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<p>Hi Roger,
My daughter was accepted into mechanical engineering at Berkeley. She was asked to apply for the Drake scholarship. Do you know anything about this, how many kids get it, and does it help to be a female? </p>
<p>Also, my daughter’s goal is to become an imagineer for Disney. Is she in the right major? It seems to me from my research, Disney doesn’t seem to make a strong effort to go to Cal for recruitment, is this true?</p>
<p>Aveng: I happened to attend a session at Disney with a bunch of recruiting folks there including folks from the Imagineering department. I would say that the important thing is not school whence one came (with one exception) but whether one shows a real drive to work for Disney (assuming the proper aptitudes). An early effort by your daughter to work through the Cal alumni network and send a well-thought-out and done resume would be in order – and the message would be to try and try again. One or two of the recruiters said specifically Disney had stopped recruiting actively in many cases for awhile and wanted people to come to them. I think to a certain extent this has changed now and they’ve gone back to more active recruiting, but there is much room for initiative. One school that they said was almost a guaranteed recruiting interest for Disney was Randy Pausch’s program at Carnegie Mellon. He’s a famous professor – largely also 'cause he has been dying and delivered his last lecture to his students on the subject of making the most out of life (see you tube). He has a program I think in engineering and interactive media. I am sure your daughter can take classes in media at Berkeley that would get her an admission to CM for a Master’s if she does well.</p>
<p>Here’s the link for the program at CM. It’s a graduate degree program apparently. Have her inquire what are the requirements for admission. If she goes there and has already worked for Disney in an internship, I imagine, her ticket will have been written.</p>
<p>Bedhead,
Thanks for the advice. For now, my daughter is an entering freshman and really doesn’t want to go far from home for college. Its between UCB,UCLA,USC and UCSD. Maybe, if she goes to grad school, she will look in CM. I realize I probably should have started this thread somewhere else and will end it here.</p>