<p>Thunderman,
Are you instate for either school? </p>
<p>My son was faced with this same decision three years ago. He decided on Cal Poly, and started there, but is now at UW, so we know a little about each experience. </p>
<p>First, for a public school, you can’t beat the value of Cal Poly. I think in some majors, a degree from Cal Poly is recognized beyond the West Coast too. Both my son and we loved CP for a lot of reasons: smallish classes, hands-on philosophy, start taking classses in your as a freshman, NO grad students teaching classes (unheard of for a public school), proximity to the beach, decent campus and fantastic town which is very easy to get to from campus (only about a mile away). I don’t know anything about UCSB, but if you are doing anything agriculturally oriented, I’m pretty sure that CP is the much stronger of the UW/CP choices. (you can get a minor in viticulture there! Who knew? Its a good thing I didn’t know that during my college years…but I digress) </p>
<p>Having said all of that, my son left CP during his sophomore year for a couple reasons–UW is instate for us and a year and a half in CA convinced him that he never wanted to live or work anywhere other than western WA so he figured out he should be studying and making professional connections in the area he wanted to work in. Also, for him, the whole airport/traveling into and out of SLO, or trying to find a ride to a cheaper airport was a giant hassle. Wouldn’t have bothered my daughter one bit, but he hated that. And, he had a high paying professional opportunity at home (which panned out) that he wanted to work at part time during college. Add to all of that a little homesickness, and transferring was the right option for him. </p>
<p>So, he is at UW in their engineering program now and doing great. Loves (for the most part) his classes and has made (after only two quarters) some great connections with profs. The classes in his program are smaller than they would have been at CP interestingly, but keep in mind that he is a junior and engineering (esp civil) at CP is a huge department. He HATES big cities so he doesn’t venture out much, but does appreciate being able to walk everywhere, and get to all of his outdoor adventure spots easily. Academically, he is certain that he, and the students who transferred in from community colleges are, on average, doing much better in the tough engineering classes than are the students who started at UW.</p>
<p>Having said all of that, there are some problems with UW that makes him very very glad that he wasn’t there as a freshman or sophomore. A lot of majors at UW are competitive and all the grading is on a curve. Consequently, the freshman and sophomore level classes are extremely competitive. You can’t apply to your major until the end of your sophomore year and the fact is that a lot of UW students are rejected from their preferred major. Some majors (the one my son is in for instance) only take students once per year. If you are rejected you might have to wait an entire year before you can apply again. Add to this mix that there are 30000 undergraduates at UW with MANY classes over 100 students (700 in a friend’s psych 101 class) and you can see that even though it is a great school, there are some problems. </p>
<p>Even with the problems at UW though, my daughter is seriously considering it (and three other schools–sheesh) though. But, even though he is really happy there now, son is stronly discouraging her from starting out there. She would give her left arm to go to CP, and we would support that decision, but unfortunately CP doesn’t offer her major. I’ll also throw in that based on my son’s experience two of his friends that graduated a year behind him are now at CP and very very happy there. They definitely will not be transferring and I know a couple of their friends at UW are jealous. 
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<p>It’s a big choice and there are pros and cons either way! Good luck!</p>