<p>Which one would you guys choose?</p>
<p>I got into UCSD and Berkeley (found out bc of regents), both for bioengineering. According to USNEWS, UCSD is the 3rd top school for bioengineering, and a lot of ppl say that UCSD is really strong in that aspect. </p>
<p>So, which one would be a better choice overall?</p>
<p>It's really personal preference. I considered UCSD briefly, but one of the big reasons I chose Berkeley is the students; I felt that I'd be surrounded by more motivated students (not to say that UCSD students aren't motivated, but you know what I mean). Berkeley bioengineering is relatively new so doesn't have much status yet, but seeing as they've just completed a new building for bioengineering (Stanley Hall) and already excel in the engineering sciences, I said why not?</p>
<p>I think the real issue is how sure are you about bioengineering? The truth is, most college students change majors, at least in their own minds if not formally, at least once. </p>
<p>Furthermore, the truth is, most people who get a degree in something don't actually take a job doing that thing. For example, most history majors don't actually become historians. Even in a highly specific degree like engineering, a significant fraction of graduates end up taking unrelated jobs.</p>
<p>For example, consider the employers that Berkeley bioengineering students work for after graduation. While obviously there are people who took the standard biotech or medical device jobs, other people ended up becoming consultants (Deloitte), one guy joined the Navy to work as a nuclear engineer (he was probably on NROTC), one guy ended up taking a job as a hardware engineer at Apple, one guy is doing semiconductor wafer fabrication (the TRW guy), and one guy even ended up working for a roofing company (the R&M Paving Company). The point is that plenty of people take jobs that have little to do with their major. </p>
<p>Sakky, do you think Duke is the 5th best school in the country. I know this has nothing to do with anything, but I'd like to know what you thought and why. Thanks.</p>
<p>If you're asking me to defend every single ranking spot in the USNews undergrad ranking, let me just say that my biggest issue with USNews has always been the artificial separation between the so-called "research universities" and LAC's. When looked at in that light, Duke clearly cannot be the 5th best undergrad school in the country. I would say that schools like Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, and possibly Wellesley, in addition to the usual elite universities, are probably better than Duke.</p>
<p>Unlike Berkeley, UCSD is really known for their bio-sciences, like biochemistry, not engineering. The UCSD campus is also surrounded by pharmaceutical companies and has the Salk and Scripps. So, if you're thinking of going into research, UCSD is a good place to be. Either way, I wouldn't make a college decision according to a usnews report. If you can, I'd visit the schools, you'll see how different they are.</p>
<p>"Unlike Berkeley, UCSD is really known for their bio-sciences, like biochemistry, not engineering."</p>
<p>UCSD bioengineering has been ranked as second best in the nation behind johns hopkins for a while now. i think they were bumped to third or fourth this year, but they still have one of the top bioengineering programs in the nation.</p>
<p>Bioengineering at UCSD is great. That's why you see 300 people in a bioengineering class that only has seats for 220 or so.</p>
<p>Again, I would reiterate the question - what if you end up switching majors? Plenty of people find out they don't like engineering and then switch out.</p>
<p>I thought the majority of ucsd students go there for pre-med or research, not engineering (ex. Revelle College has one of the highest percentage of graduates accepted into med schools).</p>
<p>I had to make the same decision as a bioE major student. I decided to come to Cal and have zero regrets. In fact, it seems that I <em>may</em> change my major as well. You may think you will stay in that major, but the truth is you most likely don't know, and you want to give yourself the chance to explore other options.</p>
<p>Anyhow, the new bioE facility will help increase Cal's bioE department's reputation in due time.</p>
<p>But how easy to change major in engineering school at cal?</p>
<p>Unfortunately, not very easy. Reference some of my old posts, or you can ask unlimitedx about it.</p>
<p>Quick summary: Very difficult, esp. if you wish to transfer into an impacted engineering major such as EECS or BioE, because you will be competing for a space in that department against transfer students who applied for the same year (your Berkeley GPA versus their CC GPA + other factors).</p>
<p>You will find much more information through sakky's old posts.</p>
<p>As an aside, I think this is one issue that Berkeley really needs to fix, and fix immediately. This has been a problem for several decades now. It is simply unreasonable to expect high school seniors to know which engineering discipline they want to major in, and then lock them into it.</p>
<p>How hard is it to become EECS after getting accepted to College of Engineering as undeclared?</p>
<p>How should they fix it, sakky?</p>
<p>Give all engineering students free choice over what engineering major they want to pursue. </p>
<p>If this means admitting fewer students (and having L&S or, even better, CNR take those people who aren't admitted) then so be it. The fact that the CoE has to restrict people by major is just a symptom of a larger problem which is the the CoE is simply bursting at the seams and is bringing in far too many students than it can reasonably handle. Because it has too many students, it cannot provide flexibility for its students to switch majors freely. </p>
<p>Consider CNR as an example. There are no impacted majors in CNR. This tells me that CNR is not bringing in more students than they can handle. In other words, CNR has enough ** slack capacity ** for its students to change majors. CoE doesn't. And it needs to. L&S, other than its 5 or so impacted majors, also has plenty of slack capacity. So does the College of Chemistry. The CoC is obviously not afraid of the possibility that every single Chem major will switch to ChemE or vice versa. That's because they built enough slack capacity into the system. The CoE ought to do the same. </p>
<p>As a larger point, I would say that this problem with the CoE isn't new. It's been like this for at least a decade, and probably for many decades. So it's not like this is an unexpected problem. This problem has been known for a long time. The issue is that nobody in Berkeley seems to be interested in fixing it. The CoE has been oversubscribed for a long time. What Berkeley ought to be doing is shifting resources to provide more resources to its oversubscribed programs and less to its undersubscribed programs. Why not? If you run a business, and you see that one of your products is selling out and another product is not selling well at all, then what you do is you shift production capacity away from the unpopular product and towards the popular product. If for some reason, people really like the Ipod Nano and don't like the Ipod Shuffle, then Apple should take the factories that are producing Shuffles and convert them to making Nano's. In other words, companies are incented to respond to demand. But Berkeley doesn't seem to operate that way. Engineering, for example, has always been in high demand. On the other hand, let's face it, there are certain majors in which practically nobody majors in. So why not shift funding from those unpopular majors to the popular ones? It's sad that Berkeley refuses to shift resources in response to demand.</p>
<p>I agree with you greatly, but doesn't your proposed solution conflict with some Berkeley science/engineering philosophy? Take in more than you can handle, and weed some out. Some chemistry graduate student at Caltech described that they even do this to graduate students in Berkeley chemistry (the best department in the world). If they even do it at least somewhat on the graduate level, it seems ingrained. I think this should be changed, of course, but do you think that's one reason why it's hasn't changed?</p>
<p>First off, I don't know if there is any inherent science/engineering philosophy. After all, it seems to me that the majors in CNR are science majors too. After all, how would you classify majors such as "Molecular Environmental Biology" or "Molecular Toxicology" if not as science majors? Yet you don't see the CNR going around taking in oversubscribed numbers of students and then weeding them out.</p>
<p>Furthermore, consider most of the natural science majors are taught in L&S. Majors like Physics, Chemistry, MCB, Computer Science, Math, and the like also weed. The difference is that if you try out Physics and get weeded, you can retreat to a cheesepuff L&S major and still graduate. But not so if you are an engineer. But why not? Engineering and physics are really not all that different. So why is it that the weeded-out physics students can switch over to some easy L&S major without any hassle, but the weeded-out engineering student cannot ?</p>