<p>Hi everyone,</p>
<p>I would like more details about the Computer Engineering Program at Davis from current and past students.
I’m really surprised that I got accepted under this major, unless it isn’t as impacted as I thought it would be. ):</p>
<p>Thank you</p>
<p>Yes, I’d also like to know how is this program at UCD? Internships, Job placements etc.</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>I too would like to know more about the CSE/ECE department at Davis. Is there a lot of research on artificial intelligence/image processing?</p>
<p>Me too! Anyone?</p>
<p>i want to know too! are all of you considering it as a top choice? i am probably going to end up going there seeing as i will get rejected from USC and harvey mudd</p>
<p>one of my friends who’s graduating got an internship at yahoo! i believe he was a CSE major</p>
<p>Yes, it’s here or CPSLO for me. I’m leaning towards UCD because I really like the campus and it’s closer to home so I don’t need to drive as far. I’ve heard a lot of good things about SLO for engineering and job opportunies, but not much for UCD which is why I was interested in this thread. :)</p>
<p>Does your friend have anything to say about UCD (that is if you’ve kept in contact with him)?</p>
<p>My guess is that at UCD or CPSLO you’re in good shape. </p>
<p>UCD is close enough to Silicon Valley that there’s plenty of recruitment going on. I spoke to the person at the career center in charge of coordinating these activities and she was mostly concerned with getting students to show up to the info sessions these companies have. I’ve known students to do internships or get jobs in the Bay Area, but I don’t have any hard figures. Based on the number of events the companies put on, I don’t think it’s a big worry. Just work hard, learn a lot, and don’t get so wrapped up in classes and extracurriculars that you forget to spend time applying to companies, meeting recruiters and whatnot. Internship-finding season starts earlier than you think! Make use of the career center and the professional groups (CS club, IEEE chapter, SWE, etc) and you’ll be fine.</p>
<p>Also, don’t discount Sacramento. I know some Davis students who intern with the Intel offices there.</p>
<p>Thanks, that’s great to hear that many companies are recruiting at UCD. I live in the Silicon Valley, so it’d be nice to find a job close to home.</p>
<p>Hey. I’m a 3rd year CS major @ Davis and decided to take a peak back at CC 
Like someone above, I was deciding between UCD vs. Cal Poly too and ultimately decided on UCD. Here’s the blog that I posted way back then if you want to take a look ([Nibbles</a> of Thought: UC Davis + College](<a href=“http://kagemucha.blogspot.com/2009/10/uc-davis-college.html]Nibbles”>Nibbles of Thought: UC Davis + College)).</p>
<p>To be honest, I’m not so hot about the CE program. Though that might be just cause I’m CS 
To me, looking at the CE reqs (<a href=“Electrical and Computer Engineering”>Electrical and Computer Engineering), the CS courses you take there won’t really make you better off at all in terms of CS. Taking ECS 122A and ECS 150 seem like a waste of time if you only end up taking those. I can’t really speak of the EEC courses, as I don’t know them as well.</p>
<p>In terms of career opportunities, I think UCD has a really good career/internship office. There are quarterly career fairs, a special winter one for Engineers, and lots of companies come on campus for tech talks (accept resumes). The job board is GREAT too. I’ve gotten really good CS internship every summer. Some of it may be luck, but as long as you are persistent in your search, you should be able to find stuff.</p>
<p>How is it as a CS major? How are your professors/classes?</p>
<p>buuummmmmppppp!</p>
<p>more info regarding classes, professors, research opportunities while in fall winter and spring when not doing an internship during the summer,
thank you!</p>
<p>Oh and as CS majors or CE do we get free time to party or no?</p>
<p>@sleepyrain: CS Major is great in my opinion. I think they put you on a good pace, and if you want to, you can challenge yourself and do really well. We have some really good professors and some not so good ones, just like any other school I’m sure. The Profs here seem to feel that we have a good Graphics/Visualization and Security program. Not sure what else you want to know specifically.</p>
<p>@USChopefull: Research in CS is a bit more difficult in my opinion. I think the earliest you can even think of doing it would be Winter/Spring of Sophmore year. That is if you are really bright and really haul ass freshman year and get your lower division out of the way. Unlike the BioSci “undergrad researcher” positions, doing research in CS is actual work. For BioSci, you join a prof’s lab and you just wash dishes. In CS you are expected to be an individual learner and be able to write code and understand cutting edge technology - no simple task. If you want to do research, make sure to finish your lower div CS ASAP, and start doing upper div CS courses. If you REALLY want research, try to focus on one of the more “applied” CS fields: graphics, networks, programming languages, AI(though we only have ~1 prof), etc. I would stay away from the algorithms/theory courses, cause they usually won’t have any need for an undergrad.</p>
<p>@kagemucha
well I’m going to be a transfer student so most of my lower divisions are going to be out the way. I have heard that CS and CE internship opportunities at UC DAvis are not that great, like for example i heard that not many career fairs are held at UC Davis. Can you comment on that?
