<p>Welcome to Davis! It is so awesome here, you’re going to love it.</p>
<p>I guess I’ll answer your questions in order. To start, I am a first year Aerospace engineer, so I know some things about ChemE. The ChemE department here is very strong, and I know Chevron picks up a LOT of UCD ChemE grads. UCD engineers i general have good prospects in Silicon valley. The more you involve yourself, the higher chance you will get picked up.</p>
<p>The students and community are great! I don’t know about you, but I came from SoCal, and the people up here are waaay more chill than down south. They are just friendlier in general. There’s always something going on on the weekends including frat stuff (which I’m not too fond of, I like to hang out at friends’ houses). Davis is an awesome city with a downtown literally connected to the edge of campus, so biking gets you everywhere. </p>
<p>I’ve found classes to be harder than high school classes, but not unbearable. I only know one person that has actually failed a class. If you study a moderate amount, you can easily get Bs. For the people I know that usually struggle with school, they study a fair amount and get Cs and Bs. If classes are very hard, there is always a curve that sets something like the average grade as a C; so, for example, if the average grade in the class is a 60%, that will be set to a 75%, so an 87% would be an A.</p>
<p>I tested out of the writing program too, but note that if you plan on grad school, you need to take it anyway. But you don’t need to take UWP 1; you can take COM 1, COM 2, COM 3, COM 4, ENL 3, or NAT 5 to satisfy the same requirement. I’m currently taking COM 2 and I like it.</p>
<p>You can skip Chem 2A with a 5 on the AP test. That’s what I did.</p>
<p>For Calc BC, if you get a 4, you can skip 21A. If you get a 5, you can skip 21B as well. This is what I did.</p>
<p>Also, I recommend taking more than 13 units fall quarter. The more you take, the more you will have for the next pass time and the earlier you will get to choose classes relative to everyone else. The importance of this is underestimated by everyone, but then all of a sudden you can’t get into Chemistry 2B and your entire plan gets screwed up. Looking at your sample, you could take ECM 5 fall quarter to give you 15 units, which would help a lot. I took 15 units fall quarter and didn’t find it too hard even when I was working 15 hours a week. Even when I took 17 units winter quarter and worked and played ice hockey, I didn’t find the classes too demanding. Just don’t go into classes thinking you can get away with not studying like in high school.</p>
<p>Hope this helps!</p>