Hi everyone! I’m currently an EE at UCLA and I was wondering what everyone’s opinions/ experiences were at the other UCs. Namely Cal, SD, Davis, and SB. So far I’ve found UCLA to be very theoretical and not super hands on.
UCLA/UCB (and UCs in general) intention is to make the students ready to go to the next step (gratuate school). That is why they emphasize more on the theoretical aspects. However, Cal States are more hands on.
You will have engineering science and engineering design course work in any ABET accredited engineering program. Some programs may front-load the engineering science as prerequisites for engineering design, while others try to introduce engineering design earlier in the program. The relative amounts of engineering science versus engineering design can vary as well.
@ucbalumnus @uclaparent9 Both great points. I think when students are applying they should make note of that. A lot of high schoolers are expecting getting down to the nitty gritty in conjunction with the basic math and science. @ucbalumnus Where you Engineering at Cal? What was it like there?
I suspect that the emphasis on “hands-on” learning and employable skills is one reason why Cal Poly is gaining traction as a UC alternative, at least at the undergraduate level. The lower CSU tuition rate probably doesn’t hurt either.
CP applications are growing at least as fast as UC applications, yet CP is not under the same political pressure to boost in-state admissions. The result is that CP is becoming more selective, at the same time that the UCs are becoming less selective. For Fall 2016, the CP freshman acceptance rate fell to 29.5%, which is lower than any UC other than Berkeley or UCLA. Will be interesting to see how the Fall 2016 SATs/ACTs/GPAs compare.
@Corbett Yeah for sure! SLO is a great school. Simple example is their first coding class is in Python which is very relevant for application whereas EEs at UCLA take C++ with all the CS majors. I think what holds SLO back is its name isn’t as well known outside of CA.
Curricula have changed since then.
In terms of introductory CS courses, there is considerable variation in how they are run, and what languages they use. For example, UCB uses Python and Scheme, then Java, then C and assembly, in the first three CS courses for CS and EECS majors.
UCs are not necessarily getting less selective (especially for engineering), but they weight criteria rather differently from many other schools (specifically, GPA tend to be more heavily weighted relative to test scores). CPSLO may be attracting more applications because it is a CSU (so less expensive than UCs for many students), but is not a mainly commuter-based school like most CSUs.
The reference is to the changes in freshman admit rates between Fall 2015 and Fall 2016, which were as follows:
UCB +0.6
UCD +4.1
UCI +2.0
UCLA +0.7
UCM +9.1
UCR +10.2
UCSD +2.0
UCSB +3.2
UCSC +7.3
CP -1.8
UC data from: http://www.ucop.edu/institutional-research-academic-planning/_files/factsheets/2016/fall-2016-admissions-table2.pdf
Granted, these changes may be short-term blips. Also granted, acceptance rates do not necessarily equate with selectivity. The point is only that recent UC administrative decisions have had the unintended side effect of making CP’s admit rate look good.
@Corbett One reason for admission rate increases of the UCs …simply is the fact that they open their doors to more and more students each year! Though I am not familiar with the student population growth of CP, but I suspect is as large. Having said that, I agree that CP is becoming much better known among californians.
@uclaparent9 UCLA seems to be grossly overcrowded. It is very difficult to get classes or at least classes with ideal time slots.
@10s4life ^UCLA is perhaps the worst such case among all UCs.
You’re right – but why are they opening their doors like that, given the concerns about overcrowded classrooms and insufficient student housing at many UC campuses ?
The answer is that the UC system is under intense political pressure to admit more and more California students. And at this time, the CSU system – which includes Cal Poly – is not under the same degree of pressure. In fact, CP has the opposite political problem. The City of San Luis Obispo (which is smaller than Davis, Santa Cruz, Merced, or any other UC community) is concerned about the number of students in town, and wants to cap CP enrollment at the current level.
No, it’s just the opposite. In Fall 2015, CP enrolled 5,709 new undergraduates (freshman and transfers). For Fall 2016, their target was to reduce that to 5,414. The final numbers aren’t available yet, but the goal was to admit fewer students, not more.
At Cal Poly, the admit rates are (currently) trending down, and SATs/ACTs/GPAs are (currently) trending up. These trends are (currently) not happening at the UCs. Such trends are obviously subject to change, but CP (currently) has a lower acceptance rate than most UCs, and my guess is that their Fall 2016 SATs/ACTs will compare favorably as well. The GPA comparison may be less favorable, since CP doesn’t seem to weigh GPAs and class rank as heavily as the UCs do.
Admission rate by itself does not tell the story about selectivity, due to differences in applicant pools.
Regarding the relative weights of GPA versus test scores, CSUs are fairly obvious in that 0.1 GPA point = 80 points of SAT score or 0.1 GPA point = 2 points of ACT score when calculating the eligibility index. Obviously, CPSLO adds additional criteria in its MCA formula. UCs are less obvious due to holistic reading and scoring, but have a reputation of greatly emphasizing GPA over test scores (rank per se is not used, although it correlates with GPA and ELC status).
So, for the situations where a CSU campus and UC campus are similarly selective, a GPA-heavy applicant may have a better chance at the UC, while a test-score-heavy applicant may have a better chance at the CSU. Of course, both CSUs and UCs may have admission by major or division, so campus admission stats may not be reflective of the selectivity of the specific major or division applied to.
And for Fall 2017, the Cal Poly new enrollment target is … even lower, at 5,300.
Meanwhile, their applicant volume is still rising, with record numbers for Fall 2017.
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/article118852378.html
Applicant volume is rising at both the UCs and Cal Poly. The UCs are responding by increasing enrollment. In contrast, CP is responding by decreasing enrollment. This approach may or may not make sense for a public university in a state with growing demand for higher education, but it does mean that CP is more likely to show gains by conventional measures of selectivity, such as acceptance rate and test scores.