I was admitted into electrical engineering, but I’m not sure if I should go here because I would like to go to grad school rather than straight into industry. I know that this is a very industry oriented school, but I have heard that people have gone on to really good grad schools from here. So I’m wondering what opportunities there are for people interested in that. How much opportunity is there specifically to get involved in research positions with professors? Do you typically have to go to other places to do research? I am very much interested in this school and there are some things here that make attending this school very appealing, but I need to know in order to make the right decision. I have offers from several UC schools and I am also considering going to UCSB.
Know that no matter where you go, even UCB, the UC known the most for research, that most engineers will go into the job market. That’s the way it is. With that said, the vast majority of Poly grads do, where it might be 20% at a UC. The biggest difference is how much it will be talked about and what you have to do on your own to get there.
You’ll have to go find research opportunities. You’ll have to know when the GRE is and sign up and take it. That’s about it.
Now, for grad school itself. Be careful how far you plan ahead. Things change. You don’t have to make that decision now. If you do, you can get into other places. The most efficient thing though is to do the 4+1 program. You walk out with a co-terminal BS and MS in 5ish years.
Good luck!
Yeah, I’m just having the hardest time choosing between schools. I just want to go to a school where I have good prospects of going to grad school or getting a job straight out of college, just in case I want to do one or the other. My plans definitely are not set in stone either – I plan on getting internships just to see what the entry level BS job is like for myself. Research and development jobs sound really appealing to me though, and I heard that you may need to get a PhD for some (though to be honest, I can’t say I know anything about that except from what I’ve read). I’ve always been interested more in why things work the way they do, more so than just using things I’ve learned without going much further.
Have you visited both? If not, that should be a top priority.
As for grad school from Poly EE, from the job reports (which are incomplete at most any school), some years more students go than other years. Below is the report from 2014. You could do worse. 
California Polytechnic State University F M.S. Electrical Engineering
California Polytechnic State University M M.S. Electrical Engineering
Stanford University F M.S. Electrical Engineering
Stanford University M M.S. Electrical Engineering
University Of Illinois at Urbana Champaign M Ph.D Electrical Engineering
University of Pennsylvania M M.S. Bioengineering
University of Southern California F M.S. Electrical Engineering
University of Southern California F M.S. Biomedical Engineering
Cal Poly is a weaker choice for grad school but a better choice for industry. That said, Grad school is definitely not off the table for Cal Poly either.
Grad school applications look at 1) research/intern experience 2) GPA/GRE 3) letters of recommendation/school pedigree, in order of importance
The people looking at applications will be the professors at those schools, usually looking for research assistants. So if they recognize a name on the letter of recommendation from your professor, often times it can end up being more valuable than the other factors.
The main difference from Cal Poly is that you’ll have more opportunities to do research DURING the school year on the UCSB campus, although you’ll have a harder time getting a letter of recommendation due to large class sizes. Not sure how much my anecdote will help, but my roommate is a mechanical engineer and will be attending grad school at Stanford in fall because he got a letter of recommendation while doing research for their labs one summer. (That and obviously good test scores/GPA) Most ME’s and EE’s I know tend to go straight into industry, but there’s alway more than a handful who go off to more academia
Well UCSB’s class size is actually MUCH smaller. Its engineering college is probably the smallest of the public colleges on the west coast, while Cal Poly’s is actually the largest. Only like 250 engineering students were admitted total this year, with only like 70-80 EE’s being admitted. So class size is not a problem for me.
I had a feeling you had to go elsewhere to do research. I could not really find anything on Cal poly’s website for on campus research. Most of the links lead to outside resources, including a link to research opportunities at UCSB lol.
I love that cal poly lets you work on all these projects in labs for all your classes, and I love the whole “learning community” here with engineering students. Plus SLO is much nicer compared to nasty Isla Vista. But UCSB seems like a better fit for me in terms of what I want to do and what they offer, so I don’t know if I can really take my chances at Cal Poly. 
If I was completely set on industry though, this decision wouldn’t really be so hard for me (not to say that I’ll have a hard time finding a job at UCSB).
The size of your cohort and the number of students sitting in class with you are two completely different things. You might have calculus with all 250 of them.
There are 284 enrolled EE’s total at UCSB. That’s pretty small if you ask me. Yeah, I realize that GE/required classes might get pretty big, but I’m sure that’s just how it is wherever you go.
It’s not that way at Cal Poly except for very rare courses required by all majors like Psychology. I think my son had 25-30 in both Calculus and Physics. I doubt any UC can match that.
Again, it doesn’t matter how many EEs there are. It matters how many they pack into the lecture hall.
With that said, if you feel UCSB is the best fit, you should go there.