Hi! So I recently got into Cal Poly Slo for General Eng, UCLA for Chem Eng, and Berkeley for Chem Eng. I have no clue what to choose. Let me walk you through what I am thinking:
SLO:
PROs: Great Engineering, love the campus, love the professor in charge of general eng, love that the professors seem like they want to help students, can mold own course of study
CONs: Not as prestigious as UCLA or Berkeley, only General Engineering and not chemical eng, more for people who want to work in industry
UCLA:
PROs: My brother goes to UCLA, more prestigious, hard chemical eng, met a lot of people already, the choice everyone expects me to choose, can work in industry or go to grad school
CONs: Professors don’t really seem to care, really hard, not the best program
BERK:
PROs: Better chemical engineering option, more prestigious
CONs: SUPER hard and competitive, in the college of chemistry so if I end up not like chem eng it will be harder for me to switch to a different engineering
My main concerns have to deal with whether I will like chemical engineering and the prestige of the school? My heart is telling me SLO but my head is telling me UCLA or Berk. Please any Chem Es, help me out!
Thanks!!!
A confused senior with 14 days left to decide!
First and foremost, you need to decide if you want to be a Chem E. It will never be an option at Cal Poly. The closest would be materials.
Then I have a question for you. What in your mind does the prestige get you?
Lastly, most engineering grads go into industry from all of those schools. A minority choose graduate school, about 25% from UCB, and they place the highest percentage in grad school. You can though, and quite a few do, choose grad school from Cal Poly.
As @eyemgh state above: Gotta decide whether Chem. E. is it for you or not. If your set on I would go to Cal over UCLA without hesitation. I had a lot of friends study Chem. E. at Cal and, yes. it was hard, but they felt the training they got was excellent. My personal experience is rather dated, but the feedback I get from students there now tells me it has not changed much. There is a lot of pride and history in the College of Chemistry at Cal and it permeates the atmosphere there. It is rigorous and demanding, but the professors want the students to succeed. I think being out of the CENG is an advantage as the Chem E students get more attention than the other CENG students. Chem E is not for the faint of heart. Be prepared to work. A pretty good argument could be made that Chem. E. is the toughest major at Cal. And it is rather silly, but there is something cool about being in class in the chemistry department and looking up at the periodic table and seeing the elements Berkelium and Californium (and Lawrencium) and as you walk out of the class seeing the NL parking spaces.
If your at all unsure of what type of engineering you want to do I would head to Cal Poly for all the reasons delineated elsewhere; i.e. the undergrad experience for most engineering majors is just superior to Cal and UCLA.
I don’t think it would be easy to transfer from Chem E to a different engineering major at Berkeley, probably same at UCLA (though your brother might be able to guide you there). Maybe someone else has more specific knowledge. General engineering at SLO sounds as if it could morph into any of the engineering majors offered at SLO (I’m guessing here). So think long and hard about what you want to major in, and what kinds of things you might want to do after graduation. Chemical engineering involves a lot of chemistry, heat transfer, fluid mechanics, designing processes, math, computer simulations, etc. If it’s Chem E that you want to do, go to Berkeley or UCLA. If it’s another branch of engineering, go to SLO. At any of the universities in question, it will probably be relatively easy to transfer out of engineering into non-engineering majors.
“Professors don’t seem to care.” At CP SLO, you will be taught by professors in relatively small classes, which is nice. However, it is not a major research university. Yes, the profs have research interests, but they are not world-class researchers. In contrast, at Cal or UCLA your lower division classes will be in large lecture halls, taught by profs or lecturers that might or might not care, and your discussion sections will be taught by grad students who might or might not speak good English. But you will also have exposure to some great profs (especially in upper division classes) who are doing cutting-edge research, and who consult with global clients. Some of the grad students that you encounter will inspire you and advise you, and could be role models for what you want to become. So there are pros and cons for both the UC and CPSLO experiences.
Just to be clear, even though nearly every instructor in the CENG at Cal Poly has a PhD, even the ones that teach labs and discussion, it doesn’t mean they are all great teachers. No school is endowed with all good teachers. Nor will they all have great English skills, but most will.
It is expected that many GEs will switch. As a result, the GPA barrier to get into popular majors like ME is lower.
I agree with the rest that the CP experience is probably better if you don’t want Chem E, but that really is a matter of perspective. If you want to work in a cutting edge research lab, you won’t find it at Cal Poly. They focus primarily on the undergraduate teaching experience.