Mechanical Engineering: Cal Poly vs UC Berkeley

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
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<p>As I prepare to decide which college to go to, I am trying to plan ahead and make my choice based upon which school will best lead me to a career in the automotive industry, preferably Fisker or Tesla Motors, or at least a similar career. I am currently deciding between Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and UC Berkeley. Both are very highly ranked in mechanical engineering, and of course both say they turn out the best engineers. Obviously Berkeley has an amazing reputation, but I have also heard from many sources that SLO is a rising star and does a better job of training engineers to work, as well as has close ties with many companies in the industry. I have visited SLO and love it, but am hesitant to commit because I'm still not sure that a SLO degree is the equivalent of a Berkeley degree. In addition, I plan to go to grad school after earning my BS, so I want to know how prepared I'll be after graduating from either school.</p>

<p>Bottom Line:
How equivalent are M.E. degrees from Cal Poly SLO and UC Berkeley, both for graduate school and a career?</p>

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<p>Posting to wait for a good response…I too am interested.</p>

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<p>Both have detailed career and graduate school surveys.</p>

<p><a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/Major.stm[/url]”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/Major.stm&lt;/a&gt;
[Graduate</a> Status Report - Career Services - Cal Poly](<a href=“http://www.careerservices.calpoly.edu/content/student/gsr_report]Graduate”>http://www.careerservices.calpoly.edu/content/student/gsr_report)</p>

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<p>A lot of people say SLO is good but from my experiences and what I hear from friends is that they teach a lot of practical stuff, but less theory compared to Berkeley. I just feel that SLO churns out the engineers that do the boring/busy work where as at Berkeley those guys end up actually having positions in decision/design making. Also, Tesla recruits at Berkeley and goes to career fairs here. Look at the course curriculum more in detail.</p>

<p>IMO, if you want to go to grad school, Berkeley is better since professors are the top guys in their field so if you get a rec from one guy, its like a golden ticket anywhere. Plus getting research is easier here since there are tons of labs/ LBNL and that is really important for grad school.</p>

<p>And finally if you graduate with a Berkeley engineering degree I feel a lot of people give you respect for going through all that crap and know that you are a hard worker.</p>

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<p>I am sorry but I cannot let the completely opinionated anecdotal drivel from GeneralWisdom go unchallenged.</p>

<p>“I just feel that SLO churns out the engineers that do the boring/busy work where as at Berkeley those guys end up actually having positions in decision/design making.”</p>

<p>Tell that to Bill Swanson, Chairman and CEO of Raytheon who runs the company and does lots of interesting stuff. Here is he resume: <a href=“http://www.raytheon.com/ourcompany/rtnwcm/groups/public/documents/profile/bio_swanson.pdf[/url]”>500 - Server Error | Raytheon Technologies;

<p>Here is a section of a post from a veteran CC poster ickglue (a Cal Poly egingeering grad and Harvard Business School MBA):</p>

<p>“If a Cal Poly graduate walk into an interview for an engineering, architecture, business, or agricultural firm, he/she will stand toe-to-toe and beyond with the aforementioned UCs. Take the tech industry in Silicon Valley, you will find CP graduates ubiquitous all over the valley in almost every function ranging from engineering, product management, marketing, to finance. Some of the most senior executives in Silicon Valley hailed from Cal Poly (Apple’s CFO, Oracle division president, Brocade CEO, etc) There is a reason why Cal Poly graduates’ salaries are some of the highest in all of the US universities, and beaten only by UCB and UVA for public schools. So bottom-line, if you are measuring CP’s reputation by its industry clout, Cal Poly is a powerhouse, full stop.”</p>

<p>By the way, Cal Poly also trumps UCB on initial salaries too. </p>

<p>More from ickglue:</p>

<p>"To address your question about getting into grad school after CP, the answer is gaining admission to a top grad school is most definitely a non-issue, provided the student did well of course. But that would be true even if you went to Harvard undergrad. </p>

<p>As an example, Cal Poly engineering actually has a preferential admission program for USC grad engineering program." </p>

<p>So, here is my anecdotal 2 cents. One of my kid’s colleagues who is a graduating senior in ME said it perfectly, “I turned down UC Berkeley for Cal Poly and at that time I was very worried that I had made a huge mistake. Many of my friends chose Berkeley instead. However, now that we are all graduating, I had several internships and now have multiple job offers. I am taking the offer with Chevron. My friends at Berkeley are still struggling to find jobs. I think that the best thing to do it is to get the practical experience at Cal Poly and then do a masters at a research university so that you can get the experience of both worlds.”</p>

<p>I have nothing bad to say about Berkeley. It is an outstanding, World class research university with a global reputation. Just don’t be foolish and discount Cal Poly with biased unsupported arguments. We as a family did substantial research, every campus tour offered and we turned down 5 UC’s for Cal Poly ME including UCLA and UCSD (UCB was not in our pool of choices – my kid was uninterested in UCB due to distance from home and campus culture preferences.)</p>

