I got accepted into Cal Poly for SE and UCI for Comp Eng & CS(hoping to switch to SE) and I was wondering which one has the better program. My goal after college is to work developing games for big companies like Sony or work for major tech companies like Google, so I was wondering which college would ease me into that area and make it easier for me to break though in the industry.
Also should I stay in Comp Eng and CS or should I attempt to switch to SE?
You need the input of @NLinsanity. He went to school at Cal Poly, but knows Irvine well, and I think has a sibling at one of the UCs. He’s now a grad student at Columbia, but previously worked for Apple.
A CE/CS degree will be able to get a software engineer wrong role just as easily as SE from slo. The UCs only offer CS degrees and not software but their graduates go on to get software jobs just fine. Software engineering just eliminates the more theoretical aspects of a traditional CS degree.
Hey there, slightly biased because I went to SLO, but I’d recommend SLO if you’re interested in working in tech after college.
I legit had never heard of poly before applying to colleges. Realistically, if I had gotten in to LA/Berkeley I would have picked those in a heartbeat because I was a name whore in high school. I turned down every other same level UC(SD, Davis, Irvine, SB) because the math works out that I’d make the same out of CP, but pay more at a UC. CP, however, gets every major tech company and is more practical (except compared to UCB) so better for industry (i.e. like the 80 labs on campus). The UCs are much better for getting into grad school because of research opportunities but have literally 2 lab classes they experience throughout college; fairly evident when I was at the west coast regionals for the engineering competition at their lack of practical engineering - except against UCB.
CP has a 9X% job placement rate after college, but that’s hugely biased by the STEM departments.
I answer a lot of other questions as well in this thread if you want to get an in-depth view of someone’s time at CP
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/cal-poly-san-luis-obispo/1974105-cpslo-graduating-senior-here-to-answer-any-questions-p1.html