Hi, I got offer letter for UC Irvine and UC Davis for electrical engineering. Any advice on which one to prefer will be very helpful. I want to take final decision within this week. thx for help.
This was my response to a person who asked the same question but regarding Chem Engineering, so it’ll apply to you as well.
ex-BME at UCD here, not a very enjoyable experience. The school of engineering in general did not meet my or my friend’s expectations. Davis has no internship opportunities around it, very dull city. I’d assume the chem. engineering is the same as BME (since same school), but that’s not a guarantee.
From what I’ve heard of UC Irvine, it’s a much newer schools, hence the fact that it has more updated technology than UCD (seriously UCD, step up your game). I know the city of Irvine has a little more going for it, so it’s possible that it has more going for it in terms of internship opportunities, but again, that’s just speculation.
EDIT: Asked a Engineering friend at UCI how their school of Engineering is; he had a positive experience and says that he loved it. He says the school is on an upward trend and that it has gone up the rankings quite fast. (It’s tied with Davis in 50 years, whereas Davis is much older). Both engineering schools are around the same ranking which is ~34 or 35. Starting to with I had attended UCI, UCD’s experience is not the one I hoped for.
Agreed, I have a cousin doing EE at UCI, he’s having a fantastic time. He says he loves the internship oppertunities and that’s why he picked UCI over UCD.
As a major at either school, I would recommend computer science (software engineering) over CSE. A BS in computer science wI’ll be viewed by many employers (your typical Silicon Valley software companies that regularly pay their engineers 6 figures and allow them to work 20 hours a week) identically to CSE or EE. So unless you’re interested in working in some kind of hardware position ( the hardware engineers I have worked with did not have bachelors degrees at all, let alone a BS in CSE from UCI) , I would stick to CS or ICS. For myself and my friends who graduated from the Bren school of ICS, a BS in ICS has kept our inboxes full of requests to interview even though we’re all already employed ( companies want software developers and they are DESPARATE for developers with degrees )
Some information about the CSE/EE major, when I was there if that was your major then you had some kind of dual enrollment with the Bren School and the Henry Samueli School of engineering, and you would take the 3 part introduction courses that are similar ICS 21 - 23 / CSE 21 - 23 ( I think )