also, they recommend to be familiar with UNIX, is it necessary or what do you think?
Thanks in advance.</p>
<p>I’m CS, so can’t comment on CE. But I think we have really good CS summer internship opportunities. There is a career fair every quarter and an engineering-only career fair around Feb. We also get the top companies come on campus to give tech talk, accept resumes, and do on-campus interviews. In the end, no one is going to hand you a job, you just have to be proactive and start early (in Fall) and literally apply everywhere.</p>
<p>The CS computer labs on campus all run Fedora. You will most definitely spend at least SOME time in the lab. It’s the best place to meet up with group mates, and depending on the class, you need special libraries/setups to run the programs. So knowing linux is definitely recommended, but you really only need simple knowledge. How to move around directories, move files, etc. Lots of ppl say to dual boot your machine, but I simply have a Fedora VM on my Windows 7 host - works great for my usages.</p>
<p>Curious, do a lot of freshmen come in clueless? Or do you think most have some kind of prior experience with programming? I know I’d fall into the clueless category :(, so I was thinking about taking some kind of programming course over the summer.</p>
<p>@kagemucha
do you know if there is any kind of event where a prospective student can check out the campus and maybe get a sneak peak of some the computer classes thats are going on?</p>
<p>@sleepyrain
im pretty sure you can take some introductory classes at UC davis. Maybe you can get familiar with C++, Java and Linux, but IMO it is not necessary to take a full class just buy some books and get familiar with it.</p>
<p>@sleepyrain: You don’t need to have prior experience with programming. It’s perfectly fine. There’s an intro course to programming ECS10 which I believe still uses Python. If you’ve had some experience, then they’ll recommend you take ECS30, which is in C.
I still have their “test” sample program to see which you should take and it says that if you can write the program below then you should take ECS30:</p>
<p>write program in any language. it will read in length&width of two rooms and tell the user which room is larger. program should continue to prompt for dimensions until the user enters a width of the first room value of zero. When the user enters zero, the program should terminate w/o asking anything else and print “Bye”.</p>
<p>I don’t know how many freshmen come in clueless, but I should say that I was one of them. But I think that if you got more familiar with it on your own, then you’ll probably do fine skipping the introductory class.</p>
<p>Trying to answer your question:</p>
<p>Computer Engineering at Davis is like double majoring in EE and CS since you take classes from both (and what you take as electives decides what your emphasis is). There are other similar majors (like computer science engineering), the primary difference there is your emphasis is already decided for you. </p>
<p>I’m studying CE at Davis 
However, a few of my friends with EE/CE type degrees ended up in programming and seemed to think they should have done comsci instead. Hrmm? Whatever. You have to take the Physics 9 series and get to take EE classes - all in all it’s like taking comsci with tobasco sauce (if you like spicy :)). </p>
<p>The teachers are pretty nice, although some will write fast on a dirty board… legibility be damned. The CE adviser is really nice, and you’ll probably find yourself spending lots of time in Kemper hall when you have EE classes (or CS classes ;)). The difference is the ECE lab is on the 2nd floor and has nice big windows where you can watch the squirrels play (and enjoy your red stapler), while in CS they move you to the dungeon and give you a bostitch stapler. </p>
<p>UCD is also pretty cool about C++, some UCs are BIG fans of Java!</p>
<p>Also: The comsci lab is called the dungeon. That makes it ten times cooler.</p>