<p>Boelter Hall: Wow, what an indictment of the MAE program at UCLA! I take it you know this from personal experience? My son wants to major in aerospace engineering, and has always placed UCLA NOT on the top of his list. Every time we see posts on CC or elsewhere, UCLA is not even listed as to which programs are heavily recruited for job opportunities. This is why his first choice is University of Colorado at Boulder. People will be shocked when he turns down UCLA as I expect he will, due to his academic reputation overall, but for his future major, UCLA will not provide him with what he needs and desires in the aerospace engineering field. Boulder provides a host of internships and co-op experiences… He just received his Open House invite for April 10th, we will go and I think we will keep an open mind, but your post has confirmed what I already had feared about the aerospace engineering program at UCLA. Thanks for commenting!</p>
<p>Can you comment on the aerospace engineering department and do you have a job yet?</p>
<p>uclaenggrad: Can you comment on the level of education you received as an aerospace engineering major at UCLA and do you have a job yet? My son wants to major in aerospace engieering but have heard some negative things about that program on this post. Any advice, comment you could make would be appreciated.</p>
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<p>I can say that this is not the case for CS/CSE majors. Most companies heavily recruit at UCLA for the CS/CSE majors and there are more opportunities for us than any other major on campus.</p>
<p>The UCLA mentality is to teach you theory to become a designer and not a tester. If you would like to do more lab work then you should consider a school like CalPoly SLO because they have more lab requirements. </p>
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<p>UCLA is highly regarded in the SoCal aerospace industry. It is a well known brand name outside of the California too. Just look at the companies that come to the Fall Engineering Career Fair.</p>
<p>I have interned at one of the big four aerospace companies and at some research facilities. I kept getting compliments for going to what they consider a great school. Don’t fill your head with ideas that a certain school will provide an easier route to industry than others. That’s simply not true. For example, I met interns from different schools, which include MIT, USC, CalState LA, Cal Poly SLO & Pamona, San Jose State, Berkeley, Indiana State, etc. </p>
<p>In the end it’s about who you know and not so much what you know.</p>
<p>yes it’s about WHO you know…as long as you form connections with recruiters early on and keep showing interest, you will get a job sooner or later.</p>
<p>And I don’t know about aerospace but I know 4 Mech E students in my MAE 162M who already have received job offers from big companies like Northrop, Boeing, and Rocketdyne. </p>
<p>2 of them were interns and they said that 90% of what they learned were useless…which I also think is true for entry level MAE jobs, unless you’re a hardcore researcher.</p>
<p>does anyone know how the MAE MS program prepares its students for jobs? in particular those that involve less hands-on work and focuses more on numerical analysis?</p>
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<p>Same at the place I interned. Most of the work that interns did was boring. It usually involved data entry, document updating, closing cases, or just random stuff the engineers didn’t have time to deal with. Most of the engineers did not do any lab work. They mostly sat in their cubicle doing some analysis or ran off to meetings. The designing was handled by the senior engineers or engineers with an advanced degree.</p>
<p>have any students actually gotten in without receiving an invitation to the Open House on April something?</p>
<p>I didn’t get one. Now relax and wait until the official results are posted.</p>
<p>lol I wish I could, believe me</p>
<p>I think I remember someone in this thread, maybe Grassbandit, stating they were a CC transfer into engineering. I’m just wondering, what did your provisional contract state for your last semester at CC? What was the overall GPA that you had to have for your last Semester at your CC?</p>
<p>How difficult is it to transfer from a different major into engineering, without having to stay, and pay, for more than four years?</p>
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<p>You receive basic mechanical engineering knowledge from the courses taken as a UCLA undergrad. Doing weekly problem sets, MATLAB assignments, etc. will give you a scope of its applications.</p>
<p>Regarding CFD, numerical heat transfer methods, your research advisor will first tell you to read literature about it and then have meetings with you before you do any of this work. Then mentors will teach you the programs before you are on your own. How fast the student learns something new will be based on academic success in undergrad AND how well the student has mastered basic engineering topics (heat transfer, fluids).</p>
<p>If you are talking about PhD, these are much more difficult. There is less guidance in the research.</p>
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None of the other HSSEAS majors outside of EE, ME and AE require much of the “hands on, building things” performed in the industry … so I can’t say anything about that. MadeInChina is right about CS/CSE. They are in great demand everywhere and UCLA students are heavily recruited in these fields.</p>
<p>Speaking of Aerospace Engineers, I know many schools in the Midwest have much more hands-on oriented Senior Design Projects (and much more challenging). Their students build full scale UAVs (design, analysis, and fabrication) in a semester. At UCLA, the design, analysis, and construction are done in separate quarters. The final products are also very small! Some don’t even fly!</p>
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<p>Boulder is a great choice, there are many defense companies which hire from there. It is good you select a school around the program your son is interested in, rather than how academically prestigious the school is.</p>
<p>Do come to Open House and talk to Aerospace Engineering students if possible. UCLA isn’t as bad as I might have made it sound, but you’ll need to join student groups (like AIAA) to build something.</p>
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<p>I just remember that I had to have at least a C in every class or something like that. I think it was a 3.0 for the last semester. A lot of things would have to go wrong for anyone not to make those grades at a CC.</p>
<p>Rousse54. isn’t the open house on April 11th? In any event, our S is struggling with similar issues. We have heard that UCLA has lost its industry contacts in recent years, is highly theoretical. It may have the edge for someone committed to a career in Academia but we too are concerned about the lack of hands on experience (as part of the curriculum). We are looking at a small school in Silicon Valley, Santa Clara University which we hear does a pretty good job of getting their students internships (although more so in EE and CE). The demand for ME students is less. I can’t beleive that we are even debating turning down UCLA but we are concerned about what we are hearing. We wonder what impacts future budget cuts will have on the curriculum for ME’s. We had assumed that with a name like UCLA behind you, internships and job opportunities would be a given.</p>
<p>Are there any current UCLA students who wish they had taken a different road, maybe gone to a smaller less prestigious school, with better access to professors etc?</p>
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It really depends on the major. I’m pretty sure prestige is quite important for recruiting and the resume. Most of my interviewers have been from prestigious universities (CMU, MIT, Berkeley, UCLA, etc.) and not from local universities that I’ve never heard of (Santa Clara University)</p>
<p>I’m currently a CSE major and our interviews are usually technical knowledge based, so our theoretical classes do a good job preparing us for job interviews. </p>
<p>Also, if your child is looking to get more hands-on experience (projects), he/she can join any of the student organizations on campus. Most of them participate in regional/national competitions, and they do quite well.</p>
<p>I’m sure BoelterHall, Deuces, or GrassBandit can add more insight on their majors.</p>
<p>I was wondering how is the engineering department holding up with budget cuts? What is class size, have you seen an increase? Will GE courses be hard to get? Basically, how hard will it be to get classes needed to graduate in 4 yrs? What do you think of the Civil/ Environmental program? Thanks!</p>