Actually, UCB’s and some other UCs’ course numbers use 1-99 for lower division, 100-199 for upper division, and 200-299 for graduate level.
I looked at the undergraduate and graduate level fluids classes at both Brown and Cal Poly. They don’t appear different. Neither deal with continuous masses that require tensor calculus (a term completely foreign to me until my son took it 
) until 2xxx at Brown and 5xx at Cal Poly.
It is weird how Brown labels them though. They have 00xx, 0xxx, 1xxx and 2xxx. It’s not apparent via the course numbers that 2xxx are graduate level classes. To make matters worse, they refer to a high level class as Fluid Mechanics I.
Cal Poly on the other hand has 1xx, 2xx, 3xx, 4xx, 5xx. It’s obvious simply looking at the numbers what’s what. The corresponding course to 2810 Fluid Mechanics I is ME 540 and called what it is, Viscous Flow.
As for charging ahead, I think a student follows the path that leads them where they’re trying to get to.
One of the options these days for students that I’m sure you’re well aware of, but probably wasn’t one when you were in school is to get blended BS/MS degrees. My son was similarly ahead like you were and took his first graduate level class 3rd year. Rather than walking out with a BS and some impressively deeper courses, he was able to get a thesis based MS in 5 years.
I don’t specifically recall whether it was that way for UC’s back then – and it matters not to the HS students we serve here – but I do remember that the Cal State’s were (and based on eyemgh’s Cal Poly reference perhaps still are?) into the 400’s for undergrad. I was applying for jobs solely in my native Southern California, so a potential problem which I didn’t recognize at the time.
The takeaway for HS students is simply to make sure you communicate to potential employers anything they should know which isn’t obvious. I didn’t think things through back then, but it would have been simple to handle and perhaps even a selling point that they would be getting a watered-down MS who they could pay like a BS.
Yes, Brown’s course numbering has gone all over the map lately. Seems like for starters they just stuck a zero after everything (my Engin 3 morphed into Engin 30, etc) and then things got more weird from there.
“As for charging ahead, I think a student follows the path that leads them where they’re trying to get to.”
I’ll rephrase slightly: To those so inclined, charge ahead (but be careful).
“I looked at the undergraduate and graduate level fluids classes at both Brown and Cal Poly. They don’t appear different. Neither deal with continuous masses that require tensor calculus”.
Don’t know about Cal Poly, but even back in my dumbed-down era the intro Fluids class Semester 5 was using tensor calculus by the second week. It was no big deal, because we had all sweated through tensor math a year earlier in E&M Semester 3.
he was able to get a thesis based MS in 5 years <
That brings up something else HS students should be aware of a few years down the road, as they ponder post-undergrad options. There’s what the college says about how long a MS will take, and then there’s how long it will actually take. When I was there, one Thermo prof in particular liked to hold on to the trained free labor for an extra year when possible, telling them they needed to put more work into their thesis. At a public school, maybe issues with course availability? Anyway, check things out once you’ve narrowed your options down.
As for me, I had already milked what I wanted to from the grad program and was ready to get to work. Not to mention that “work” paid better than “student”, and coming from a family with no resources that counted for something.
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“I don’t really mind learning math, but I would much rather focus on hands on experience."
A few specific examples I meant to bring up with you relating to how undergrad programs differ:
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I was really looking forward to taking Electricity & Magnetism third semester at Brown. As a budding ME and occasional tinkerer, I figured I would learn useful things like how many turns of wire around a metal rod it takes to get a certain pull force from the resulting electromagnet. No such luck. It was all tensor calculus for figuring out stuff like the electric field density around a half-sphere, and similarly useless (to me) “theoretical” concepts. OTOH, such skills are essential for a future EE/physicist tasked with determining wire-spacing design rules which will avoid transmission line effects inside a tiny IC, or a senior ME on a supercollider project trying to build something which will bang atoms into each other better than anything before.
