<p>Is the anyone here who has graduated from UCSB with a chemical engineering degree? Current students in chemical engineering is fine as well!</p>
<p>I want to know what you think about the program (ex. class size, professors, class difficulty, social life, etc)</p>
<p>I recently got accepted to UCSB and Cal as a transfer student. It's a very hard choice for me, but I would like to hear more about UCSB from a student's or graduated student's prospective.</p>
<p>My son was also admitted to UCSB for chemical engineering, but has the same questions. Are there any UCSB engineering students or graduates who will weigh in on their experience?</p>
<p>SB is known for it’s Chemical Engineering program & it’s stronger than Cal’s. </p>
<p>2010 Chemical Engineering program ranking:
[Department</a> Rankings | UCSB Chemical Engineering](<a href=“http://www.chemengr.ucsb.edu/honors/ranking.php]Department”>http://www.chemengr.ucsb.edu/honors/ranking.php)</p>
<p>Did you attend ucsb?</p>
<p>No I did not I’m an incoming freshmen to Davis, but during my selection of which college I was going to attend a lot of my professors mentioned SB’s superb engineering programs. SB’s engineering department is well known, but chemical engineering is where SB shines. I think you’ll have both the college experience and the education if you were to go to SB for chemical engineering.</p>
<p>I’m majoring in Environmental Engineering & SB doesn’t have it and overall Davis is known for their environmental programs. Hope someone can help you out with how big class sizes are and such. Good Luck!</p>
<p>I’m currently an undergrad in the UCSB ChE Department (going into my third year). Your first and second year you can expect most of your classes to be fairly large (chemistry is about 300, math is around 200, physics is around 150). Once you start taking classes in the major classes get smaller (especially as time goes on since typically 50% to 67% of students switch majors). IIRC the graduating class last year was around 40 students. I really like the professors at UCSB (they’ve got some hefty credentials), but they teach classes differently so class difficulty can be variable depending on who teaches it.</p>
<p>You don’t really have a choice in your professor though, as the entire class schedule is highly ordered so that you can graduate in four years. Class failures or the inability to get a class can really set you back (but as a transfer this doesn’t really affect you that much - freshman classes tend to be the ones that are more difficult to get (at least at the time you want aka not 8 am haha)). The professors in the ChE department also do a lot of great research, much of which is interdisciplinary and draws on our strengths in Chemistry, Physics, and Materials (although biology is becoming more important as well).</p>
<p>Personally, I didn’t find the courses to be that difficult since I made sure I prepared. The difficult thing would be to make sure that you’re working enough problems to understand the material, as ChE problems are usually long and complex (I’ve had midterms with two questions, albeit with multiple parts).</p>
<p>The social life at UCSB is one of its main draws IMO. The atmosphere is really relaxing and not stressful or competitive (like Cal). There’s a great deal of partying (we’ve made lists of the top 10 party schools multiple times), but as long as you can avoid it or balance it you should be fine.</p>
<p>As far as comparing Cal and UCSB goes, one of the main factors I considered when I was deciding between the two is that Cal’s graduate population relative to it’s undergradaute population is significantly higher than UCSB’s in chemical engineering/chemistry. As a result, UCSB is more undergraduate focused, although it’s not churning out as many PhDs with associated research.</p>
<p>I just got admitted into UCSB and UCSD but I was not admitted into the chemical engineering degree in UCSB instead they placed me in pre chemistry. I m not sure if i should go to UCSB and try to transfer after a year or so into the Chemical Engineering degree or just go to UCSD. I would prefer to go to UCSB but dont know how hard it is to transfer to a different degree. What should I do?</p>
<p>I’m an undergrad chemE at sb.</p>
<p>Engineering is a REALLY nice gig at sb. You get a bunch of free stuff to fuel your ego.
I know a bunch of guys that chose here over Cal, if you’re one to care about superficial ratings, I think SB occasionally beats out berkeley chem. eng in those. They also liked the availability of research positions here more; I guess Cal ugrad spots are in short supply. </p>
<p>In terms of social life, all the transfer students I know through AIChE fit in just fine. It’s really not hard to stay far away from IV if you’re afraid. If you’re friends with enough engineers, you find ways to entertain yourselves apart from alcohol.</p>
<p>I would say that if you’re looking for an easier time @ job recruitment fairs, go to Cal. there are a few local refineries (imerys, occidental oil), clorox, and p&g that recruit regularly from sb chemE job fairs. But Cal no doubt has dozens of companies coming on a regular basis. </p>
<p>The professors have to be more chill here than at Cal. There’s a nice little “engineering cafe” in the engineering II building where basically every chemE professor goes to for lunch. So if you’re courageous, you can just walk up to them and have a sandwich with them and it’s never awkward. They’re never in a hurry and will even drive you to an interview if you’re desperate (and on good terms with them.) </p>
<p>if you want to get a 1 year masters degree in materials engineering, there’s a really well integrated 4+1 program here for that. You just need to keep a 3.5 & score 85th percentile on Quantitative reasoning (GRE).</p>
<p>class difficulty: Cal is going to be significantly more difficult to get A’s. maybe I’m underestimating the ChemE classes here at sb but there’s way more students in ChemE there. And the competition to set the curve is undoubtedly higher. </p>
<p>Top reasons: