<p>SLO’s academic reputation is a joke compared to UCLA. End of story.
Its still a good school with a good program, but strictly on reputation and prestige it cannot compare.</p>
<p>Excellent comments Mallen640 and ucbalumnus. Mallen640, I’ve never seen such a comprehensive pro vs. con description on this site. Good stuff.</p>
<p>alving0107 – go with your gut. You chose Cal Poly and applied for ED. It is a great school and you’ll get out in 4-5 years with a job. My kid was also recently accepted to UCLA and he is going to Cal Poly SLO. He has made his decision.</p>
<p>Since we are a mixed Asian family and deeply hooked into the Asian community, I can explain why Cal Poly has more White students than Asians where it seems the opposite is true at some UC campuses. It seems as if some folks on the forum were stumped by this. A lot of Asian families, especially first generation immigrants, are heavily influenced by prestige. UCLA and Berkeley have big international recognition and the UC’s are considered superior to schools in the CSU system. Due to academic prestige, theory and research are often prized over practicality and “hands on” learning which is often misconstrued as more akin to the way they teach at trade schools in Asia. Professors and PhD’s enjoy far higher status in Asia than here in the US where entrepreneurs and street savvy investors sometimes get more respect. Basically it is cultural attitudes that hold over from the old country that influence many Asian students to opt for a UC engineering education.</p>
<p>Now this was a very stereotypical explanation with absolutely no empirical evidence. It is 100% anecdotal pulled from my own experience and comments from some of our friends and neighbors when we told them that my son was turning down UCLA for SLO. You should have seen the jaws drop. Anyway, we get it. Here in the US, we’ll choose a polytechnic education over a UC any day and quite frankly, I’ll follow what employers prefer in a heartbeat.</p>
<p>I think CC has a way of devolving into mudslinging and academic chest thumping contest. </p>
<p>Is UCLA better than Cal Poly? Or is Cal Poly better than UCLA? I think the school that is the better academic and financial fit for the OP is more important. </p>
<p>Besides, with this thread dragging on like this, sooner or later, a person from UC Berkeley will come along and declare, you are ALL wrong! Cal is better than both by a mile!</p>
<p>Then the argument starts all over again, when a guy from HYPMS finds this thread.</p>
<p>@onecircut</p>
<p>You said, “Why don’t you ask 10 CEO’s of top corporations in So Cal and ask them who they would rather hire for a Vice President’s job, Cal Poly SLO vs UCLA? oops, forgot, it would never get to this point, because the CalPolySLO engineer would still be working as a low to middle level engineer.”</p>
<p>Please ask the CEO of Raytheon, who is a Cal Poly grad, what he thinks about Cal Poly grads possibilities for advancement into management.</p>
<p>Please do a little more research before you make comments like this. There are many Cal Poly grads who manage engineering grads from the UC’s, Harvey Mudd, and loads of other great schools. This does not mean that I think Cal Poly is better than those schools. It just means that being a Cal Poly grad does not hold you back from a senior management position. Once you are in a firm it is all about performance. I own my own firm and I’ve fired a handful of grads from top schools because they were lazy and had some weird sense of entitlement. I even fired one employee from my own alma mater for insubordination! I’ve promoted others who worked their way up the ladder after graduating from “no name” institutions. It all depends on the person and work ethic once on the job.</p>
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<p>However, while CSUs have a lower percentage of Asian students than UCs when considered system wide (which would match the “prestige” explanation at that level), the individual campuses are all over the place:</p>
<p>East Bay (Hayward): 28%
Fresno: 16%
Long Beach: 20%
Los Angeles: 18%
Monterey Bay: 5%
Pomona: 26%
Sacramento: 20%
San Diego: 7%
San Luis Obispo: 10%
San Jose: 34%</p>
<p>CSU system wide: 17%</p>
<p>There seems to be little correlation between prestige within the CSU system and Asian enrollment. Cal Poly San Luis Obispo is considered the most prestigious of the CSUs, but it has a rather low Asian percentage. This is even more odd because of its heavy engineering enrollment. The other Cal Poly, Pomona, has a significantly higher Asian percentage.</p>
<p>The engineering school at Cal Poly has a very high concentration of minorities. In fact, from my observation, out of the 5000 students in the college, I would guess (just a guess) more than half are minorities, with Asian being heavily represented.</p>
<p>So it could just be the case the rest of the colleges are mainly white. </p>
<p>As for Cal Poly and higher/top management path, I don’t think a Cal Poly degree will ever hold one back, especially after a while, it is all about one’s work experience. </p>
<p>Some noteworthy graduates of Cal Poly, </p>
<p>CFO of Apple
COO/President of Lions Gate Entertainment (major Hollywood Movie Studio)
CEO of Veritas Software (now part of Oracle)
Co-Founder of Brocade
Founders of Jamba Juice</p>
<p>The list sort of just goes on and on…you get the idea.</p>
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<p>ickglue your comments here are not unreasonable</p>
<p>CPSLO undergraduate students
<1% American Indian/Alaskan Native
10% Asian/Pacific Islander
1% Black/Non-Hispanic
12% Hispanic
64% White/Non-Hispanic
1% Non-Resident Alien</p>
<p>Assume that 80% of the 10% Asians are in Engineering and 1/2 of the 12% Hispanics are in Engineering…</p>
<p>that would be 14% of 17,332 undergraduates = 2,427 Minorities in Engineering</p>
<p>since 24% of total undergraduates are in Engineering = 4,160 students in Engineering</p>
<p>therefore 2,427/4,160 = 58% of Engineers at CPSLO are Minorities.</p>
<p>this would imply that 84% of the non-engineers at CPSLO are white</p>