Admitted Student Day-Steven's Institute of Technology

Colleges and Universities A-Z Stevens Institute of Technology
1

Hi we attended this event yesterday but honestly did not get a good sense of the school.
The way it was organized, for two hours, you basically visited each room for the area / schools you are interested
and engaged a professor or a student and ask indivdual questions instead of being set up as info session to get general information as well as information you did not think to ask.

There were also student led facilities tour but for technology school we were a bit surprised the school did not
have more updated facilities/ equipment.
(After seeing several other schools, Stevens felt like HS labs along with corroded shower heads in each room
which you are suppose to pull in case of emergency decontamination set up by the doorway or in the middle of the room)
We also visited visual arts floor which we saw one Mac lab with one computer set up for 3-D programming.

Our younger son is considering Stevens out of several accepted schools. It’s proximity to NYC as well
As the school’s reputation is a draw but he is interested in prehealth/ biology which we understand has only started up 4-5 years ago.

While it is interesting and we agree everything will be affected by technology which the school is def. selling, we weren’t sure if the school is investing in the school and their students.

After spending 4 hours yesterday we weren’t clear on what the schools does for placement as well as advising / setting the students up for success. We did h/ever think students and professors are smart.
Lastly, we also did not get a good sense of the student culture since there was no tours offered which usually
You can get some sense of the the culture by listening to the tour guide as well as asking questions…We understand
Stevens have a large student body who are grad students…

Would love to hear back from current students or anyone who knows Stevens well on above mentioned.

Thank you.

2

Thank you for the feedback on your tour. I hope Stevens will read it and consider your comments.

It seems like the accepted students day changes every year. I have been twice and both times, I thought the information sessions were very helpful and we had a lot of access to students after the official sessions. Maybe they changed things around due to their increasing undergrad enrollment?

Stevens is in the process of constructing a new building that will have labs and classrooms. It was supposed to be finished by 2017 iirc, but it is still in the early stages from what I can see (I visit Hoboken often). Once that is complete, they may not use some of the older facilities? I am only guessing.

Placement and advising: individual student advisors are highly variable in their care and concern. MY opinion, based on what my kids have told me.

They offer opportunities for co-op placement each semester, but nothing is guaranteed, and sometimes students have to do a little legwork of their own in order to obtain their preferred internship. For example, each company has a certain amount of interviews they will do on the co-op interview day. You will get assigned a number, and if the interviews for your preferred company have run out, you will have to go to your Plan B firm(s). Later they will have another round of interviews, and this time, you will get first choice of interviews. This is how I remember it, not sure if things have changed. You are also allowed to find a coop outside of the coop program, as long as they meet certain criteria.

Yes, there are a lot of grad students. My guess is that they pay the bills.

Stevens seems to be marketing themselves lately as a Business Tech and Quantitative Finance school. My opinion only. They seem to want to get away from being know as just an engineering school. The campus and the offerings are evolving at a fast pace right now. It is not the same Stevens I first visited 6 years ago, and that is both good and bad.

3

What labs did you visit? All labs in which chemicals are used must by both federal OSHA and state safety regulation must have eye wash and decontamination showers immediately accessible, are those the “corroded shower heads” to which you refer? It is common for labs to have them both in the hallways and in the individual labs. If you visited any of the chemistry, chemical engineering, biology/biochemistry, Micro Device Lab (nanotechnology), materials science, or any of the others that use chemicals, it is standard equipment in those labs to have emergency showers. When I worked in the Solid State Research division of Bell Laboratories, we had the same emergency showers in every lab (which used some rather nasty chemicals, as does any lab engaged in such research). Does that surprise you?

Stevens in the past several years has invested some $110 million in new labs, facilities, and equipment. Have you seen the nanotechnology, mass spectrometry center, electron microscopy (Lab for Multiscale Imaging), Davidson Lab (hydrodynamics, ocean engineering), x-ray diffraction, nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometry, Nicoll Environmental Engineering Lab, undergraduate electrical engineering design lab (all current, state of the art electronic measurement equipment), various mechanical engineering labs (wind tunnels, thermodynamics, engine performance), physics (quantum communications, ultrafast laser spectroscopy, quantum computing, and more? The new building that rualum describes is an addition to the facilities already in place.

With respect to placement, Stevens is among the best in the United States with graduates commanding in the top 15 highest starting and mid-career salaries of all institutions of higher learning in the nation (source, Bloomberg Business Week/Payscale survey “What’s Your College Degree Worth, 2017”), and the fifth best co-op and internship program in the nation (Princeton Review, “Best Colleges, 2017”).

