What Is Needed For Success In Engineering?

We sometimes hear students say, "I do not believe I can get admitted to the College of Engineering at Cal Poly Pomona."

Our experience is that most students can get admitted to the program and progress successfully through the four-year education and graduate to join our 16,000 alumni. Most of our students (about 70%) work, so they take 5 years on the average to complete the curriculum, although 25% do complete in four years. Inexpensive fees and top notch instruction make Cal Poly Pomona a terrific educational bargain especially since many of our students are the first in their family to attend a university.

Attitude and desire are perhaps most important for people considering a four year university and a technically challenging engineering program. To be a successful engineering student, you do need good math and reasoning skills but also curiosity and interest in how things work. Most of our students want to know how things are made or how they can be made better.

Some of our students are excellent mechanics and chose mechanical engineering because of a deeper sense of inquiry based on the principles of motion. We also have some students who are pilots and chose aerospace engineering because of their interests in fluid dynamics and propulsion. It would be easy to go on to give examples for each of our fields but the concept is that students need to bring a sense of interest and wonder about the world around them to be successful in engineering. Try the commercial web site http://www.howthingswork.com to test your curiosity and interest in understanding some of the ubiquitous devices produced by very clever engineers.

The engineers of the United States are acknowledged internationally as a most clever group. Part of our challenge to the students at Cal Poly Pomona is to pursue that same cleverness, develop engineering prowess and learn to be competitive in a global economy. The 1.6 million US engineers have quite a job to do for the 260 million people in our country.

We open the door to an education in fundamental technical background and follow it up with capstone experiences that give the student the ability to analyze and design things to benefit society as they graduate. Engineers need to keep on learning their entire professional career. Employers tell us the most valuable traits of Cal Poly Pomona engineers are their work ethic; the ability to present themselves and their work; the ability to be good team members as well as leaders; and, of course, their superior technical ability.

Cal Poly Pomona is different from the 31 other schools in California that have an ABET accredited program. We emphasize a faculty who are both educators and engineers with significant professional practice experience. Our courses build on the basic math, science and engineering principles and lead to laboratory and field experiences that demonstrate these fundamentals. Solutions in today's world are constrained by economics and the art of engineering must build on science to produce the needed results. Our "learn by doing" philosophy is unique. We have seventy laboratories for undergraduate instruction and students use more than $14,000,000 worth of laboratory equipment to explore fundamentals and develop their thinking. This approach has led many of our graduates to develop new products or form businesses and their entrepreneurial talents make us proud.

To prepare for the challenge of an engineering education, students need to take advantage of all the opportunities open to them through high school, community organizations, friends and relatives. Not only do future engineering students need to take as much math and science as they can, but they also need to learn to communicate well. Many experiences beyond the classroom opportunities can help them develop into eager freshmen ready for success.

The CSU has minimum eligibility requirements and an easy way to review them is to visit the CSUMentor site at http://www.csumentor.edu. Currently the regular eligibility requirements are in effect for all of the engineering programs at Cal Poly Pomona. We do, however, urge you to apply early since some programs can fill up.

Much of what is provided on this web site for freshman students applies to transfer students as well. We have very close and cooperative agreements with most of the community colleges in California. We also know and talk regularly with faculty and others at each of the engineering programs in the State. If you are planning to transfer to Cal Poly Pomona the best advice is to plan the transfer early. The sooner you can plan, the easier your transition will be. We find transfer students do very well in the engineering programs here. We have formal articulation agreements with community colleges and many of them also indicate CSU and UC transferable courses in their catalog. If you are thinking about engineering please check the website http://www.assist.org for the agreement with your school. These listings show you exactly which courses at your college will transfer to Cal Poly Pomona.