Looking at the strict time to graduation is a red herring. Look at the experience and value in its entirety.
You can certainly graduate in 4 years or less in engineering, especially with AP credits. But there are a few other things to consider. You have to take a relatively heavy load of hard classes. It is better to take a lesser load and study more in-depth, which should make you a better, more marketable engineer. Additionally, some students get behind a quarter or two by taking a quarter/semester abroad or going into an extended coop program, which again are very valuable.
The silver lining is that these opportunities will certainly make you a better, more marketable engineer. Don’t just look at the extra few thousand dollars spend for the extra quarter of two. Many engineering majors come with opportunities for well paid internships/coops and the long term earning potential provided by the experience will more than make up for the extra time spent. This is especially true if you manage to get an internship after your sophomore year.
Take your education seriously, focus on how well you learn, and your entire college experience and don’t focus only on the 4 year number. You can certainly be much better off taking a little more time to graduate.
I have no clue of opportunities for internships at Rutgers in CS, although I doubt they’re lacking. I can tell you for sure there are quite a few such opportunities at CalPoly with the Bay Area so close and the school having such a solid reputation.
It comes down to where you want to live after graduation. If you want to stay on the West coast, CalPoly is by far the better deal, East coast very likely Rutgers, if you’d like to go back home, just figure out which school has a better reputation. Good luck.
@MYOS1634, I agree wholeheartedly that honors colleges are not gimmicks. They are great ways to attract bright kids to state schools that are affordable. They do vary widely though, from what coursework is required and whether or not it’s replaces degree hours or adds to them, to class size, to housing. A lot of what they do though is, as you said, create the elite experience with smaller classes, taught to all high achieving kids, by professors. That IS the Cal Poly experience. There is a gimmick angle. Schools are businesses. They attract more students if their ranking is higher. Having an honors college may seem altruistic, but they are there, along with the big merit most students who get into them receive, to increase the average admitted student GPA and SAT/ACT.
Thank you so much for all the inputs. I will try to learn more about both schools especially the CS curriculum. My school does not offer AP, will check if I am able to take the tests in May.
I became friends with quite a few international students who were studying abroad while I was at Cal Poly. They came from all over the world, Brazil, India, Germany, France, but they all really liked SLO and Cal Poly. So much so that they all wished they could move to California permanently. Obviously each person’s individual experience is different, but they were all from very diverse backgrounds and ethnicities, and they were all studying different things, but all of them were very happy with the school and town.
I just want to add that contrary to a prior comment that it is hard to fly out of San Luis Obispo, because it is not served by any large airports, there are daily flights to San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix and from there to anywhere you need. (True, the airport is not a large one). I live in the area and the only thing you need to worry about are the very last and second to last flights that are frequently cancelled due to fog. There is also a mid-sized airport in nearby Santa Maria, with flights to San Francisco.
I would like to clarify that the reason Cal Poly has such a low 4 year graduation rate is because the metric counts people who graduate in 4 years and 1 quarter(most engineers) as a 5 year graduation rate.