<p>Recently, I've been accepted to both UCSB and UC Berkeley, but now I can't decide which school I would like to attend. I did get accepted into a few other schools, but these two are my top choices. I will be transferring there as a Chemical Engineering major.</p>
<p>Is there anyone here who has gone to either schools with this particular major? Any insight would be helpful (class difficulty, professors, social life, etc..)</p>
<p>As of right now, I am leaning a little bit towards attending UCSB.</p>
<p>Social life is much better at SB than Cal. Heck, social life at SB is much better than most other colleges. (Playboy magazine doesn’t rank SB as a top party school for nothing.) That being said, Cal’s engineering is one of the top 3 in the nation (and arguably the world). You would be foolish to pass up an eng degree from Cal.</p>
<p>UCSB is also really well known in chemical engineering. Even though it’s not ranked as high as Cal, it’s still pretty up there. I just wanted to know the differences between the schools besides the prestige and location, such as the class sizes, professors, and grading curves.</p>
<p>Didn’t you have to SIR by May1st?</p>
<p>Not if he’s (or she?) is a transfer.</p>
<p>Yes, I’m a transfer student, so my deadline is June 1st.</p>
<p>Sphinx, I’m a she. haha</p>
<p>I’m just grinning because I though for SURE UCBChemE would have chimed in here by now… he was also a transfer into the ChemE major.</p>
<p>
well, see, the problem is you have to actually be AT Cal and study WITH Cal students to get hat Cal degree. Now if you could spend your time with the normal folks at UCSB and get a degree that said Cal on it, that would be cool.</p>
<p>In all seriousness, the NRC publication from this past year places UCSB ahead of UC Berkeley in Chemical Engineering. </p>
<p>Chemical Engineering R score, Group 1: CALTECH, UCSB, MIT, Texas.
Chemical Engineering R score, Group 2: UC Berkeley</p>
<p>Chemical Engineering S score, Group 1: CALTECH, UCSB,
Chemical Engineering S score, Group 2: UC Berkeley
Chemical Engineering S score, Group 3: MIT, Princeton, Texas</p>
<p>Looks to me like UCSB has placed higher than many uber-elites.</p>
<p>Just for fun, I took a look at UCSB’s ChemE faculty page. I randomly clicked on the first four names, and found that the professors had received their Ph.D.s at:</p>
<p>Cambridge
Berkeley
Texas
Caltech</p>
<p>It’s hard to imagine a faculty with better credentials than that.</p>
<p>Today, I talked to a physics professor that went to UCSB. She told me the program at SB is much smaller and many of the students there do research. This is super important to me because I want to attend graduate school right after I graduate. Do you think most berkeley students do research as well? I’m scared that it’s super competitive to get into.</p>
<p>I even checked out the professors at SB on ratemyprofessor haha. From the student’s prospective, most of them are really good and fair. Barely any of the berkeley professors are listed on the site, but I’m sure they are equally as good. There is probably more competition at berkeley so it’ll be harder to get a better gpa.</p>
<p>Thank you DunninLA, this is very encouraging. Most people just tell me to go to Berkeley because of its prestige. I always see UCBChemE on the forums, but he’s biased towards Berkeley haha.</p>