<p>My son is looking to study mechanical engineering and compete in college athletics. He is a good athlete and student (2100 SATs, 3.8 and 9 APs).</p>
<p>We took him to visit a cross section of West coast schools (Gonzaga, Univ. of Portland, CO School of Mines, UC Boulder, Stanford, Santa Clara, UC-SLO, Harvey Mudd) and he identified
1) he is willing to assume debt
2) he wants a diverse national student body (not just engineers and not a regional school)
3) he wants a nationally recognized engineering program
4) he is fine with D1, D2 or D3 athletics.<br>
He liked Harvey Mudd (since his sports team would include the diversity of Claremont-Mudd-Scripps) but since they dont tip we cant predict if he will be admitted. Stanfords coach is not interested in him (we dont know why but wonder if an engineering course load is not perceived as compatible with their training/travel schedule).</p>
<p>For family reasons we were unable to visit the East Coast earlier and are now trying to catch up. He has been invited to visit MIT and Columbia in the fall and if they click he will go to one of those schools but we think he needs some more options. He is looking at Brown but has ruled out Princeton, Yale and Duke for his own reasons. I have suggested researching and contacting the coaches at
- Tufts
- Cornell
- Harvard</p>
<p>Would you recommend any other schools? My husband and I had great college experiences and want him to find his people and have an amazing four years as well. Thanks for any advice you can offer.</p>
<p>His SAT scores may not have been in range for Stanford, or perhaps they could get a more accomplished athlete than your son since they are D1-- pure speculation on my part. I think Tufts will be VERY interested so I would definitely pursue that one. I wouldn’t say it has a “national recongition” for Engineering per se, but it certainly has national recognition for being a great school academically. Other schools with a good E-programs that I’d recommend are Bucknell (academically diverse but not ethnically so), Northwestern, and Northeastern. He may get some nice scholarship/merit based money at Northeastern.</p>
<p>Thanks for advice. I hate to miss something obvious.</p>
<p>Re Stanford, who knows the actual reason they aren’t interested but it wasn’t SATs - we know 3 current athletes and their SATs were significantly lower than my kid’s or the admitted student range.</p>
<p>I am advocating for Tufts as I think that is the most interesting student body but he is now engaged and researching Boston University (not very competitive admission stats?!) and we are on the road.</p>
<p>BU is a very diverse place, and I think recruits in sports fairly strongly. It’s right in the middle of Boston, without as much of a traditional walled campus feel as many schools, but very lively, and if he likes baseball… Fenway is just a very short walk. It’s a rising star sort of school in many ways and I know some very smart kids who are very happy there. You can do research easily.
Tufts is very innovative and very international. It’s a more bucolic campus but still very close to Boston.
MIT is…well…MIT… Also right in the city, with housing scattering around. He’ll need to be prepared to deal with the atmosphere and the work level - doing sports seriously at MIT will leave no time for much besides studying.
Case Western, Carnegie Mellon, Olin (although they don’t do sports, but if you are looking at MIT , you should check them out), URoch all come to mind.</p>
<p>You may want to consider Georgia Tech.
Tech’s National Rankings</p>
<p>U.S. News & World Report
No. 7 public university in the country
No. 4 graduate engineering college
No. 5 undergraduate engineering college
No. 1 industrial engineering program
7 undergraduate engineering programs ranked in the top 5
10 graduate engineering programs ranked in the top 10
Chronicle of Higher Education
Faculty Scholarly Productivity (2007)
No. 1 in Materials Science & Engineering
No. 3 in Architecture
No. 3 in Information Technology/Information Systems
No. 8 in Engineering Mechanics
No. 9 in Engineering (various disciplines)
No. 10 in Systems Engineering
Diverse: Issues in Higher Education
Bachelor’s (2009)
No. 1 in engineering bachelor’s degrees awarded to African American students
No. 2 in engineering bachelor’s degrees awarded to all categories of minority students
No. 4 in engineering bachelor’s degrees awarded to Asian American students</p>
<p>College Pr****er says:
On paper, MIT is one of the most diverse campuses in the nation, and this diversity extends well beyond race to religion, background, political viewpoints, and personal beliefs.</p>
<p>Soon to be ex-Tufts student here. Our engineering program is very close-knit community (I believe 200 per enrolling class are engineers) and, as far as I know, it’s a good program. My engineering friends absolutely love it (except for all of the work, but you find that at every engineering school). </p>
<p>I wouldn’t call Tufts a very diverse campus, though. Lots of minority groups (understandably, I think) prefer to socialize at the minority “houses” on campus (e.g. The Africana Center). In fact, minority viewpoints are somewhat marginalized. For instance, most pro-Palestinian groups are shouted down by our very vocal Hillel. </p>
<p>Tufts can crow about diversity all it wants; in my experience, the only way to really engage with others from socioeconomically/geographically/ethnically/racially different backgrounds is by a lot of legwork and putting oneself out there. To wit: I’ve found that Tufts self-segregates.</p>
<p>Our engineer-athletes are quite able to handle the courseload, but they’re also brilliant people. I’m sure your son could handle the work.</p>
<p>What sport? Is it XC/TF (judging from the screen name?) The minimum ability difference between a program like Stanford and a program like HMC is huge, in terms of what it takes to contribute to the team. Granted, top runners at a DIII school could probably run at most DI schools, but the range of ability is much greater at DIII institutions than it is at top DI schools. If you are not an elite-level runner (top 50~ nationwide) then elite programs will not be interested, regardless of your academic stats.</p>
<p>Wanted to share the status of our search. Unfortunately “Iamright” … was right. Stanford wasn’t interested due to my student lacking a national ranking but we were obtuse in our reading of their email response. We are in discussions with Columbia, MIT, Wash U, Mines and Santa Clara coaches. He is faster this year and ranked top 25 in nation so we have recently had frank conversations with Stanford. Like many coaches, they pick their recruits (in their case the recipient of the admission red envelopes) based on junior year performance. Not sure where my runner will end up but we are confident any of these will be a great learning, running and living experience.</p>