Any unanswered questions? Thoughts on the campus/changes of heart?
@DoctorP, I just returned from Triton Day. The school’s campus is very nice, but I was so embarrassed for, and disappointed in, the Computer Science and Engineering group for not being able to get their laptop to connect to the huge screen that they were trying to use for their presentation, which was witnessed by a full auditorium of prospective computer science students and our parents. And even when they saw that it wasn’t working properly with screen’s display flipping and jumping wildly, they still kept trying to display stuff on it for about twenty minutes. It was literally unbelievable.
Finally, they shut it down. The CSE professor who seemed to be in charge of giving the presentation grabbed the microphone and admitted to everyone, while chuckling, that this sort of thing has happened in the past, stating that “it seems to only happen in this room”.
What a debacle. I saw many kids and their parents get up and walk out of the room shaking their heads. I’m sure that they WILL NOT be attending UCSD.
Even though my parents and I stayed for the whole presentation, which was extremely poorly presented, hoping to learn things about the UCSD computer science program, afterward my dad wanted to walk up to the professor and tell him that he should be ashamed of himself. I asked him not to and we walked out.
I realize that things can happen at the most inopportune times, but for a group of computer engineers to not be able to get a laptop hooked to a large TV screen for a major presentation to prospective computer science students is about as bad as it gets imo.
And yes, I have had a change of heart about UCSD. Before I had walked into the presentation, UCSD was one of my two choices. It’s now seventh on my list.
@KES2022 wow, that’s pretty embarrassing. I can’t imagine the shock a lot of parents would have been feeling and I don’t know what to tell you. I can say that a lot of professors, usually in MAE, are not the most technologically competent and they’re definitely not training you for a career in IT. In fact, I’m more surprised that the university didn’t have one of the 377202473 members of its IT department on hand to deal with problems like this. Sorry that that was your experience but I guarantee that should you or other people who were there choose to come here, UCSD will give you an excellent computer science education not reflected by that incident
@DoctorP, I was ok with the malfunction up until the CSE professor admitted to everyone that this sort of thing has occurred before and seems to always happen in this Price Center West auditorium. You should have seen them fumbling around with that laptop for a half-hour trying to get it to display their slideshow and trying to get the large screen display to stop flipping and jumping in around. At one point during the presentation when the professor advanced one of the the flipping and jumping slides to the next flipping and jumping slide, a prospective student stood up and shouted “would you please go back to the previous slide so that I can have more time to try and read it?”
Rhetorically speaking, If it “always happens here”, why wasn’t the issue addressed long before yesterday’s very important presentation to prospective students and their parents?
Now, after sleeping on it for a couple of days, I’m not so frustrated about it. Yesterday, when I posted, I was actually angry at UCSD because I felt they let me, and everyone else in that auditorium, down when they were one of my top picks—and that’s saying a lot about how much respect I have had for UCSD because I was admitted into some other very fine CSE schools. Today, I’m feeling that my decision to exclude them in my school choice process is probably hasty, and I’m second-guessing my knee-jerk reaction toward them. On the other hand, my dad isn’t so forgiving toward it. He says after that very sloppily prepared presentation, and if you got into so many other great schools, why not just choose one of them and be done with this.
I will say that looking back on it, that It was sort of comical watching what’s suppose to be one of the top ranked CS departments in the world unsuccessfully struggle to get their laptop to simply connect to an external monitor. My dad joked to my mom and me while we were sitting there saying they could get a chimp from the San Diego Zoo to come in here and get that thing to work much quicker. A lady sitting in front of us with what I presumed to be her college-bound son and her husband overheard my dad and slightly turned her head back toward us nodding her head yes—they actually got up and walked out about 20 minutes into the presentation with what appeared to me to be very disgusted looks on their faces…or perhaps they just all had to go to the bathroom, at the same time.
@KES2022 To be a sliiight devil’s advocate, PC West’s ballroom is rarely ever used for presentations and is not used for classes, and is typically more used for career fairs, orchestras, and other big events where the projector does not have any use.
Can you PM me the speaker that day? My curiosity is piqued! A few of the CS professors here are sort of bad eggs, so I wonder if it was one of them presenting that day, but a lot of them – Prof Politz, Ord, Porter, Alvarado, Minnes, etc… are wonderful!
@KES2022 again, really bummed that that happened. Like ucsdcompsci said, that room isn’t really set up for your standard “lectures” and when I helped with a conference there, they brought their own tech setup. Don’t know what to tell you but I hope you can weigh the merits of the school against that incident and if you decide it’s worth it, hope you’re able to convince your parents as well