Stevens is not marketing itself as a Business and QF school. It is of course marketing that program which is a very strong one that has had great success in placing graduates in major Wall Street investment banks and other high level financial institutions. It is drawing on the great strengths of the traditional engineering and science programs in having built the QF/Financial Engineering program, but rest assured engineering and science are still major foundations of Stevens as they have been since the founding of the university in 1870.

Stevens has a large graduate student body reflecting its role as a research university. This is not uncommon in institutions that have a large research commitment. Stevens has many externally industry and government funded research programs including being the home to three Department of Defense funded Centers of Excellence in systems engineering, ship design, and cybersecurity (funded by NSA).

Perhaps you ought to visit again and ask to see some of the work actually being done in the labs.

4

We agree with Yonj69. Other than the president’s welcome which was fantastic, we were very discouraged with the lack of any engagement with the BME administration. We were in a room filled with other engineering disciplines, excluding ME, and it was very disorganized. The lab tour was very disappointing and the dorms need to be upgraded.

Steven’s was a strong contender; however, I’ve heard as well that they may be focusing on Wall Street’s needs now. As a result, I’m believe Steven’s is off his list.

5

Did you talk to the BME faculty and ask the questions you had? That is the purpose of the gathering of each of the department faculty in one room, so that one can ask all the questions and gather all the information one needs in one sitting. I don’t think any school is going to have separate Accepted Students Days for each discipline or department individually - some students may not have decided upon a specific major and having all the departments represented in one place allows them to speak to each one.

What needs upgrading in dorms? Most of the buildings are air conditioned (when I attended Stevens only one of the dorm buildings was, and not mine), they all have laundries, they all have individual or common bathrooms, a bed and storage. What more would you expect a dorm to be? The Hyatt Regency? Come on, it’s a dormitory in a university, not a five star hotel. It is not going to be the equivalent of your house in the suburbs in any school. The Stevens off-campus housing in local apartment buildings by the way would be less like a traditional dorm and have more amenities.

Stevens is building its business, quantitative finance, and financial engineering programs to be sure. They are already quite successful in placing students on Wall Street, but it certainly is maintaining its traditional strength in engineering and science as well.

Also, I laugh when people mispell Stevens as “Steven’s” (I guess they also say “John’s” Hopkins, too).

6

A phd student led us to an orthopedic lab as well as biomedical labs. While it was educational and interesting to hear about actual work again the facilities were not impressive, in general cluttered and not updated. I as the parent also found the experience intimidating vs reassuring, if that makes sense since I don’t have bio background… The schools have one shot in most cases as families like ourselves have several schools in few different states to visit and agree with jabbond it could have been better organized. Two hours was allotted to speak with different/ school & departments but mostly standing around waiting for your turn vs. getting a wider/ general knowledge as well as engaging individualized questions at the end. The other schools we attended also customized the day allowing the students to sit in on classes of their choice…The dorms I would say is comparable to all the schools we have seen and we have seen a lot. H/ever the closing reception which provided food from supposedly local food places was not memorable since no students/ faculty/ staff members were present. (food quality for Hoboken being known for Italian was not impressive. kinda like cafeteria food but that is on a minor note) Thank you Engineer80/rualum for replying but it doesn’t make the decision any easier.

7

@yonj69 - I know that in the past Stevens had events in which applicants and accepted students can sit in on classes of their choice as well. They also do this during individual visits and tours given to students being interviewed on campus. The general accepted students day is likely meant more as a Q&A session with all the departments represented. With all due respect, if you do not work in biology or have the background, from what base of knowledge do you draw the conclusion that the biomedical/orthopedic engineering labs were not updated? Do you know of the makes and models of all the current equipment and their age? I know several of the faculty in the BME and Chemical Biology departments and know that all of the labs in the chemistry, Chem.E, and BME departments were upgraded and much new equipment was purchased in the last few years. The lifespan of equipment used in this work is more than just a couple of years, you know. A nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer, electron microscope, quadrupole mass spectrometer, or gas chromatograph (all of which were installed within the last three years) for example each cost the better part of a million dollars - this is equipment that has a service life of two decades or more and serves their purpose over that lifespan. It is not replaced every couple of years like one may do with their auto lease for example.

Best of luck on your college choice and in your academic endeavors.