California Engineering Education

I’m a new engineering student and a parent of a budding engineer. We live in California and all the prestige is on the UC schools. Unfortunately, the UC’s seem to be only open to 4.0 students now for engineering. Students with a 3.5-3.8 don’t seem to be admitted to any UC for engineering. I was recently admitted for a second bachelor’s degree in civil engineering at the University of the Pacific. This school has an excellent engineering program, but is not rated with the top programs in the state. Neither are the Cal State schools. Don’t all engineering schools have to meet the same standards to be accredited? Do students who attend UOP or a Cal State have a decent shot at a job if their GPA is solid?

You can check the ABET accreditation for any schools of interest here :http://www.abet.org/

My husband’s company hires many engineers: Civil/ME/Construction etc… and they really like the graduates coming from the Cal States since they tend to have the more hands-on approach. If the programs are ABET accredited, the curriculum’s are very similar. Good GPA’s are important, but my husband says when he hires, he looks at any job related experiences via internships and how they interview is a telling sign that they will be a good worker.

Yes, but CSUs are often much less expensive than UoP.

http://main.abet.org/aps/Accreditedprogramsearch.aspx lists the following schools in California with ABET accredited civil engineering:

CSUs: CPSLO, CPP, CSUC, CSUFresno, CSUFullerton, CSULB, CSULA, CSUN, CSUSac, SDSU, SJSU
UCs: UCB, UCD, UCI, UCLA
Private: California Baptist, Loyola Marymount, Santa Clara, Stanford, UoP

Ratings are misleading in many ways, especially when comparing programs like UCs that offer PhDs to CSUs that don’t. The methodology, for USNWR at least, for UG engineering is 100% based on institutional reputation. Reputations are built within academia (the ones the ranking opinions come from) by doctoral programs. Once you get past Cal Poly which for several majors is more selective than any of the UCs and get into the next tier of CSUs, schools like CPP and SJSU do a VERY good job at placing their graduates, aren’t as competitive to get into and are inexpensive by comparison. As for ABET, they set a minimum standard which is pretty high, but doesn’t guarantee uniformity.