This is a great question! I’m a non-Regents and non-Honors student and I chose UCSB over Computer Engineering at UIUC (top 5 program!)
Research opportunities are phenomenal – UCSB Engineering is unique in that it’s the smallest engineering school in the entire UC system, only around 1600 undergrads across 5 majors. For Computer Engineering, there’s normally only like 60 people per year! UCSB deliberately keeps its College of Engineering small to keep quality up – the CE program here has a student to faculty ratio of like 7:1, similar to private schools like CMU and Stanford (ratio at bigger engineering schools like Berkeley and UCSD is closer to 12:1).
As one can imagine, this makes it much easier than a lot of other schools to get undergraduate research as class sizes are also very small. I’m currently a research assistant in a CS lab, working with machine learning and computer vision and I would say that a large portion of my peers participate in undergraduate research. UCSB engineering has some extremely smart faculty, truly some of the best in the entire world. For example, I have friends who are doing research with professors like Professor Vigna Giovanni Vigna | UCSB Center for Responsible Machine Learning, who is probably one of the top researchers in cybersecurity in the world.
As for internship opportunities, they’re also quite good! UCSB has a well developed local ecosystem of engineering companies, primarily defense contractors, that hire aggressively from campus. I can personally testify to this, as a second year I’m currently working part time at a local aerospace/engineering defense contractor and I plan to continue this work full time during the summer. Nearly all the local interns at this company are from UCSB, including a few of my classmates.
I actually got this opportunity through the UCSB Career Fair as well!
This is also a great question! I would honestly say that they’re identical, in my experience applying for internships, Computer Engineering and CS are interchangeable.
At UCSB, Computer Engineers take the same CS sequence course load as the Computer Science students, they just take ECE courses on top of it as well. I think CE is a great way to get a good balance of hardware and software, plus you can always switch to CS from CE if you don’t like the hardware classes (I personally know people who have done this).
Additionally, as a CE you have registration priority on almost all CS classes, same as the CS majors and you’re also allowed to pursue the CS Department’s BS/MS program.
Just wanted to add also that I know people personally who have interned for big tech companies like Amazon, Google, etc as freshmen. This is obviously more difficult but it is possible!
I think it’s so interesting that you guys keep asking questions that I have personal experience with!
As an LGBTQ engineer, UCSB has been nothing but super accepting and welcoming to me. I grew up in the Bay Area (very much known for its social liberalism) and I’m happy to report that I haven’t experienced any problems!
This is honestly my favorite area to discuss because I think it’s an area that UCSB really excels at!
Coming from the Bay Area (and its infamous competitive public high schools) I really did not spend the next four years in a place with a toxic/competitive/cutthroat student culture. Safe to say, UCSB did not disappoint.
UCSB has a much deserved reputation for being a very lively and social school – I would say that this reputation is completely justified, even as an engineering student. There’s a friendly, truly collaborative culture here, especially in engineering, that you don’t see in other schools. Social life is very lively here and the entire student body very much embodies the axiom of work hard play hard. I’ve had much better work life balance than in high school and honestly had no trouble making friends.
At least in engineering, UCSB doesn’t feel like a massive public school that you can get lost very easily in. UCSB engineers are very tightly knit, since there are so few and we end up taking the same classes together. I have made some of my closest friends here. There’s hundreds of clubs to join and tons of activities to do – just as an example, we have something called the Adventure Program Adventure Programs | Join the Adventure! | Department of Recreation that offers stuff like kayak/surfboard rentals, surfing lessons, kayaking excursions to the Channel Islands, backpacking, hiking, etc.
In conclusion, I would definitely say that UCSB is above average socially.
Yes! When we arrived my son was handed his name tag and told he was admitted! We were late to the event, so I don’t know if there was a larger announcement before we arrived.
My son applied to College of Creative Studies and they said they will be announcing on the 19th or maybe the 20th. His alternate choice was to the College of Letter & Sciences.
As far as I know, everyone there was told they were admitted, but they won’t know to which major until the 19th. A few UCSB people told me the first choice major was likely, but when I said I thought the CCS number of admits is a tiny number, they agreed that he would need to just wait until the 19th to find out which major he had been admitted for.
Maybe someone who was there for the beginning of the program could better explain. We arrived in the middle of the Chancellors speech.
We attended. It was a nice event. They asked the invited students to stand at the start of the program and it was announced that they were admitted. There was not a mention of major. She said the portal would not change until the 19th.
Yes, the vast majority of applicants will receive their admission decision on March 19.
UCSB had three Chancellor Receptions this year - one in San Jose, one in Los Angeles and one in NY. An applicant living outside of those geographical areas wouldn’t receive an invite.
Were these early admits? Sorry if that was covered already in this thread