<p>I narrowed down my college choice to these 2 schools and im having a hard time choosing. I'm going to major in aerospace engineering at both schools.</p>
<p>I visited both campuses. Both were close to the beach :) I was more impressed with UCI because it looked more modern, has a lot of conveniences, more diverse, and has a nice city feel (im from a big city). </p>
<p>I don't consider myself a really smart student, but i am a hard worker. UCI has a great engineering program but i hear cal poly's is better. Is Cal Poly's "learn by doing" really as good as it seems? Will i have a better chance at getting a job if i go to one school over the other? What if I have a change of heart and i want to switch majors? What's there to do at SLO and Irvine?</p>
<p>cal poly SLO is pretty freakin respected for engineering, its no joke there. I’d say cal poly graduates would be more recognized on the job market. It’s also a lot cheaper being state</p>
<p>of course being a UC, irvine is flashier with all the funding and what not.
i heard that cal poly dislikes people switching majors but of course you can still make it happen.</p>
<p>I would choose Cal poly on this one for the pesos and reputation and rigor.</p>
<p>cal poly SLO is pretty freakin respected for engineering, its no joke there. I’d say cal poly graduates would be more recognized on the job market. It’s also a lot cheaper being state</p>
<p>of course being a UC, irvine is flashier with all the funding and what not.
i heard that cal poly dislikes people switching majors but of course you can still make it happen.</p>
<p>I would choose Cal poly on this one for the pesos and reputation and rigor.</p>
<p>Having worked at UCI’s engineering department, I’d beg to disagree. It’s a very good school with a huge amount of cutting edge research going on. I can’t speak on the differences between post employment opportunities, but I will say that it’s far easier to change majors into a completely different field at UCI. </p>
<p>As far as UCI’s social life is concerned, there are a wide variety of things to do in Irvine, but the city does tend to shut down after about 11pm. UCI runs shuttles to major recreational locations in Irvine, and getting to the beach is fairly easy assuming you have a friend with a car (you most likely will). On campus, there are parties, late night club events, and hall programs if you wish to do stuff after about 11. In addition, UCI’s University Town Center is very nice, and runs an excellent farmers market on Saturday mornings.</p>
<p>While I don’t have any experience with UCI but judging from the outside it does seem like a low tier UC because of its extremely low average SAT compared to top UC’s. It seems like the place to be if you get rejected from UCB, UCLA, UCSD, UCD, and UCSB. </p>
<p>I do agree on the "far easier to change majors into a completely different field at UCI. " part. At Santa Barbara its almost impossible to change your major into engineering.</p>
<p>I can’t speak on SLO, but UCI has large intro classes with smaller recitation sections. After you get into major specific courses your class sizes tend to get very small fairly quickly, so it’s easier to establish professor contact. Even in large intro classes, most students fail to go to the office hours, which means that simply bothering to show up might allow you to develop very close relationships with your professors, potentially leading to employment opportunities or fantastic letters of rec (happened to a few of my undergraduate co-workers).</p>
<p>Graduating in four years is often difficult for engineering students, but that’s because engineering is a highly sequential major, and failing a class might mean not being able to take the next class up. Getting classes at UCI isn’t terribly difficult, particularly for engineering/hard science majors. </p>
<p>Xtreme Power- a high percent of students who start engineering soon drop out because they hate it/ couldn’t handle the rigor. Also, just because UCI’s average SATs are lower than some of the other UCs (but still much higher than the national average) doesn’t mean that the classes are any less rigorous or that there aren’t a huge number of brilliant people at the school. I’d agree that in terms of student preference and level of research conducted (the latter being only important for grad students), it’s a mid tier UC, but it’s still an excellent school, one that offers a very rigorous STEM education to anyone who’s willing to put forth the effort to succeed.</p>
<p>Lots of kids from my high school decided to go to UCI eventhough they were accepted to a lot of higher ranking UCs. For example, one kid turned down UCLA and UCB to go to UCI because they can save the cost of room and board. Another kid turned down UCLA and UCSD to go to UCD. One kid turned down UCB to go to ASU because UCB is so dirty/dingy and the kid likes to party. You can’t assume everybody thinks the same as in collegeconfidential.</p>
<p>They are both commuter schools; but always pick UC over CSU the funding is much better and you have more options if you decide to change majors.</p>
<p>In Fall 2012, 36.5% of undergraduates lived in one of 28 dorms on campus. Almost all first-time freshmen (98.1%) lived on campus, even though Cal Poly does not require them to do so. In addition, 50.8% of Cal Poly sophomores lived on campus in Fall 2012.
-by Poly View Fall 2012-</p>
<p>Cal Poly. Side note: Friend got into Irvine but not Cal Poly.
A lot of people overlook the CSUs by thinking the UC is better, but as my parents argue, the UC’s are too much into research and you’ll get a lot of theory instead of learning how to do the job. They can back it up with people getting executive positions that have people that go to the prestigious colleges working for them because they have more job experience and know what they’ll be doing (Ex: Stanford student not knowing how to spreadsheet)… </p>
<p>P.S. I’m choosing CSU Sacramento with the commute over other schools for their electrical engineering, and I’ll admit, its pretty decent and it has a subfield that is high in demand that is only offered at elsewhere at Cal Poly Ponoma.</p>