I really want to our pursue a masters degree at Stanford, or a top tier school. If I were to get my undergrad at cal poly would I have a good chance of getting into Stanford? Or would I have a better chance attending usc or Berkeley for my undergrad?
You can get into top tier graduate schools from nearly anywhere. The school you attend will have far less impact than your GPA, research you do as an undergrad, recommendations and your GRE.
@eyemgh I don’t know how familiar you are with the schools, but if you have any insight I would love to hear it! Do you think transferring from cal poly to USC/UCLA would make sense? I am planning on majoring in economics/finance. I know cal poly is much more affordable, but from what I’ve heard you cant beat the prestige that comes with USC and UCLA. I also want to attend graduate school, so having minimal loans would be great.
@Hlabs11, I don’t know the business schools as well as the engineering programs. Hopefully others will chime in. What I would do though is to call the Career Services department at each school. Of course each one is going to pump their own program, so you’ll have to do a little interpreting. Then you have to decide 1) if there is any advantage at all in transfering and 2) if it’s worth the money you’ll have to pay to do it. My gut, not knowing all the details, would be that transferring wouldn’t be advised.
You cannot count on transferring from CP to USC or UCLA, it is very competitive and in the case of UCLA, priority is given to kids at CCs rather than four year schools. USC states this preference as well although I do not know if they practice it in reality. Agree with eyemgh that you can get to any top tier school from anywhere - it is your record that counts. There’s a lot of great grad schools btw besides Stanford. Also, USC is $68K a year, UCLA close to $40K which are quite different than CP. Are you taking all this into consideration with your famliy? UCB is known to be brutal on GPAs and many find grad school entrance difficult lugging around the GPA from that school, just a heads up. Good luck! You will do well where you happy.