The University of California San Diego

Date: Jun 25 2008
Major: Aerospace Engineering (This Major's Salary over time)
First, my personality type upon arrival: friendly, naive, socially awkward.

The place will wear down your spirit. Courses are too big, professors are too inaccessible (even if they are friendly in the first place). Don't expect empathy from most people. It's a lonely place if you don't have friends already in attendance. Don't expect professors to care about your plans after graduation; don't expect the career center to know enough about your specialty to provide quality advice.

The quarter system is way too fast. The stress of exams overwhelms any joy you may have gotten from learning. When they say the school has a challenging program, it's challenging because of poor teaching + too fast a pace…you feel like you're working incredibly hard but not getting anywhere.

UCSD also makes it very clear that you are here to pay them. All of your checks go to "UC Regents" even though you attend UCSD—and the UC Regents are a politically appointed, private group.

If you are an over-qualified student, you will get bored with the inane idiocy of many undergrads—but if you're smart enough, you can win the attention of professors in order to get research jobs and connections for graduate school. And a lot of the researchers have connections. So you can easily overcome not getting into MIT or whatever. In fact, I would say that grades are less important than making personal connections with researchers—a good letter will make a world of difference.

If you barely scraped your way into UCSD, expect pain. The geniuses think you're an idiot (so do the TA's and professors). UCSD is highly diverse in terms of intelligence—some classes might have a 10%-90% spread in scores. If you're a top student, 4 years should be plenty of time—if a lower student, 5-6 years.

Housing usually sucks here, off campus is a pain. Buy a bicycle to get to class (or a motorcycle/scooter). Expect to move several times, sometimes during the quarter (if you're unlucky).

You need a car to do stuff on weekends but there's no parking—bike to school, drive to party. And you have to drive to parties. And there is a 0 tolerance for underage drinking, with special Campus Police patrolling at all hours to make you feel comfortable and at home.