Quote:
Originally Posted by Borderline PD
The UC system is, IMHO, overrated for education, and many schools, most notable UCD, flatly refuse to assist in any way, shape or form on careers. People respect the system because it has a lot of quality researchers, but the teaching quality and career assistance is generally awful.
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I might be biased being UCB alum... But still, if UC is overrated, then most public research universities and also many private ones are also overrated. This is the reality of a modern American research university. No UC professor is being paid for being a great instructor and no one is going to feed you with a spoon there. However, the academic coursework is very tough, rigorous, and demanding. For many subject area (including engineering) when you graduate, you will be a head above people who went to smaller state universities or many private ones.
Regarding finding jobs, it depends on the major. The engineering and business departments from the top UCs for these specialties (Berkeley, LA, and probably UCSD and UCI) have their own career placement services that frequently hold career fairs and generally place their students very well. My friends who studied CS and engineering at UCB for the most part got very good entry-level jobs at at the top companies with seemingly little effort. Of course, those who wanted to work at startups or say go to graduate school were also usually able to take that route. Many of those who did not study business/cs/engineering also usually get decent job offers. For example, as an econ major, I think the prospects for math, economics, statistics, and many other liberal arts majors are very good, but those departments will do relatively little to help you find a job.
The most important thing is to do a lot of research about careers and develop a vision for your own career goals some time during freshman/sophomore years. Once you have such vision, you will be able to make the optimal use of the university resources to achieve your goals. I think the people who have toughest time finding jobs are those who fail to develop a such vision for their post-college career paths early enough, and so they fail to make the best use of their college experience.