I got my BS in Electrical Engineering/Computer Science from UC Berkeley, and did my co-op at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. The co-op was basically a semester-long internship; it probably gave me a leg up if I had wanted to return to JPL, but otherwise I think a summer internship at an engineering-oriented corporation provides just as much work experience. And the nice thing is engineering corporations have money to give to summer interns (and grad students). 🙂

Having gone on a pre-college visit to Caltech, I’d say that the engineering guys at Berkeley are just as geeky as the ones at Caltech – but they both can be really sweet. That’s probably because I’m somewhat of a geek girl myself. 🙂 What’s nice about the UC schools is the general college environment – the football games and other activities that aren’t always available at tech schools.

UCSD has a solid tie-in program with the San Diego engineering corporations; I used to participate in it when I worked for a defense-contractor company. I’m not sure what the UC Riverside undergraduate engineering program is like, but I know that (as of 10 years ago) they didn’t have an engineering graduate program.