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In my Control Systems class at Brown, it was all “book learning”. Defining the stability of a system via root-locus techniques, Nyquist stability and similar analytical tools – nothing hands-on. At the other end of the spectrum, a summer hire of mine from a Cal State college (one step down from UC) had a Control Systems class which consisted of things like hooking up electric motors to mechanical devices and playing around with the parts until the system seemed to perform ok – little math and less theory.
From what you’ve said, it sounds like (repeating myself) you would be happiest in a program which strikes a good balance between those extremes. But be sure to do some research, because almost any program will in its advertising show students doing interesting-looking projects (as opposed to staring at a book). Those projects might be examples of “hands-on” integrated into the curriculum, or might instead be EC’s… which can still be worthwhile, even though not specifically class-related.
I’m no authority on this having taken only two semesters of Calculus and Physics that wasn’t Calc based. @boneh3ad could speak to whether or not the timing at Brown is atypical. He’s at least been at three schools as either a student or faculty and knows how to usefully deploy tensors. I’m just happy I now have a semblance of understanding of what one is. 
According to the kiddo describing his CP experience, “Yeah. Technically second year, but you don’t really need them or use them as real tensors. I guess it depends on what you consider as tensors. To me tensors are only relevant in fluids and continuum.”
Fluid Mechanics I & II are typically 3rd year classes at CP, but a student can hit them some time in 2nd year if they’re ahead.
Continuum is a graduate level course, as are advanced Viscous and Compressible Flow, same as Brown.
Just like you can’t paint all Ivy engineering with the same brush, you can’t do that with the UC/CSUs.
When my son was weighing a Stanford terminal class based MS (they don’t offer a thesis option) vs. staying at Cal Poly and doing a funded thesis MS and getting out a year earlier, a regular CC Mechanical Engineer said that he’d worked at companies that preferred Stanford grads and others that preferred CP grads. Cal Poly (the original) is viewed in most circles to be every bit as “good” as the UCs even though it is a CSU. They teach full proofs based math and don’t offer watered down “good enough for engineers” math and physics that some other well known programs do. Every year students are admitted to UCLA and/or UCB that get rejected by Cal Poly. Every year there are students that pass on the UCs to attend Cal Poly. There are no subjective shenanigans. They admit by algorithm.
Stepping down a notch several are certainly on par with the lower tier UCs like Merced and Riverside.
On average, the CSUs accept a lower level of student and adjust their curricula accordingly. At both ends of the spectrum though there are schools that fall above and below their system’s mean.
Looks like UCI, UCLA, and UCSD use the 1-99 = lower division, 100-199 = upper division, 200-299 = graduate, but most of the southern California CSUs use 100-299 = lower division, 300-499 = upper division, 500-599 = graduate.
But there is not a universally followed rule. SJSU uses a course numbering system more common with UCs, while SFSU numbers upper division courses from 300-699, with 700-799 being graduate courses.
Re: tensors this or that. We may be getting a bit far afield from the OP’s (or any HS applicant’s) needs and interests. Very few HS students have had anything to do with Tensor Calculus, so any distinctions wouldn’t figure into their decision making vs more general questions of the math/hands-on balance found in one program or another.
As for Compressible Flow, I took that as an undergrad course at Brown. Course offerings shift from time to time, especially in a relatively small program like Brown’s. Priorities change, or faculty come and go. Last I heard from the dean, they aren’t currently offering an undergrad Control Systems course either (a crying shame – great course).
“Just like you can’t paint all Ivy engineering with the same brush, you can’t do that with the UC/CSUs.”
“Cal Poly (the original) is viewed in most circles to be every bit as “good” as the UCs”
Agreed. We were talking past each other, and my fault since in my mind the Cal Poly’s aren’t Cal State’s, though yes they are technically part of the Cal State system (or maybe not so technically, to the extent admission is by rote formula).
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Viscous and compressible flow are introduced at both schools currently as part of the regular fluids classes. They are expanded upon greatly at both schools as stand alone subjects at the graduate level.
I agree. We’re in the weeds. Back on track. 
