<p>I am in a CA community college and interested in transferring to UCSB’s chemical engineering program (I am also interested in pursuing the masters in Material engineering). I have some specific questions to students in this program–or similar program.</p>
<p>I will be a mature student when I transfer (approx 29 years old)
I will be living off campus (possibly with husband)
I have 4.0 gpa (probably won’t last until transfer) and I am honors.</p>
<p>specific questions:
How many hours per day were you in class
How many days per week were you on campus
How many hours spent studying outside of class
Where did you live off campus
Any recommendations for locations when living off campus (I do not party hardy, but I am cool with the ghetto)
was public transportation reliable, or did you bike/have a car</p>
<p>Reasons for these questions: I have two dogs that I cannot give up when I go to university (yes they are my emotional crutches, and I am a looser) and I am trying to plan ahead to ensure they and I can live happily together when I pursue a more rigorous education.</p>
<p>I am a senior in the Chemical Engineering program at SB. Pretty much all the transfers I know that came to this program had close to 4.0 GPAs in community college, my class has a lot of very bright people. Here are my answers to your specific question:</p>
<p>1) When you have labs you are usually in class ~15-20 hours per week, and a lot of the time you MUST go to office hours if you want to get the homework finished (or at least get the office hour notes from other people).
2) I have never had a quarter where I had a day off except weekends. All my quarters were 5 days/week. That being said I could have spread things out more but usually this isn’t the case for transfers. Even then I have had many reviews/office hours/finals on Saturdays too.
3) You won’t spend as much time studying as you will doing problem sets. You typically have 1 problem set per week, and they can take anywhere from 3-10 hours to complete (depending on the class). Studying is usually for just before midterms and just before finals, the rest of the time should really be focused on understanding the problem sets.
4) There are many quiet places in Goleta that you can rent out, or there are graduate student housing accommodations where they sometimes have extra space that might work out.
5) You should get a bike. Almost everybody has one and you can get ones for very cheap if you look around on craigslist. That being said public transportation is actually pretty good, I have never really had a problem with the MTD SB buses.</p>
<p>Hope this helped, let me know if you have any more questions!</p>