<p>I like the liberal arts and believe that it's important for me to have the educational experience of a liberal arts university, even for engineering.</p>
<p>What are some good, top-tier liberal arts schools with a good engineering program? Preferably on the East coast.</p>
<p>There's always HPYCC, but I want some safer schools.</p>
<p>Let's just assume my stats and EC's are enough to put me in the running for HYP. Cost is also not a concern at this point.</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>Lafayette College in Easton, PA offers accredited engineering programs in civil, chemical, electrical & computer, and mechanical engineering.
[Division</a> of Engineering Lafayette College](<a href=“http://engineering.lafayette.edu/]Division”>http://engineering.lafayette.edu/)</p>
<p>Also, Swarthmore and Bucknell in PA, Trinity in CT are LACs with respected engineering programs.</p>
<p>Are you looking for the smaller, more undergraduate focused environment of what are usually called liberal arts colleges, or are you looking more for a broad liberal arts education along with engineering?</p>
<p>If the latter, note that engineering degree programs typically have substantial requirements in liberal arts subjects. Math and science are obviously included as prerequisites; humanities and social studies are required for breadth.</p>
<p>Indeed, a large university may have a greater selection of both engineering courses and humanities and social studies courses that you may want to take.</p>
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<p>I’m looking for latter in general, but I really like the premise of an undergraduate focused environment.</p>
<p>More specifically, I want to avoid technical institutes where humanities are just “requirements” for the degree. </p>
<p>I feel like I can more easily get into Cornell, but would the college of engineering offer the same breadth of liberal arts education, as say, Princeton?</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd, Rose Hulman</p>
<p>impatientone, if you decide to consider venturing away from the east coast, you could look into schools such as Wash U. St. Louis or Vanderbilt Univ. In both cases, the engineering college is separate from the arts and science college, but students take humanities/liberal arts classes in a/s. Both also allow transfer out of engineering fairly easily if the student changes her/his mind about pursuing engineering. Both are mid-size universities and have a strong focus on undergraduate education.</p>
<p>Neither is an easy admit. Neither is Cornell, by the way.</p>
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<p>You have to look at each individual school’s curriculum requirements and offerings to see if it meets your needs and wants.</p>
<p>For example, you might be avoiding MIT for the reasons you state. However, it actually requires all students to complete a large number of liberal arts courses, including:</p>
<ul>
<li>Eight humanities, arts, and social studies courses, including one from each category, and three or four in a concentration.</li>
<li>Math (calculus through multivariable calculus), physics (mechanics and electricity/magnetism), chemistry, and biology courses.</li>
</ul>
<p>[General</a> Institute Requirements | The MIT Wiki](<a href=“http://mitadmissions.org/wiki/General-Institute-Requirements]General”>http://mitadmissions.org/wiki/General-Institute-Requirements)</p>
<p>Note that MIT also has sufficient offerings in several humanities and social studies subjects that you can major in them:</p>
<p>[MIT</a> - Education](<a href=“http://web.mit.edu/education/]MIT”>Education | MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology)</p>
<p>For comparison:</p>
<p>Cornell’s engineering degree requirements in humanities and social studies are here (six courses from at least three of six possible subareas):</p>
<p>[Cornell</a> Engineering: Liberal Studies](<a href=“http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/academics/undergraduate/curriculum/liberal_studies.cfm]Cornell”>Liberal Studies requirement for Cornell Engineers)</p>
<p>Princeton’s engineering degree requirements in humanities and social studies are here (seven courses from at least four of five possible subareas):</p>
<p>[Degree</a> Requirements – Princeton Engineering](<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/engineering/undergraduate/majors/requirements/]Degree”>http://www.princeton.edu/engineering/undergraduate/majors/requirements/)</p>
<p>^I’m only concerned that since MIT is primarily a technical institute, the professors and humanities curriculum will probably not be of the same level as something like Princeton.</p>
<p>Are there any other suggestions?</p>
<p>I don’t think the problem with MIT is the faculty which is pretty world class in the social sciences for sure–don’t know much about humanities. The problem is the student body is skewed away from those subjects which makes for maybe less interesting discussions.</p>
<p>Are you female? Smith has engineering.</p>
<p>Union (NY) is a very strong school and might be worth a look. Best of luck!</p>
<p>I have a kid at Bucknell and a kid who graduated from Cornell-neither in engineering. Cornell grad D’s boyfriend is getting his PhD in engineering from Cornell. He attended a much smaller school as an undergraduate. ( A 4.0 in engineering from Clarkson)</p>
<p>Bucknell is a top 10 ranked engineering program for a small school, in this case a small LA school. Bucknell always ranks on USNEWS top 50 LA schools. But it also ranks in top schools, that do not grant a graduate degree,on many of its engineering program and overall, in the top ten. So you get the best of both worlds.</p>
<p>Cornell, on the other hand, is a top ranked engineering (again top 10 in most of its programs) program from a school that awards PhDs. It is also, obviously, a top ranked school overall.</p>
<p>I think any engineering program allows some, but restricted, electives. So your choice of school really depends on the size of school and classes you want-small vs larger. </p>
<p>Some would say that you get better research opportunities at the larger schools. I would say, different opportunities. But they are there for both-Bucknell and Cornell. </p>
<p>Both are great school and have great engineering programs. Obviously Cornell has the Ivy name. Bucknell is smaller, more people get to know each other, professors know students, etc. Cornell is more diverse, more class choices and more diverse social opportunities (although both have a strong greek presence).</p>
<p>Both of my D’s had/ are having, great educations, experiences outside of the classroom and opportunities to take advantage of.</p>
