Cal Poly SLO, SDSU, or UC Irvine?

Question

Hi. So far I have been accepted into Cal Poly and SDSU. I was accepted into Cal Poly as an english major because I thought it would be easier for me to get in as an english major (which worked) and to SDSU for an electrical engineering major. I want to major in Electrical Engineering at Cal Poly but Ive learned that it is really hard. Is it really very difficult to change majors at Cal Poly. And hows UC Irvine, i havnt gotten in there but hopefully I will.

Answer 1

Please don't go to SDSU, now that you've gotten into Cal Poly SLO. It's not easy to transfer between campuses; they're going to give most of the transfer spots to students from community colleges with the rationale that you're already getting a Cal State education and they want to give the opportunity to someone else.

I went to UC Irvine (as a liberal arts major) and loved it. Students and faculty were great, it's a well-respected school, and Orange County is wonderful. The downsides were that it's very much a commuter school -- most people live off-campus, and it seemed like a huge chunk of people went home on weekends.

I have no experience with SLO so you should look into that sort of stuff (campus feel et al.) yourself. If one is significantly better for EE, then you should just go there anyway.

Professional prospects are more important than I realized when I was applying to colleges. As an engineering major, you'll probably need a graduate degree for most work, right? Ask to see information about where EE students from SLO and UCI each go to graduate school. That's a decent gauge for the prestige of the EE program, if you see that one or the other is sending way more people to, say, CalTech or MIT (I'm just making an educated guess at which schools would have top graduate programs).

Congrats on SLO and good luck with UCI!

Answer 2

Cal Poly is the most respected engineering school you list, imho. Changing majors should not be hard. Freshman basics (pre reqs) are all about the same regardless of your major, so as long as you change majors within a year or so, you're fine. usually it's your last 2 years (for an engineer last 3 years) that are the ones pertaining to your major. The first 2 years are pre-reqs and "well-rounded electives". I changed from being a music major to BSBM, just used my extra music classes to count as electives that I needed anyway.

Good luck

Answer 3

How about this: go to SDSU as an EE major for a year or two, then transfer to Cal Poly. If that doesn't work, get your EE @ SDSU.