<p>I'm currently attending the Aerospace Engineering program at the UW. It's supposedly to be pretty good (probably the best in the North West area). It's also probably the most competitive Engineering major in the UW. And if money could be an issue, it may be the best choice for her.</p>
<p>How good is the UW AE program compared to AE programs around the country? Top 15?</p>
<p>UDub is excellent in Aerospace Engineering. Remember that until a couple of years ago, the Boeing headquarters was in Seatle and even now, many Boeing activities are taking place in the state of Washington. In terms of rankings, I would say the University of Washington is anywhere between #10 and #15.</p>
<p>It's definitely up there in the top 20. USNews ranks them at 12. I would say that, aside from obviously Computer Science and Medicine, AE is the area in which the UW excels the most.</p>
<p>Boardlr,
It sounds like we have similar daughters and she went through the same thing last year. She looked at MIT but when she saw the cost and that they did not offer merit aid, she ruled it out for undergrade. She narrowed her selection to 6 colleges, Purdue, Rose Hulman, GATECH, Embry Riddle, Florida Tech and Univ. Alabama at Huntsville (UAH). We visited them all (we started the spring of her JR year). She applied and was accepted to all. If you have time, visit as many as you can. There is SO MUCH you can learn from visiting that you cannot learn from publications or webpages. Every school is different and the correct choice will depend on the feel of the school as much/more than the statistics in some publications. Her final decision came down to Purdue or UAH. With merit scholarships, cost were almost the same (We live in Indiana so Purdue is in-state for us). She selected UAH and, after midterms, is very happy with her decision. If you haven't noticed, a small but vocal portion of CCs population is not friendly to choices other than Ivys so I will not go into detail here. I would be glad to give you more details of her reasons if you PM me.
UAH (and ROSE) does not offer AAE degrees, Aero is a concentration under ME. For us, the best of both worlds, she wanted the AAE and I wanted the broader employment opportunites of an ME.
I would also agree with the comments about a college with more than just engineering. Many kids switch majors and that can cost an extra year or more in lost credits if they have to transfer. Embry and Rose were almost all technical, not much in humanities, english or foreign languages majors/minors.</p>
<p>She should def. go with Mich. Ann Arbor - she'll get in for sure with those stats. It's a great school for aerospace engineering (and any other kind of engineering).</p>