<p>Yes, at least one person has gone to all those highly ranked schools over the last 10 years. Considering the size of the cal poly science dept. compared to the UC's, that's rather good.</p>
<p>For a person deciding on which school to attend with the goal of reaching those schools, it is very clear that Cal Poly would not be the top choice.</p>
<p>It was my top choice.</p>
<p>Giants, per gabes post and your repsonse, your goal was to reeach a TIER 1 gradschool..and you chose a Cal Poly for your undergrad?</p>
<p>Indeed. Why would that inhibit me?</p>
<p>I should expound. My goal was to get an excellent undergrad education and get into a very good grad school.</p>
<p>Cal Poly sucks!!</p>
<p>Lets face it. UC's may be greater "overall" from the perspective of an academic, because they're more doctorial and well... academic oriented. Although, not everyone goes to college wanting to go on to get an MBA or obtain a doctorial degree. Other people would prefer to get out of an academic textbook ridden enviroment (as lots can be learned in the real world, believe it or not). Why don't you ask the founder and CEO of Costco? Or Jack In The Box, of the retired head portfolio manager at nicholas applegate (he controlled over 100 million in assets) or the founder of Brandeis (A 5 billion dollar financial institution), or John Madden. There is a common trait amongst all these people they attended a CSU and majored in various things particular in their field such as finance etc. Regardless most would consider them to be pretty darn successful, even though they're lacking doctorial degrees. </p>
<p>This poster behavedfunnyguy is dripping with insecurities. Let those inner demons out, just because you chose to go to a CC instead of a CSU, does not mean you mad a bad life choice! You may have missed out on the dorm experience, meeting lots of people and networking capabiliites at the beginning, but slap yourself on the back because youl'll do well at UCLA, its a great school, world class. I was somewhat insecure with choosing SDSU over a UC, but then ended up absolutely loving every second down here and the countless amounts of oppertunities i'll have in my future, even though I go to a lowly CSU.</p>
<p>.....they have programs to study at institutions all over the world, i'm actually going to be able to study at Oxford. I'm looking to study over there and get a recommendation from an Oxford Don that I will be meeting with every week, I have a feeling that will bode well on my future applications. </p>
<p>PS I believe its mucher easier to get a higher GPA at a CSU and have lots of free time, than at a UC. Plus all my friends graduating with high grades here at SDSU and looking to go to a grad school, are getting into some very exceptional ones, so I would never discount the power of a high GPA and high test scores when applying, regardless of your university.</p>
<p>The reason I feel SDSU and Cal Poly don't quite have the same prestige at UC's yet, is because they just recently became extremely competitive, the average stats of their students have been climbing phenomenally over the past years, while UC's have essentially been stagnant. Look for a rise in prestige over the course of the next 10 years.</p>
<p>cheers</p>
<p>Keep in mind that SDSU and Cal Poly are standout Cal States; there are 23 Cal States total. Again, I don't think a Cal State is a good idea if you are mostly concerned with getting into a good grad school; and that's statistically speaking.</p>
<p>well I was naturally making the assumption that someone would have the hindsight not to choose cal state channel islands over UCLA.</p>
<p>But Chico State, CSU-Long Beach, CSU-fullerton, Cal Poly Pomona, CSU-northridge (maybe some others i missed) all have their particular strengths and high GPA's from any of those schools in correlation with high test scores and extra activities pretty much will gaurantee a seat in a good grad program. Just to clear this up before someone makes this argument, clearly a HIGH GPA from UCLA will look better (but you'd probably have less time to prepare for certain exams and have time for many extra activities outside of the classroom).</p>
<p>^ So the question is whether having a high GPA from UCLA/CAL + less ECs is better than having a high GPA + ECs from a Cal State.</p>
<p>I think it depends on where you want to go. If you are talking about b-school, then as you know work experience is weighted more than your GPA + GMAT score, so in turn, techinically, the CSU candidate would prevail. Although, I agree with gabe that UC candidates are still preferred despite the fact that they have less ECs than their CSU counterparts. As for the candidates who ultimately want to end up at Med / Law school then the UC candidate would prevail.</p>
<p>
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high GPA's from any of those schools in correlation with high test scores and extra activities pretty much will gaurantee a seat in a good grad program.
