My daughter is a junior looking at engineering programs, and she should be a strong candidate for a top school.
She’s also a sweet, sensitive, quiet kid who values niceness.
I’m worried that the two might not mix easily. Does anybody have insights on any engineering programs with relatively positive, supportive social environments? Thank you!
Here are a couple of places you could start:
http://www.forbes.com/2010/12/10/best-colleges-minorities-women-science-lifestyle-education-stem.html
http://engineering-schools.startclass.com/stories/3311/engineering-schools-with-most-women
Check out this recent thread (wherein I do much touting of Olin College of Engineering, which my D attends):
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1836349-prestigious-but-friendly-schools-for-engineering-p1.html
Any preference on location, urban/rural, etc? Is financial aid a concern?
She may want to prefer schools where either:
(a) she is admitted directly into the desired engineering major, or
(b) she can declare or change into her desired engineering major without needing a high GPA or going through competitive admission process
Schools where students are not directly admitted to the major but must earn a high GPA or go through a competitive admission process may, if all other aspects are equal, encourage more cutthroatism.
I think you are going to find most engineering programs encourage collaboration because that is what engineers do. I’d highly recommend Michigan engineering as great example of that. They have departmental lounges where undergrad students can study and ask questions of grad students. Every class had many review sessions and most everyone worked in teams. There are hundreds of student run projects - solar cars, drones, submarines, water purification to name a few. They have an open-door policy for administration and everyone is admitted to engineering in general and can decide on a major in sophomore year. The entire program is designed to help students succeed.
Kids are very enthusiastic. Some engineering majors are heavily male, while others are more even (e.g operations engineering, CS). The university overall is about 50-50 M/F.
The grading policies varied class to class. Many professors flat out said that they would not use curves and would judge each students work on its merits. Others used a curve but only as a guideline. It actually helped me somewhat when exams were exceptionally long or difficult.
Best thing is for you to visit during school term to get feel for the social side of things (dorms, fun things to do etc) . Our son (currently a HS senior) ruled out a few of the schools (MIT, Caltech) just because he said students were too tense and stressed, too weird (Berkeley) , or too male (RPI).
Northwestern definitely doesn’t have a cut-throat atmosphere in the McCormick engineering school, and there are a ton of group projet where you work collaboratively with other students.
My D is at Brown, and there’s a really supportive environment there in CS and engineering especially for women. The CS teaching assistants program is staffed by undergraduates, so you get a lot of help and support from your peers. My D never thought she would be a CS major (and like your daughter, she may tend toward the introvert side), but she dived right in and loves it and has been hired as a teaching assistant twice. Her professor makes the teaching fun, and the TAs dress up and present skits or films on a regular basis to keep things light. A majority of the TAs are women, interestingly enough. She also got several summer internship offers in her first go-around from some Silicon Valley/Seattle giants, so Brown’s department seems to be respected. The only problem is that the courses are very oversubscribed, as it seems like everyone wants to go into this field now (up to a quarter of each entering class takes an intro to CS class at Brown), so you have to have persistence and patience to get your computer lab time or time with the professor or TA. I don’t know as much about the engineering school, but Brown claims to have the oldest engineering school in the Ivies, for what it’s worth. And they are devoting many hundreds of millions of dollars to boost it in the next few years. Overall, I think there is a very Brown-style approach to engineering and science education.
Take a look at Smith. She’d be a good candidate for merit aid if she’s eligible for the super selective schools.
Try Rice, it seems like a really collaborative school with good engineering
I echo the comment on Smith. My D also looked there, and they made a big merit offer. Along with that, they provided special access to professors and research opportunities for all four years. Of the womens colleges they, along with Wellesley, may be strongest in STEM fields.
I don’t know if it may be too late for the OP’s daughter or not, but try a summer program for women in technology. WTP at MIT is very selective but it delivers some great young women, and gives them the confidence to excel in a male-dominated field. All the “girls” who did WTP with my daughter ended up at top schools and all of them have continued in their science and engineering studies.
I know this is a bit of cliche but if you are looking at ‘nice’ and a good engineering program then I would take a look at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities. We visited 13 universities (mostly midwest and northeast) and we were truly struck by the ‘niceness’ of everyone we met. S did end up picking this school and quickly acclimated - said everyone on his very large dorm floor was friendly. If she is interested in Chem. E, it is one of the top programs in the country. The CS program is strong too (he is double majoring in CS and Economics).
@spayurpets “…try a summer program for women in technology. WTP at MIT is very selective but it delivers some great young women, and gives them the confidence to excel in a male-dominated field. All the “girls” who did WTP with my daughter ended up at top schools and all of them have continued in their science and engineering studies.”