Purdue has one called STEP (Seminar for Top Engineering Prospects). It’s a week long. It covers all of the fields and also the engineering process ie. working together to solve problems. It’s where my D decided she didn’t want to consider bio medical engineering after watching them clean the area of the lab rats where the connections were made and hearing them squeal. She nearly passed out. She ended up going to Purdue and is now a Chemical Engineer.
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Looking up crazy calculus terms is pretty interesting, but thank you for getting back on track.
How could I find out what the engineering curriculum is like at other colleges? Should I ask current students there?
Unfortunately, Purdue decided not to do STEP this summer.
You should be able to search for the four year plan of study at most colleges and then look up the individual courses for the specifics.
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Every school will have something like the Cal Poly resource linked below (I linked Purdue ME too). Some aren’t as elegant as you have to dig backwards from the curriculum sheets and flowcharts to figure out what the course number is, but it’s all there. Google the school name and either flowchart or program map. Different schools call them different things.
For Cal Poly use 2020-2021 and not 2022. The latter isn’t up to date with concentrations yet.
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If you go the “talk to students” route – either forums or direct communications – answers will of course vary from student to student even at the same college. So allow for there being some spread/uncertainty in that “data”. Things I would ask engineering undergrads about:
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Teaching environment. Do profs typically teach the engineering courses, or is it grad students, or ???. One engineering prof at UCI (pre-covid) simply had a grad student play recorded videos of each lecture during the scheduled class time. When students complained, the reply was “My job is to grade papers, not to teach.” Not to say that a TA can’t necessarily teach as well as a prof, but if nothing else to make sure that whatever you might be expecting from college is what you get from college.
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Average amount of time spent on homework (problem sets) per school day. I’ve seen a range of from 1-7 hr on that one. Presumably the 7 hourers have a lot more to show for their four years than 1 hourers, but one’s personal preferences regarding “work/life balance” can also figure in.
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Ease in getting involved with profs’ research (if that matters to you, say in the last two years when you have some basic courses behind you).
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Any impacted required courses, or other major academic/bureaucratic speed bumps to getting through the four years? Some of that may be spelled out in the official prose, e.g. lower-level min GPA required to major in this vs that upper-level engineering specialty. But there may be a “ground truth” to be discerned as well.
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Since you are especially interested in a “balanced” sort of engineering curriculum, of course hit that subject hard with whomever you talk to.
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Let’s not pretend this is in any way typical, though. I’ve never met or even heard of anything like this until just now. It would be far more believable to me of they said their job was to research.
Honestly, I doubt it. Usually the ones who spend extreme numbers aren’t being efficient with their time and the ones spending minimal time obviously aren’t taking things seriously. I’d wager the students taking the most away are usually somewhere in the middle.
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From my experience in aerospace for over 35 years … All types of engineers thrive here. There is hardware/software design, there is operations, there is testing, there is manned vs. unmanned, commercial vs. NASA, space vs airplanes. We have every type of engineer at our center, physics majors, math majors, CS majors, and probably some others I don’t know about. In operations you can train crew, work in mission control, be a systems expert, a planner, a software specialist, a facility expert, or a procedures expert just to name a few. There are electrical systems that need electrical engineer, med systems that need biomedical engineers, propulsion generally takes aerospace engineers, mechanical systems needs AEs or MEs, etc. So you don’t have to be an AE. (I was an EE with a Biomed specialization double major in Math - later got an MBA). Good luck in your search.
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My D was given a tour of a Chemical Engineering facility by a Chem E friend of ours. He was glad to take her through the plant, show her some things they were working on and the jobs various people were doing. She was really impressed. She did this as a rising junior in HS and is now a Chem E working for that same company though at a different facility. The tour confirmed that she wanted to be a chemical engineer. If you know any engineers it might be worth asking if they could give you a tour.
It’s different than shadowing. My youngest D is a DPT student and had to spend 100 hours shadowing Physical Therapists of various types. When shadowing you are following the person watching what they do and sitting in on consults. You can’t interact with the patients, only watch.
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