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</p>
<p>This is just off. This is going too far. Grad schools ABSOLUTELY EVALUATE THE UNDERGRADUATE INSTITUTION. They don't just blindly look at your gpa. A person graduating from a UC has a huge advantage over many of the CSUs. </p>
<p>IT IS NOT A GOOD IDEA TO GO TO A CSU IF YOUR MAIN PRIORITY IS GETTING INTO A GOOD (top 10, probably 20) GRAD SCHOOL.</p>
<p>I think it is very, very hard to disagree with that. And that was the main point I was making. CSUs are good; I mentioned many reasons why a particular student may be inclined to go to them over a UC, but I am firm on what is best to do if a student is set going to a good grad school.</p>
<p>"IT IS NOT A GOOD IDEA TO GO TO A CSU IF YOUR MAIN PRIORITY IS GETTING INTO A GOOD (top 10, probably 20) GRAD SCHOOL."</p>
<p>True. Top 10 grad schools take from their own. Then again, UCDavis etc. aren't top 10, 20, or even 40. It would have been tough to get into harvard from there as well. UCLA and Cal are different stories.</p>
<p>No, my statement was not off. I never said grad schools don't evaluate the undergraduate institution, i purely made a conjecture stating that "high GPA's from any of those schools in correlation with high test scores and extra activities pretty much will gaurantee a seat in a good grad program." If you want to go get statistics of where those top CSU students went to grad schools, be my guest i'm sure you'll be surprised. Also I suppose i'm not an elitist and figured there to be other good grad schools outside of the TOP 10, that would still leave CSU grads with the top 20-50! </p>
<p>So no my statement was not wrong in any way shape or form, our definition of the word "good" was off. But to get into a top 10 grad school I believe you would probably have to attend an ivy league and have immaculent statistics, the argument here was is a UC or CSU better. In the UC system there are schools like UCR, UCSC, UC MERCED that I would put in the same tier as many CSU's. So earlier my statements were based on the higher CSU's and now you reverse your argument using the higher UC's..I find that interesting that you didn't realize that.</p>
<p>The only reason I decided to comment in the first place was due to the vulgar CSU bashing taking place in this forum and how misinformed many are. Don't get me wrong I would choose a UC over a CSU in many situations, I just despise all this negative commentary of the cal state system and was furthermore just trying to make a point that CSU's are not a bad place to be.</p>
<p>UCR admissions has not been stagnant, it has actually gotten worse with Merced opening up. Funny though, they are tring to get a medical school going, expanding the campus etc. ALL THEY NEED AS A BETTER CAREER CENTER, and i would go there. </p>
<p>If i do stay in state, i will be picking a cal state over a UC, either fullerton, sdsu or slo, but that is becuase i am majoring in accounting, so i am a little different than some of the other students here</p>
<p>I take issue with the idea that CSU's give out higher grades. At cal poly, at least, grades are very difficult to come by. The avg college GPA is between 2.7 and 2.8. UC's are normally above 3.0. In a physics class I took, there was ONE "A" awarded. This is a class where students averaged 3.8-3.9 in high school.</p>
<p>Thats an interesting point you bring up, because I just realized the average GPA at SDSU is a 2.6. SDSU, however, in many programs has a curved grading style and in a few of my business classes they intentionally make classes harder to weed kids out. I just find the workload here to be rather slim and easy compared to my high school. Truly the only reason I came up with that logic was primarily based on the quality of students, at the UC's compared to the quality of students at the CSU, if it was a curved grading system the competition would be much easier at the CSU's. </p>
<p>But you must take note that Cal Poly by no means has an easier competition than the UC's, it's actually probably greater in many of their majors.</p>
<p>
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In a physics class I took, there was ONE "A" awarded. This is a class where students averaged 3.8-3.9 in high school.
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</p>
<p>Maybe it just means that high school grades aren't a good indicator of "student quality" or college performance :p</p>
<p>SAT's are also in the 1250-1260 range.</p>
<p>one cannot generalize very much about a university system with 23 (CSU) or even eleven (UC) separate campuses, all with their own peculiar strengths and weaknesses. California as the largest state in the nation has the most extensive state university system to go with it. and that means you can find near ivy type campuses such as berkeley and others closer to a community college feel such as dominquez hills.</p>
<p>and of course within each system there are very good universities and somewhat mediocre ones. and unquestionably, the lower UC campuses rank below the higher CSUs in most criteria. Cal Poly SLO may be the best deal for education in the country given its many distinguished programs, such that it is easily the best in the CSU system and better on most counts than several UCs. The Cal Poly Pomona campus has almost identical academic programs but its service area unfortunately includes some weak high schools with students that lower its overall ACT/SAT/admissions indices. Once again, however, many Pomona students reject places like UCR for a presumably lowly CSU.</p>
<p>San Diego State represents the best and worst in the system in some respects. it is far larger than either Cal Poly campus and thus admits many marginal students who could not be admitted to a UC. yet its size allows it some opportunities, such as joint doctoral programs, that make it unique in the system and among the top four or five in the CSU--typically up in the top tier with SLO, Pomona, Long Beach and Chico.</p>
<p>Californians can be spoiled with so many choices. Consider a typical state will have somewhere between two and six state university choices where the lines among them are not as blurry as among 34 separate state entities for higher education.</p>
<p>Do CSU students go to top tier grad schools? unquestionably, and that includes even the ivies. the chancellor's office has data to prove this.</p>