Hi so I’m an upcoming transfer student that is looking to transfer out into one of USC, UCLA, Cal Poly SLO, or UCSD to pursue my bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering. However, it’s really hard to pick a school since all of these schools are great for engineering. Also, I did a net price calculator for all 4 of these and for USC, the estimated price for me with financial aid is $10.5k, $9.5k for a UC, and $14.5K for Cal Poly SLO, so please don’t disregard USC because of the cost of attendance. Out of these 4 (and assuming the estimation is what i’ll actually have to pay), which one is the better option and why?
USC and SLO appeal to me mainly because of the small class size as I have a hard time believing that I’ll be able to make friends in a class of 200 people. I also want accessible professors as I always go to office hours to ask professors questions in my CCC and I’m pretty sure that’s one of the main reasons I’m doing really well in my CCC.
UCLA and UCSD appeal to me mainly because of their stellar engineering but honestly outside of this, I have no idea why else is it a better option over USC and SLO, especially with SLO’s high post graduate employment rate.
So which one is a better option for electrical engineering and why? If possible, add a “ranking” on where you would rank each, like first is UCLA then USC then SLO then UCSD last.
Thanks!
EDIT: Also, I have a 4.0 GPA right now and Im relatively confident I’ll be able to keep it by the end of the application process
You are putting the cart before the horse. Get your applications in and see where you get accepted before trying to determine which is the better option. None of these schools will be an easy admit, so you have plenty of time (next Spring) to determine the best fit.
Best of luck.
Haha true but its around that time of the year where I start thinking where would be a good place to go and pretty much nothing else is on my mind other than that, so I guess I made this post as an ease my mind kind of thing.
Alsoo, I have a 4.0 GPA and Im relatively confident I’ll be able to keep it by the end of the application process so yeah
Congratulations on your academic success and I am sure you will have several options.
Have you visited all the campuses? Have you looked over each schools upper division course offerings? Have you visited the career centers to see which companies recruit from each campus? Have you sat in on any classes or talked to current Engineering majors at each school?
All of these things could help with your decision.
Cal Poly - your professors are professors and not TAs. Plus, there are more labs at Cal Poly. If you do not want a PHD - best route available. Go check out the Universities and then decide which works best for you. If you do not have any EE classes completed as a transfer student, you may not be accepted at Cal Poly. You need to come in at a third year level.
I have absolutely zero EE classes completed at the moment. I will be taking one next spring though, mainly because its a UCI requirement. Other EE classes that can transfer to the universities weren’t available since on assist.org, it says I have to take the EE class at the university. I plan to visit the colleges after I get accepted to save time and money lol but for now its mainly just researching and asking around, which is what this post is for
Pay attention to how much “catch up” you need to do to complete lower division courses that you could not take at your community college, and whether needing to take the “catch up” courses could mean needing an extra quarter or semester at each four year school.
Note that USC is on the semester system (like all but three community colleges in California), while UCLA, UCSD, and CPSLO are on the quarter system, with three 10-week quarters instead of two 15-week semesters in the academic year. At a quarter system school, you would take about 45 quarter units in an academic year; since 1 quarter unit = 2/3 semester unit, this is theoretically similar content volume and workload as 30 semester units in an academic year at a semester system school.
As far as I know, I complete all the pre-major requirements for all of the schools and the lower-division electrical engineering classes are the only classes I need to catch up on, which are about all the same quarter/semester units. So they’re all pretty equal right now. I don’t know too much about the advantages and disadvantages of the semester vs quarter system so I haven’t really considered that.
Try looking at the degree requirements at each school and planning a remaining schedule until graduation. Take note of which in major subareas are well covered at each school in relation to your interests.