@Mwfan1921 Thank you for the suggestions! 4.6W/3.85UW, 36ACT, some ECs, but as you can imagine, he doesn’t have much in the way of leadership or crazy level of involvement. I’m hoping he can at least express an opinion on location: weather, city/suburban/rural, proximity to home. Baby steps.
1 Like
@Eeyore123 Well, initially I was thinking large universities were off the list, but now (especially after this thread), I’m seeing size as less of a factor. Here’s what I would like to eliminate:
-Schools that have extensive writing requirements or writing portfolios
-gritty urban locations
-hyper competitive climates (here’s looking at you CMU…I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong 
-any of these: boarding school crowd, sports fanatics, heavy drinking culture
Probably means any college where the student’s desired major requires a highly competitive secondary admission to major process.
Note that some colleges admit some by frosh direct admit to the major, but others who apply to the major are admitted to the college but not the major. The latter, if they enroll undeclared or in another major, can face a competitive secondary admission process to get into their desired majors. CS at colleges like UIUC, UCSD, and Washington is like that.
For engineering, some colleges admit frosh to a first year engineering program; some of them have high college GPA requirements or competitive admission to choose a major later.
1 Like
I agree that large schools should stay on the list, as many will offer the depth of course offerings your son may be interested in and, as many people say, you can make a big school small but it’s hard to make a small school bigger. Public flagships, including with Honors programs, that admit more on stats than holistically could be a good start for the list. Throw in honors programs and activities, honors dorms (where they exist) or living learning communities, and a student could control their experience.
While a lot of Big 10 public flagships, for instance, have pretty rah-rah sports and plenty of heavy drinking, with 30,000 undergrads, there are plenty of kids who are not day drinking every weekend but are instead very academically focused. So I would keep some of those flagships on the list for sure!
2 Likes
Colleges I’d be encouraging my kid to explore given what you’ve posted:
Rice, Northwestern, Beloit, St. Olaf, Brandeis, Macalester, Tufts, Conn College, Harvey Mudd, Middlebury, Goucher, University of Vermont, Brown, Missouri M&T, Rhodes. This is a range of prestige/selectivity, and a range of “distinction” in science (since he doesn’t sound 100% sold on what he wants to study), range of sizes but nothing massive, and a range of locales, and a moderate “preppy/frat” presence (or at least easy to avoid) and some schools which are known to be easier to navigate than others.
None of these offer hand-holding or nurturing-- for that you need to be looking at Landmark or a program specifically designed for kids who need support (and I would argue that is not what your son needs from what you’ve posted). But Middlebury for example- intense academics, but it would be hard for a kid to get lost in the crowd, even with a quiet personality. If he decides he wants engineering, that’s a different list-- if he’s more aiming towards a math/science type of discipline, he’s got plenty here to work with.
Once he comes out of the rabbit hole of exploring these- and has some stronger opinions about what he wants, the gang here can be really helpful fleshing out his list.
Is the “non-urban” thing your preference or his? The thing about urban schools- you may not want him living in the middle of a city, but city schools offer TONS of things to do that don’t involve frats, drinking, etc. If you are in a bucolic locale guess what kids do on the weekends?
3 Likes
University of Alabama - Huntsville
(NOT the rah rah football, Greek Life main campus in Tuscaloosa… although you can totally avoid all that if you need to! )
Great engineering, will give him money for his grades/stats, has great internship opportunities and isn’t massive. My D is at Tuscaloosa campus and in a very writing heavy program so I cannot say much more that is helpful!!
I’m sure there are posters with kids at UA-H; I just can’t remember who they are!
Also second looking at Clarkson… also RIT, WPI maybe??
3 Likes
@ucbalumnus He already goes to a competitive high school and life is too short to live in a perpetual state of stress! We’ll look into admissions to majors for sure.
@Midwestmomofboys Honors colleges/residential communities are interesting! I wonder how much they create a circle of like-minded kids or make the university seem a little smaller (oh no, back to size 
Major-specific communities could be helpful too. In theory, they might provide a web of academic support? Kids in same classes together could be study buddies? I just can’t see my son wearing body paint at the 50 yard line!
1 Like
@blossom Thanks! Such a diverse list to explore. Missouri M&T and Rhodes are definitely off my radar. The line in the sand regarding engineering needs to be drawn. If he’s attracted to engineering in any way, he’ll need to head to a certain set of schools. Hopefully he will have some experiences this summer to clarify whether engineering is the right path.
He doesn’t do well with busy, overstimulating environs, hence the avoidance of cities. A campus school in the middle of a city, like Macalester or CWRU could work. BU, Northeastern, NYU- not a chance.
