OP here … Our older son loved Rose from the moment he set foot on the campus, did Catapult and still loved it (so much so he almost didn’t apply anywhere else), and then at the last minute decided to go to WPI for purely location-related reasons; we live in MA, and he had an unrelated opportunity that really required him to stay in state. He took a gap year 2019-2020, and started at WPI in the fall of 2020.
He was miserable beyond miserable from Day 2 and I could echo a majority of what @CaryPlanner said about his son’s experience, even including a conversation with a dean who had a similar lack of concern about terrible first-year teaching. Yes, COVID was miserable, and we all got that, but the attitude and teaching of some his professors was really not acceptable, and at $50K+ a year, students shouldn’t have to put up with a year of terrible teaching to get to the “good classes”. Plus, we discovered that there are several unexpected consequences of 7-week terms which I discussed in this thread: Feedback on WPI - #11 by HomeschoolMomMA.
He suffered through A and B terms (got all As and Bs) and then took a leave for second semester, and at this point he is not planning to return to WPI at all. We were so disheartened by all that we learned about WPI through our older son’s firsthand experience that WPI became an option of last resort for our younger son. (Happily, he got into his top choice that wasn’t a moonshot and will be starting there in the fall.) Like @CaryPlanner, I think it’s possible our older son might have been able to overlook the terrible teaching and learning context and be okay at WPI in a non-COVID context, if he had been able to interact with other students, both socially and for academic collaboration and support and commiseration. But that’s not what happened, and he’s moved on and we’re okay with that.