elementG

Does UC Irvine have a good civil engineering program? I see that they are ranked 48th in the USNEWS 2008 Engineering ranking, but I don't want rankings to determine where I will transfer to. Any insights/information would be appreciated, especially from any engineering majors. Thanks!

ps. I posted this in the UC Irvine section but still no replys.

aibarr

I haven't personally heard things one way or another with regard to UC Irvine's civ program, and I'm one of the few civs around here that posts with regularity... Ken, you heard anything?

It seems to have an accredited program, which means you won't end up with PE licensure headaches later on. Skimming the degree program, it looks pretty standard. Seems like there's active research going on in the department. The fact that it's ranked at all is good.

Employers really look at how well you do in a given (accredited) program, rather than which program you went to. I'm at one of the big design firms and while we've got some Illinois people and some Berkeley people and others from Georgia Tech and UT and MIT and Cornell and Stanford and the like, we've got plenty of really great people from some unranked colleges. (You have to have a masters to work here, though.)

Just so long as you have the tools that you need (which an accredited program will give you) then I don't think you'll have any problems finding a job, particularly if you want to work near Irvine or in California. (In fact, you might have an advantage over some other folks because most people don't get *any* seismic design exposure in undergrad.)

Don't worry about the ranking too much.

ken285

Sorry for the late response... I was out of the country for the past week.

Anyway, I'm not that familiar with any of the UC schools actually. 48th isn't all that bad though considering that an overwhelming majority of engineering school s have a civil program except some very new schools and some of the Ivys.

If you go into structural engineering in California, you'll definitely have an advantage over people coming from other parts of the country. I'm not aware of any school that has a good earthquake engineering program outside of Cali. I think many civil programs actually tailor their programs to the locality. I took a course on urban security (such as blast resistant design), but I doubt that would be offered in Wyoming State because the threat of terrorism just isn't there (contrary to what Congress believes)

aibarr

U of I houses the Mid-America Earthquake Center, along with lots of courses in seismic stuff. They exist, they're just hard to find outside of seismic regions... (And actually, because of the New Madrid zone, Illinois has more seismic region issues than many...)

Take a gander at course catalogs, if you're curious about who has what. They'll tell which schools have a bent towards different fields of study.