<p>Bay:</p>
<p>Cal’s Engineering is generally considered #3 in the country (after MIT & Stanford). Cal’s College of Chemistry is LAC-like for chem geeks. So yes, there are programs worth paying top dollar for. (But those two programs also have higher than average SAT scores.)</p>
<p>As shown below, BME is the only “weak” engineering program, but then UCSD is top ~3 in BME.</p>
<p>2012 Engineering undergraduate departments ranked </p>
<pre><code> Berkeley Stanford MIT
</code></pre>
<p>Civil Engineering 1 4 8
Electrical/Electronic/Communications Engineering 3 2 1
Environmental Engineering 2 1 7
Materials Engineering 2 7 1
Mechanical Engineering 5 2 1
Computer Engineering 4 2 1
Nuclear Engineering (last ranked in 2004) 4 n/a 1
Industrial/Manufacturing Engineering 3 5 n/a
Biomedical Engineering 10 7 4</p>