With the public flagships and Honors, learning communities etc. – there are a range of “flavors” of how schools handle that. At Univ of Iowa, for instance, there is an Honors only dorm which has lots of special community-building, special activities etc. In contrast, at Wisconsin, honors is a program, a course of study, not a separate honors college from the rest of the university. Wisconsin does not have honors dorms, but it does have residential learning communities which may be as small as 25 kids on one floor of a large dorm or an entire 600 person dorm . At Wisconsin (and other big schools), there are discussion sections of common Intro courses which meet in the large dorms, so that students have ready-made study mates close to home. My kid loved his 1st year “FIG” – a structure found out a number of schools- which is a group of 2-3 classes across several disciplines which are thematically linked, and about 20 students are in the FIG together and take those classes together, again, a ready made social and study group.
The science vs. engineering decision would impact the list, as direct admit to the College of Engineering and to a specific major, if a university does that, is usually the most competitive admissions at the institution. And even for direct admits, you want to understand the requirements to remain in engineering and in the major. Again, at Wisconsin, I believe a student has to maintain a certain gpa for different departments, to remain a major and the bar is lower for some majors than others. That may well be too much pressure for your student, so something to look for and avoid, if possible.
2 Likes
Yes, Wisconsin has weed-out college GPAs as high as 3.5 technical and 3.0 overall for engineering majors. See https://www.engr.wisc.edu/academics/student-services/academic-advising/first-year-undergraduate-students/progression-requirements/ .
This type of thing is not common at direct admit engineering programs (which usually require passing with C grades and 2.0 GPA to stay in the major), but is common at direct admit nursing programs.
1 Like
Another school you might want to look at is the University of Rochester in Rochester, NY. It has it’s own “bubble” campus rather than being urban like Case Western or others you want to stay away from. It’s a private school with a lot of engineering and CS, plus there are very few other classes he would need to take - and lots of choices for what those are (even lots of choices for the writing class). Research is big at this school. Does research interest him?
2 Likes
I would second the nominations of Harvey Mudd, URochester, and Rice as being possible fits for your introverted STEM-focused son. In developing his list, also consider how far he wants to be from home. If he needs to escape campus for a weekend to manage anxiety, for example, would it be better to be a car ride from home as opposed to being on the other side of the country? Ultimately the best advice will be to visit the schools that make the list to see where he can picture himself/feels comfortable. Hopefully we are able to get back on the campus tour circuit this Fall! Good luck.
2 Likes
@Midwestmomofboys Thanks for the information on Wisconsin. I like the sound of the FIG program and will need to research this a little more. A structured program that creates cohorts of kids would work well with my son on both an academic and social level.
@ucbalumnus On the other hand, a weed out minimum gpa (3.5?!!) would be super stressful. He would never leave the library. I don’t know if this is a characteristic of all larger universities/flagships, but we’ll be careful to explore these requirements. No need to add pressure to an anxious kid.
1 Like
@Creekland I don’t know if many high schools give students experience with research, but it really hasn’t come up in my son’s high school classes. So it’s hard to tell whether he would be interested enough (and take the initiative) to get involved with research.
Rochester is a great example of a campus school with urban benefits The open curriculum and academic offerings in science and eng are a good fit.
2 Likes
OP, I know that you are focusing on fit, but we would all be remiss if we didn’t mention cost. Are you able to afford the Net Cost at the highly selective schools that provide good financial aid? Will you need to chase merit aid? Are you not in need of financial help? Knowing this helps in not suggesting unaffordable colleges.
3 Likes
Note that Harvey Mudd has a fairly heavy humanities, social science, and arts requirement.
1 Like
@healani Good point about proximity. He says he’s up for distance, but it could be the covid quarantine talking. We could all use a little distance now
There are some schools that have homework free breaks in between quarters/semesters. Coming home on those longer breaks could be helpful to his state of mind, and of course navigating the airport is a good life skill.
@Eeyore123 Thank you for checking. Fit is my top priority right now, although I’m hoping there are a range of schools that could offer a good fit. We would pay full freight if need be, but want to include schools that offer merit aid as well.
I would second what some of the others posters have mentioned.
You may want to look into some state schools that have good engineering programs that are direct admit as they tend to focus more on collaboration over competition (there are several where engineering/cs school within university is more prestigious than overall university) and have honors college/program. Honors will come with some smaller classes where can’t hide and possibly some writing assignments, but also perks such as priority registration, nicer dorms that are 4-person suite (2 shared bedrooms and a shared bath) vs hall style, advisors, smaller community of their kind of people within the larger university. Also, larger engineering school often means they have residential LLCs (some can chose engineering or honors LLC), engineering clubs and clubs for things that engineering types tend to like, etc. The one my D21 is leaning toward more everyday has engineering school floors in the HC dorm + has entire (non-HC) dorm just for engineering school students. Some of universities have engineering honors/challenge programs in addition to general honors.
Not to stereotype too much but (my H and his whole family are engineers/cs so in my experience there is some truth to the stereotypes), he will likely find his people in engineering/cs no matter what.
Also, there are generally a mix of kids at most places of decent size. My older one was a first year at UNC in a regular dorm. Were there kids that partied/frat types? Yes. However there were also a number of kids that did not party/drink and would just hang out with each other and play cards, watch movies, play video games, go to a restaurant or the cat cafe (that was her crew; pre-COVID).
2 Likes