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<p>You have to realize that historically, liberal arts and engineering have been like oil and water: they just did not mix. With the exception of Cornell and to a lesser extent Princeton, the teaching of engineering was considered much too pre-professional for the Ivy league. Still to this day, Harvard and Yale only pay lip service to engineering. The situation at LACs is far worse: engineering is either non-existent or taught at such a basic level that hardly any programs are accredited. Even though a Harvey Mudd or Rose Hulman can be seen as LAC size, they certainly don’t have a strong liberal arts curriculum.</p>
<p>As ucbalumnus pointed out below, I would argue that MIT has a much more balanced curriculum than any other engineering school and even than most engineering programs at liberal arts colleges. </p>
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<p>Well, you concerns are unwarranted. Not only does MIT have some of the strongest social science programs in the country in areas such as economics, political science and psychology it is also world class in philosophy and linguistics. </p>
<p>More surprising perhaps, its creative writing program is also considered one of the best. USA Today ranked it as the 4th best college program in creative writing in the country.</p>
<p>[The</a> 10 best American colleges for writers | USA TODAY College](<a href=“USA Today Educate - Teacher & Student Resources & Guides”>USA Today Educate - Teacher & Student Resources & Guides)</p>
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<p>Arguably, the typical MIT student may be less interested in the humanities than his counterpart at a LAC, but there is still a substantial pool of student who DO have strong interests outside of the STEM fields and that pool is not much smaller than at a typical LAC.</p>
<p>Maybe because anecdotes may convey the point better than a listing of facts, I would take the example of my own D. Top student in HS, just as talented in the STEM fields as in the humanities, National French Exam Gold medalist, gifted painter… Her ultimate professional interest was medicine but she just did not want to give up on getting a broad liberal arts education in college. She eventually decided on MIT because she felt she could get the best of both worlds: top training in her field of choice (neuroscience) and also world class education in the humanities. A big selling point was that she could cross-register at Harvard for any classes she could not find at MIT. In the end she never had to: she took over a dozen humanities classes and a got a minor in English. If anything, she enjoyed her humanities classes as much or even more than many of her STEM classes: never more than 5 or 6 students per class, one on one interaction with professors in a true tutorial format. The humanities are really among the the true hidden gems at MIT. MIT is also the only university in the US with a true full-year exchange program with Cambridge University. </p>
<p>I would definitely not suggest MIT to somebody who wants to major in English, largely because the STEM requirements would be overwhelming. On the other hand, if your primary interest is engineering and you also want to also get an excellent liberal arts education, nothing would come close to the MIT undergraduate experience.</p>
<p>Note that not just MIT will provide good engineering and good liberal arts. Many of the big state universities that have good engineering also have good liberal arts (and their large size typically means a large selection of subjects and courses). A small school may be more limiting in this respect.</p>
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<p>Harvey Mudd is a LAC, it’s not just LAC-sized. I’m not sure what you mean by not having a strong liberal arts curriculum either. Mudd is fairly serious about its liberal arts side, and has pretty strong requirements for its students (from what’s been posted here, more courses required than MIT). The mission statement of the school is:</p>
<p>“Harvey Mudd College seeks to educate engineers, scientists, and mathematicians, well versed in all of these areas and in the humanities and the social sciences so that they may assume leadership in their fields with a clear understanding of the impact of their work on society.”</p>
<p>And admittedly the selection of courses isn’t always great at Mudd itself, but luckily that’s no impediment with the consortium. I’m taking my anthropology course at Pomona and my video production course at Pitzer right now, just like everyone else does here. The 5C’s boast an incredibly strong liberal arts curriculum, and you get the advantage of being at a technical institute like Mudd while still taking liberal arts courses with students actually majoring in those fields. So you avoid the problem of the student body being skewed away from those subjects while still attending the top ranked undergraduate-only institution for engineering.</p>
<p>That being said, I think MIT is a hard-to-beat option (it was my number 2 pretty much for the reasons cellardweller described), and the OP expressed a desire for the East coast, where Mudd is definitely not. I had rather similar desires to the OP, wanting a good liberal arts experience while still getting the best engineering education possible, and Mudd was the best possible fit for me. MIT fell slightly below for this, but is also an incredible school for this and caught my eye over most institutions in that regard and I think it’s definitely worth considering for theimpatientone.</p>
<p>Check out Rice University (in addition to some of the other schools mentioned above).</p>
<p>Agree with Wash U, Vanderbilt, Rice, Swarthmore. You could also be on the ground floor of the program at the University of Chicago, which sounds really interesting if they are getting the faculty. Also, take a look at:
Brown
University of Rochester
Lehigh
University of Virginia
Columbia (where engineering students take half the core)</p>
<p>How come no one has mentioned Cooper Union? Is it too much of a specialty school?</p>
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<p>I wouldn’t be too concerned about their getting the faculty. They already have a founding director from UC Berkeley. They will take 5-10 years to spin up to the target number of 24 faculty members, but already have 4 named professorships. They are constructing a new 265K ft2 building ([Construction</a> of William Eckhardt Research Center | The University of Chicago](<a href=“http://facilities.uchicago.edu/construction/meb.shtml]Construction”>http://facilities.uchicago.edu/construction/meb.shtml)). Meanwhile they already have top-notch math, physics, and chemistry departments.</p>
<p>If your priority is a broad liberal arts education (not a well-established engineering program), you can’t do much better than Chicago.</p>
<p>I agree with what others have posted. You’ll be better off at a national university that has an LAC feel than going to an actual LAC. Think Lehigh, or similar schools.</p>
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<p>Yale recently spent over a billion dollars (yes, with a B) on their science and engineering programs–new buildings, renowned professors, heavy recruiting of top students, etc. Hardly lip service.</p>