<p>I have been recently accepted to a college which has dual degree agreement with Dartmouth. I read comments saying that Dartmouth engineering is not competitive enough. But, I love Dartmouth. Can anyone who has experience of the dual degree program help?
How competitive is it to get in? Do they limit the number of candidates for the dual degree? Is there a minimum GPA required?<br>
Is financial aid available for the fifth year? Do they guarantee to meet demonstrated need(of international student) in the final year too? </p>
<p>Tuition and Expenses
Tuition for 2010-2011 is $13,326 per term, which covers instruction, use of instructional facilities, and healthcare service through the College infirmary. Tuition and costs for 2011-2012 will be determined in March 2011.</p>
<p>Students without their own hospital coverage must purchase a Dartmouth College hospital insurance policy for approximately $1,800 per year.</p>
<p>The total cost of a year in the Thayer School B.E. program, including tuition, books, room, board, and incidentals, will be approximately $59,000 for the academic year 2010-2011. </p>
<p>Financial aid can significantly lower the yearly cost.</p>
<p>Full-time students in the B.E. program are eligible for aid in the form of partial-tuition scholarships, hourly employment as teaching assistants or in other capacities, fellowships, and loans. Special and part-time students are not eligible for financial aid.</p>
<p>While the experience is still excellent, Ivy engineering programs aren’t reputed to have the same focus and rigor as say MIT or state schools that feed major local employers (like UW & Boeing, UM and the car companies). Many students use the ivy engineering departments as preparation for professional schools or careers in finance or consulting.</p>
<p>@Chardo The comment I read told that “Dartmouth is not a good choice for engineering…its a Liberal Arts College…so its engineering is not exactly “engineering”. Its better to goto RPI or Columbia for engineering than to choose Dartmouth”…This thing made me so confused. That’s why I asked for help in here.
:)</p>
<p>I wonder that myself. If someone really loves everything about Dartmouth (or Yale, for that matter), and wants engineering, are they making a mistake? Dartmouth is very different from RPI or Columbia.</p>
<p>Can’t help you with the dual degree thingy… but I can help a little with engineering. I’ll be perfectly frank: engineering is NOT Dartmouth’s strong point. It’s a really nice program… but it’s not one of the flagship programs. Compared to the rest of the Ivies’… Princeton, Cornell, Columbia and Penn all have better programs. It’s better than Harvard’s (practically nonexistent) one. Probably on par with Yale’s or Brown’s. Engineering just isn’t the focus of Dartmouth. That being said… the engineering labs are super sweet! Passing by to visit the River, you can see people down in the labs pretty late at night. Most of your classes will by in Thayer (the engineering school) which is pretty nice.</p>
<p>If you’re thinking about doing engineering at Dartmouth, you have to commit really early on. There’s a TON of prereq’s… math, chem, bio (I think), physics, engineering classes. THEN you get to start on your major. It’s a lot of work, the median’s not high, and these kids are darn smart. There are a decent number of engineering majors, but not many. Most also do a minor in something else or modify the major.</p>
<p>@meowmix0669 Thank you so much! This information was really helpful! Anything else you would like to add about the course load? Please do add some more info…</p>
<p>Coursework is definitely the most brutal of any major. A lot of engineering majors take 5 years to graduate – not necessary, but easier.</p>
<p>And let’s be clear here: all the ivies have awful pure engineering programs because all the engineering kids at the ivies get funneled into quantitative roles in high finance…</p>
<p>DartmouthForever- you neglect the fact that the engineering program is constructed to be five years. You get a BA at the end of four (then graduate with your class), come back for another year and grab a masters. Coursework is hard (all sciences have difficult coursework) and you’ll get a lot of problem sets. That being said, the median’s not too shabby. However, I’ve met quite a few engineers that are taking 4 classes, two or three of which are engineering classes. That might not sound like much, but at a school where your quarters are so much shorter than everybody else’s semesters and where your reading period is two days compared to two weeks, 4 classes is pretty brutal. If a chem major told me that he was taking four classes, and two of them were chem classes, I’d ask him if he was going insane. The fact that many engineers do double/triple up on engineering classes tells me that the courseload isn’t horrible. </p>
<p>I’m going to have to disagree with you quite a bit on your last statement. Princeton’s engineering programs are amazing. Electrical engineering, aerospace engineering, etc are top ranked. Same thing with Cornell’s engineering school. They both have excellent engineering programs. </p>
<p>That being said… firms hire a lot more engineers from big state schools with good engineering programs (for example, Penn State) because their engineers are just as good, but don’t come with such a hefty price tag. So do consider your value to employers if you’re an engineer coming out of an ivy with just an engineering degree.</p>
<p>I don’t think that is correct Meow… The 5th year is not for a Masters but rather for a BSE. This is the program that allows for engineering certification. I believe Rightnotleft has expanded on this before… there are some students who can complete the BSE in 4 years, but the program as outlined on the Dartmouth website indicates 4 years for a Bachelor of Arts in engineering and then a 5th year to get your Bachelor of Science in Engineering.</p>