mochabubble

Hello everyone

I'm currently attending a California CC and I was wondering where I should look to transfer for Chemical Engineering. I attended UC Berkeley for one year and withdrew my second semester due to mental health issues and suicidal tendencies. Honestly, my main concern is that UCB was a top top top ranked ChemE program, and I don't know how well ranked other ChemE programs are in California. I'm worried about job and graduate school placement if I go to a "less prestigious" school. Does the prestige of undergraduate school matter? I don't know if I want to go straight into industry or go on to grad school. Personally, I love the research environment which is why I would go to grad school, which is why I'm wondering how good my undergraduate school needs to be to go to a good grad school. Also, I'm picking ChemE because it seems more versatile than a Chem degree, where the chem degree I would need to go to grad school for better job placement while Chem E has better job prospects.

Pretty much, I'm wondering what schools I should shoot for that are in the LA area. For me, I would prefer to stay away from the UC system because my experience with UCB was absolutely horrible. I know UCLA is probably different than UCB, but I'm worried about the financial aid situation which is one big reason I had to leave UCB and one big factor that lead to my mental health issues.

entomom

You might want to ask some of your questions on the Engineering Majors subforum.

mochabubble

I posted over there, but I'm not really getting a response. Anyone here have any ideas about prestige worth for Engineering schools? And what kind of schools I should be shooting to get into if prestige does matter?

wwlink

I think you should stop worrying about prestige - all the prestige in the world won't matter if you can't afford/get too stressed out to finish the degree!

Believe it or not, people do go to CSUs, graduate with engineering degrees, and get engineering jobs. Best of luck mate, I hope you end up going somewhere that you're happy with

mochabubble

I guess I should. I mean it's hard since I've been conditioned for ages that you should go to the best school you can, and I just keep getting people telling me "you're better than that. Go back to Berkeley or go somewhere equally ranked." or people saying "CSULB is for stupid people. If you graduate from there, you're stupid" which is really off putting.

Another thing is I've developed extreme test anxiety which is why my grades suffer. It's not that I don't know the concepts, and I've dicussed with my profs about this, and they know that I know the material, but it baffles them and me to on why I panic so quickly and have my heart racing during an exam. I guess that's also why I don't think I could get into anywhere better than CSULB since I'll probably not have straight A's

DerangedCorgi

Don't listen to those people then. A lot of the UCB graduates that I know are earning less than my friends in "less prestigious" schools. My friend from CSULB is earning twice as much as my UCB Chem.E friend right now. And my friend in UCI is earning close to 80k working at Intel right now. Engineering really comes down to, who you know, what you know, and what you can do.

I also have severe test anxiety. Even if I know the theorems/concepts front and back I get extremely nervous. Just close your eyes for a couple seconds and try to breath slowly.

mochabubble

Thanks Honestly, just staying in the area would keep my overall anxiety down since I have a better support system around here. Also for some reason, having a job calms my nerves down because I don't feel like I'm doing absolutely nothing to help pay for college.

I've been trying that. It's just going to be a hard battle for me, since it started back in high school and just gets worse every year. It's like once I find one coping method, my anxiety just jumps to a new level.

fouinybaby

maybe claremount mckenna or pomona. decent private schools. maybe USC? UCLA is decent, but it's a UC. UC Davis, SD, Irvine are also all decent.