which school is better in terms of an engineering major, cal Poly slo or ucsd
i know that cal poly’s main focus falls heavily on engineering but at the same time there are lots of beneficial programs at ucsd
i thought that internships would be difficult to find at Cal Poly because it’s in such a secluded area … could anyone comment their thoughts???
but I was thinking that internships take place for the most part during the summer so I thought I wouldnt really matter???
Ucsd is located in an urban area so would finding internships be easier, or like i said does the location really help for finding internships, or does school matter too?
Im also trying to transfer from structural/ civil engineering to aerospace engineering… what are my chances as of rights now?
I was accepted regularly to ucsd but through waitlist to Cal poly slo
Please help
Internships are supposed to be one of the strengths of Cal Poly. You should ask about that in the Cal Poly forum on this site.
Cal Poly SLO is much stronger for engineering, UCSD is better for basically everything else. Don’t worry about internships, the companies go to Cal Poly to recruit. There is a huge silicon valley presence, like Apple does a quarterly, weeklong “networking” session, which is how I got my first internship at Cal Poly. Google and Amazon both have daylong sessions and several other big name companies through out the year.
UCSD is pretty good for aerospace though because there is a huge amount military companies in SD
@NLinsanity I don’t know about “much better” since the Jacobs School of Engineering is considered top 15 for PhD granting institutions and Cal Poly is top 10 for non PhD universities, which I’d say makes them pretty close. For most CS-type internships, San Diego and SLO both send tons of undergrads and grads to Silicon Valley and have really strong recruiting on campus, including sessions by Google, Apple and Qualcomm. I’d say UCSD has an advantage when it comes to startup incubation and research.
However, OP said that his current major was structural/civil engineering and his desired major is aerospace. @gestate, you should be aware that transferring between engineering majors at UCSD is difficult and not guaranteed. For structural vs civil engineering, I’d tell you to look more closely at your interests within the field. For overall civil engineering as well as architecture, Cal Poly is stronger and better known. However, large-scale structural engineering at UCSD is a really strong program with several massive structural labs on campus as well as the world’s largest outdoor shake table. In terms of aerospace, UCSD is clearly the superior choice. Aerospace engineering is the oldest engineering department at UCSD and the San Diego area is a major defense industry hub. You’ll have a much better chance of finding a local aerospace internship here.