I’m a California guy who’s been accepted to Cal Poly and Carnegie Mellon. I got into both for Electrical Engineering, but I can’t seem to figure out which school to go to. I’m paying exactly the same for both because need based grant covers my tuition to CMU making both about 24K. I really enjoy the beach, but I also love the city. On top of that. I’m a talented Cross Country and Track distance runner trying to be a walk on at either school. Could somebody, alumni or student with a similar issue, please assist me in determining which might be the better fit for me? I’m also an IB student getting his diploma who also is taking AP tests, if that at all can show my work and study ethic.
Thank you!!–
They are both good programs, but in lots of respects are very different.
CMU is a small urban campus. Poly is ten times bigger in area, not including the remote areas that are in the campus proper, but not really part of the campus per se. If you include Poly Canyon, Sheperd’s and all the rest of the outlying campus land, it’s almost 10,000 acres.
Poly has more overall students, but nearly all of them are undergraduates. CMU on the other hand has more students seeking advanced degrees than they do UGs.
SLO weather is perfect to the point it could feel boring. Pittsburg on the other hand gets very cold in the winter and very humid in the summer, but has a proper 4 seasons.
If you’re interested in grad school, you’d likely have more research opportunities at CMU. You’ll likely have smaller classes and few if any TAs at Poly.
Really, it boils down to lots of intangibles that each have meaning to you. Have you visited both?
Cal Poly student here, CMU has a much better national reputation and will provide better grad school opportunities.
What Cal Poly offers is a closer relationship to Silicon Valley with heavy job recruitment from other major engineering firms as well. That and better weather in my opinion
@eyemgh Thank you for replying, I have visited Cal Poly, but I missed my chance to visit CMU. Would you say SLO is better for Undergrad work than CMU?
Also, I’ve been led to believe that CMU offers more knowledge regarding management in your major (ex. me in EEngineering) and that SLO offers more practical hands on work that prepares you to join the work force right away.
Also why do you think I’d have smaller classes and few if any TAs at SLO? With more students shouldn’t there be larger classes and more available help?
@NLinsanity what year are you at SLO? And how difficult, or easy, has it been for you to handle your classwork, any sports/extracurriculars/clubs, and internships, if any? Also what is your take on the 4+1 Masters programs at SLO and how do you think a Masters degree at SLO in engineering compares to a Masters from another university such as CMU, or another Private, or UC
The class sizes and lack of TAs are largely a function of the CSU undergraduate centric mission. The largest actual classroom on the whole campus only holds 200 students. Classes in there are rare for engineers. My son has had two, both materials courses. Those sections are large by Poly standards because those courses are required for so many different types of engineering. As for TAs, without a doctoral program there’s no pool to pull TAs from. In ME for example they have about 3 give or take. Contrast that to Berkeley. They have over 60.
As for the 4+1, it’s really about efficiency rather than reputation. CP’s is good, but if you look at the cost and lost opportunity of taking two years to go elsewhere, even a top name school like Stanford, you not only pay an extra year of tuition, but you lose a year of employment. For an engineer with an MS, that’s a swing of well over $100,000.
I’m a 4 year ME:
I’ll try to sum my extra curriculars (sorry if it sounds braggy): I’ve been an elected official for the student Gov’t for the last 2 years (3-5 hours a week), I run a small business out of my apartment (12 hours per week), I lift/party regularly (weekends/nights about 8 hours a week), I’m running two engineering design projects(20 hours per week), and run 2 stand up comedy shows around town (4 hours a week but changes through out the month because I go up on stage an average of about twice a week and host the entire event). Whatever time left, I spend studying. My schedule is pretty comparable to some of the other students I’ve met here who discovered their passions early on during college.
I stopped having time for clubs after trying to focus on my projects and my stand up during my sophomore year, but most people tend to stick to one or two clubs because of friend groups.
The extras do eat into my GPA, it is a 3.42 and it’s been decrementing from a 3.8 at the end of my freshman year. But I definitely wouldn’t trade my experiences and the people I’ve met from my extra curriculars for even a 4.0. Having a strong GPA from the start really helped though. Freshman year, the material is more busywork than mental strain. The older I’ve gotten, the harder the classes are, but the less work is required of me. They start getting more and more hands on (projects) rather than hypothetical.
My roommate is the opposite of me and spends all of his time doing research and school work. He works at Poly during the year and he worked at Stanford labs last summer is planning to attend there for his masters next year.
I’m working at Apple this summer.
The 4+1 is mostly to save time as @eyemgh said. A masters degree won’t make much of a difference when it comes to hireability (when it comes to engineers). A masters is important if you want to go into a certain level of management at a big company, but they never care about where from, it’s just something to please HR.
A masters will make a difference if you are trying to get a PhD Though. Assuming you want to research or stay in academia, then I wouldn’t recommend the 4+1 here. But if you’re trying to go bang for buck, 4+1 is pretty great.
A masters may make a significant difference in your lifetime earnings though and might open doors closed to those with BS only.