Hello all! I’m currently stuck between choosing these two great universities. My conflict comes with the fact that I was admitted into computer engineering for Santa Cruz but only Pre bio for Santa Barbara. These two are two of my top choices as majors, but I’m not really sure if they’re really what I want to do. I feel like if I go to Santa Barbara and I’m not able to switch into engineering if I want to major in it then I would really regret whereas at Santa Cruz I could easily switch out of engineering if I didn’t like it. Also Santa Barbara is a bit far from home, about 5 hours when Santa Cruz is about 2 hours. Santa Barbara also offered me a $120,000 scholarship so that’s a very big deal for me because I am low income. I am okay with the Santa Cruz campus, but love the Santa Barbara campus. Then again I’m not really a party person (more introvert), so I don’t know. Also Santa Barbara is more prestigious, recently ranked as the third best UC. If someone could give advice on this it would be great. Thank you!
What is the net price after financial aid and scholarships at each school?
http://engineering.ucsb.edu/prospective_undergraduates/changing_your_major indicates that you need 3.0 GPA overall and in prerequisites to apply to switch to computer engineering at UCSB. It is 3.0 GPA overall and 3.2 GPA in prerequisites to apply to switch to computer science at UCSB. However, admission to the majors is competitive, so these minimums do not assure admission.
Thank you for responding. The net price is about $6921 for UCSB and $9,600 for UCSC. This is not including work study. Also I forgot to mention that the SB scholarship basically guarantees me $30,000/year so my net cost will remain the same for all four years. So it would be very hard to switch, like many have told me, but thank you for sending me the link, I need to take a look at that.
Getting into engineering at UCSB is very competitive. I would go to SC as it gives you more options and less worry about getting into your major. You could also ask them if they’ll match USCB’s financial aid so the net cost is the same.
In an earlier post you wrote " I am hoping to study somewhere in the science or technology field"
It sounds like you haven’t looked into this too deeply yet. Jobs in science doing research generally require a PhD degree. You’re not going to be able to do much with a BS, at least directly involving what you studied. The news gets worse; there is a glut of PhD’s. Spend 30 minutes looking into this on the web and you’ll see what I mean.
However it doesn’t sound like you really have solid plans in engineering either. Understand that 1/2 or more of those starting engineering at most schools end up dropping the major. Be prepared for a very heavy workload, and work with the career center from the start of your time at college to figure out what is right for you careerwise. The more popular major these days is CS; the heyday of electrical and computer engineering was over about a decade or so ago, as once hot fields such as minicomputing, graphics, and networking matured. UCSC has a software option for their CE degree but it emphasizes systems programming and not the details that a straight CS major learns.
Yeah I don’t really know what I want to do 100% yet so I really wouldn’t want to go to UCSC and end up not doing engineering at all. I got two Cs in Calculus BC my Junior year and only got A and B in Physics honors, which is probably a bad sign for engineering. I also took a Ruby programming course at my school, but didn’t really like it, or it may have just been the way the teacher taught it, but I still someone how got an A in the class. I guess my main reasons for wanting to do engineering is because of the job security, decent pay, and its relations with the tech and science field.