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<p>Not necessarily by major, though. Cal Poly wins overall because it is engineering-heavy; it does not have as many biology and humanities majors to lower the average pay of new graduates.</p>

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<p>@ucbalumnus – Thank you for the post. Of all contributors to CC, I find your posts to be the most objective and informative. More so than mine, as I tend to be somewhat biased in my opinions with strong views. This is more so when it comes to Cal Poly with an educational approach that I feel is the right fit for many students looking for a hands on program. I do believe that the starting salaries for Cal Poly engineers was higher than for Berkeley and there was a graph indicating so on the Cal Poly web site. However, it appears to have been removed. So, I cannot post a link to it. So, I will retract that comment as I do not have independent proof. Thanks for keeping us all honest.</p>

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<p>What about Stanford engineering vs Cal Poly SLO Engineering?</p>

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<p>Stanford is the superior choice there because, simply put, its Stanford. I applied but did not get in, however if you did I would say without a doubt to go there. Unless of course the school is not a fit for you, but that is another matter. Based purely upon academics and preparedness for your future, Stanford is by far the better choice.</p>

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<p>I’m going to apply to Stanford and Cal Poly.
I too am a Mechanical Engineering major and I too want to go into the automotive industry…and Tesla is my dream company.
I have a passion for sustainability.</p>

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<p>After visiting both campuses and gathering as much information as I could, I decided on Cal Poly SLO over Berkeley. Here’s why:

  1. Berkeley is primarily a graduate university focused on graduate research; no Cal faculty or students would explicitly state it, but you can tell if you read between the lines. SLO is ONLY an undergraduate university, their entire reputation comes from the successes of their undergraduates.
  2. During my Berkeley tour, they kept restating the fact that industry is telling them to get more hands on, something that Cal Poly has been doing forever. The Berkeley machine shop, while very high tech, had zero students working in there when I saw it, and the tour guide said that most students will first use the shop in their junior year (while at SLO freshmen engineers learn to use machines in the first week). At SLO, not only were many students working in all the machine shops, students were the ones actually giving the tours.
  3. How do you get into grad school? Recommendations and demonstrated experience (research or internships).
    -At Berkeley, you are competing against hundreds of other students for the professors attention. You are anonymous unless you put effort into getting to know your professor during their office hours. At SLO, there are no TAs or GSIs, you have around 30 person classes, and teachers make an effort to know their students. Which one sounds easier to get a recommendation from?
    -SLO is renowned for getting its students internships with major companies starting very early in their college career. Berkeley has scrapped its internship program entirely. Enough said.
    -Berkeley is great at research, yes, and some of the undergraduates get to participate as well. This cannot be denied. And Berkeley does have many of the same engineering competition clubs as SLO. But while the SLO teams each had their own alotted working space in the machine shop, Berkeley teams were, as one Cal professor said, “lower priority than the senior capstone projects. The clubs know their place”.</p>

<p>If a top school like Berkeley is contriving to make its learning experience more like the one that SLO already has, the decision is pretty clear as to which school will give the better undergraduate education. For me, that school is Cal Poly SLO.</p>

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<p>That is…a GREAT POST Monty!</p>

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<p>CONGRATULATIONS MechEMonty!! As the proud father of a freshman ME major at Cal Poly right now, I am thrilled that you have seen what we saw when we turned down 5 UC’s for Cal Poly. Not only will you save enough money to pay for grad school, you will get that coveted hands on experience. Smart man. Best of luck – you will LOVE the program. If you are interested in the Supermileage club (which as you state correctly has its own dedicated space in the machine shop AND a professor adviser), I’ll connect you with my son. Send me a private message via CC.</p>

<p>By the way, the clubs at Cal Poly know their place too – It just happens to be front and center!!</p>

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<p>Congrats on your decision MechEMonty!
It’s a no brainer turning down UC Berkeley for Cal Poly. Plus, you’ll most likely end up working side-by-side with UC grads in the industry, except that you’ll probably be way more prepared initially for the industry due to Cal Poly’s great reputation for giving it’s students practical hands-on design work. Berkeley’s great for research and like you said, it’s main and greatest priority is research and the professors are there for the research and teaching is just an obstacle they’ll have to get through to get the funds for their research. I mean research is important, but for the rest of us Berkeley undergrads (like 70% of the graduating class?) we’ll just end up working in industry, so might as well be prepared for the big slam when we’ve realized that our education has been theoretical and time for us to roll up our sleeves, get the screwdriver or the wrench, and start designing and fabricating stuff like we’ve been largely deprived of at our four years at Cal. i’m not saying that there aren’t opportunities to build stuff at Cal, but seems to me like you’ll have to prove yourself worthy enough to do so and they ain’t as important as the never-ending cycle of problem sets, labs and trying to survive those theory-heavy classes amongst cut-throat competition. i had always wanted to go to UC Berkeley just because i loved its reputation for research. but now that i’m working in industry, my non-UC educated buddies are all training me from design to fabrication, while i actually prefer just doing calculations and reading papers (theory), lol. Best of wishes to you! i know you’ll have tons of fun as a MechE in Cal Poly! :)</p>