineering is harder for a ChemE major than for someone who is already in Grainger?
I’d seen this from a current ChemE student: " We get all the same resources that other engineering students get. We pay engineering tuition, attend engineering career fairs, have access to engineering work stations, etc. I wouldn’t worry about it at all. We are essentially in both LAS and engineering."
More information:
https://wiki.illinois.edu/wiki/display/ugadvise/Majors%2C+Minors+and+Certificates#Majors,MinorsandCertificates-ChangingMajor
Since chemical engineering is in LAS, students in chemical engineering would be considered to be outside of CoE, but not required to switch to pre-engineering before attempting to change into a CoE major (according to the second link).
Wow that is incredibly helpful. Thank you!