<p>UCLA engineering for me!!!! actually I got rejected from berkeley EECS...but I met LOTS of kids who rejected Cal engineering for UCLA during orientation...so yea if ur a prestige whore go to Cal for engineering, but UCLA > Cal</p>
<p>but I wouldn't have gone to Cal EECS anyway...because</p>
<p>1) UCLA much much closer to home (50 min. drive)
2) way cheaper for me (huuuge factor for me)
3) surrounding is fabulous (Bel Air, bev hills, santa monica). I went there at orientation for the first time...and daaamn. I was expecting ghettos and projects around it....big surprise.
4) One of my friends went to both and said that Cal reminded him of Taiwan...heh</p>
<p>btw UCLA jus revamped its entire engineering program...if you want details PM me. </p>
<p>and it's not like employers are going to look at two candidates one from UCLA and one from Cal and decide on some ranking</p>
<p>
[quote]
If defense of my own, do you think prestige arises out of thin air? Surely, prestige stems from factors like quality of faculty, class size, and grad school placement.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The gap between UCLA and Cal is much much smaller than it used to be a long time ago. Prestige is based on past success and takes a while to develop.</p>
<p>social: Berkeley, but if you love SoCal UCLA will be a better fit
undergrad: Berkeley
engineering: Berkeley, definitely. However EECS at Cal is way too intense. There is a case for prefering UCLA for EECS.
college town: Berkeley for sure, pedestrian, compact experience vs car-centered LA setting.
academics: berkeley
football: Berkeley
basketball: UCLA</p>
<p>Here's a take from a UCLA engineer who's visited both UCLA and UCB:
[list=0]
[<em>]Social life: UCLA > UCB
(UCLA benefits from a larger student body and a ubiquitous cross-town rivalry, as well as a closer proximity to venues for free local entertainment as well as shopping/fashion districts)
[</em>]Undergraduate education: UCLA = UCB (I'll let you in on a dirty secret... the strength of most UCLA CS/EE courses are derived from tried-and-true courses at higher-ranked institutions, merely adapted for the quarter system: the new CS 161 was copied from UCB's CS 188, and the new CS M152A/EE M116L were copied from Stanford's EE 121)
[<em>]College town: UCLA = UCB (Westwood is more hospitable than Berkeley; neither Los Angeles nor San Francisco can be bonafide "college towns" since they're too disjoint from their respective campuses to be intermingled to the point of codependence. Individual tastes reign here; do you prefer "Starbucks" yuppie or "Whole Foods" bohemian?)
[</em>]Academics: UCLA < UCB (Can't argue with UCB's "hardcore" reputation; UCB offers more engineering majors, and its EECS students are reputedly instilled with generations of competitiveness, but UCLA is geared towards specialization and interdisciplinary knowledge, with mandatory technical breadth areas in Fall 2006, and the choice of EE/ChE/MatE majors to pursue "options" to enhance their field)[/list]</p>
<p>
[quote]
4) One of my friends went to both and said that Cal reminded him of Taiwan...heh
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yes, I'm SURE that is a valid factor concerning the proposition of going to UCLA over Cal. The fact that you were rejected further invalidates your credibility.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Girls: UCLA > UCB. PERIOD.</p>
<p>End of Discussion.
Case Closed.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>And what pertinence that serves in this discussion, I don't know. If you're using the quality of females to guage the significance of Berkeley or UCLA, you're looking at the wrong schools.</p>