The WTP application used to be due in January. If you can get in, it is a great program.
DD went and @spayurpets is exactly right. Every girl that she stayed in touch with is at a great school. The 5 girls in her close friend group from that month are at Penn, Harvard, Yale, Brown and MIT.
However, entering frosh in the College of Science and Engineering are not in their majors. It looks like admission to each major is only assured if the student earns a 3.2 GPA in the prerequisites; otherwise admission is on a space-available basis. See the four year curriculum sheet PDFs for each major at https://cse.umn.edu/r/four-year-plans/ . It may be worth investigating what kind of GPA threshold each major has for students with GPAs below 3.2, since some majors may be completely full with 3.2+ GPA students, while others may have plenty of space to admit all 2.0+ GPA students.
Minnesota does have a relatively low out-of-state list price.
Thank you all for your responses, this has been tremendously helpful! I didn’t know about the WTP summer program, we’ll definitely look into it.
My D’s Calculus teacher warned her that the profession itself won’t have a lot nice people. So, we are more concerned about after college.
Why would the teacher say that?
The notion of attracting and retaining women in Engineering is more of an engineering culture issue than a pure numbers issue. It is a lot easier to increase the number of women (especially in today’s economic environment) through aggressive recruiting than it is to change the prevailing culture.
I would be careful assuming anything about a school’s engineering culture based on the number of women attending.
MIT has a relatively high percentage of women attending.
MIT is a great engineering school. I have worked at companies founded by MIT engineers, I have recruited at MIT for years, I have family members who have attended MIT, but I would never recommend MIT to a person of either sex who considers themselves “sensitive”. I doubt that many MIT alums would, either.
When it comes to culture, it’s really not about collaboration, because that happens at all engineering schools. It’s more about how the students (and professors) collaborate. It’s also about how students and professors think and what motivates them.
If you want a culture more conducive to women, then it’s probably a good idea to put a woman in charge, at least for a decade or so.
Here are some quotes from a somewhat dated article from the previous Dean of Engineering at Tufts. The Dean who proceeded her was not female, but he was an expert in K-12 Engineering Education and a pioneer in making engineering more appealing to a broader slice of the population.
It’s also important to note that some women (and men) are interested in/motivated by things other than the traditional engineering stereotypes.
“Congenial learning haven” is quite different from “collaborative” and is not a phrase usually associated with Engineering.
(Note that the Dean quoted above has recently stepped down, and she said that it was very difficult finding a replacement who really understood the Tufts Engineering culture.)
http://tuftsobserver.org/engineering-female-success/
Tufts engineering is closely coupled to the School of Liberal Arts - which represents about 85% of the undergrad population and therefore impacts the overall culture of the campus. There is a free flow of students between the schools and there are no engineering dorms. The newest academic buildings are interdisciplinary. The School of Liberal Arts is on the more liberal/artsy end of the spectrum even for a liberal arts college. The school motto starts with the word “peace”, and the mascot is a vegetarian rather than an apex predator. International Relations is the largest major, and there is a strong culture/language requirement (for liberal arts majors), so taking a global perspective is part of the culture.
Engineering is taught with more of a liberal arts ideology focused on improving the human condition. There are interdisciplinary majors that span the two schools as well as eight ABET accredited majors (which is unusual for a small school). Liberal arts students will take entry level engineering courses to satisfy their science distribution requirements. The largest engineering grad degree program is a Masters in Engineering Management/Entrepreneurship which won the Gordon Prize from the National Academy of Engineering for innovation in engineering education. A minor in Entrepreneurial Leadership is offered at the undergrad level and is one of the most popular minors for liberal arts students. Computer Science (which is offered by both schools) is growing fast and recently passed International Relations as the largest undergraduate major. As a result the intro class is restricted to freshman and sophomores.The engineering Phd programs are small by research university standards, but are also growing. Engineering research creates critical mass by leveraging the close coupling with liberal arts, and focusing on three strategic interdisciplinary areas:
Engineering for Human Health
Engineering for Sustainability
Engineering the Human Technology Interface
One of the largest areas of research is K-16 Engineering Education.
The net attrition rate out of engineering is a negative number (i.e. more students transfer in than transfer out). The nationwide attrition rate out of engineering averages about 40%.
The engineering school claims a 4 year graduation rate of 99%, which, depending on how they measure it, may be higher than the School of Liberal Arts.
A female electrical engineering professor won the Presidential STEM Mentoring Award for mentoring women in engineering. She also created a Multimedia Arts Minor that bridges engineering and liberal arts. A computer science professor won the international undergraduate teaching award from the IEEE Computing Society.
The percentage of female undergrads is 32% (they need to advertise/recruit more aggressively - but that is counter-cultural)
Here is an old paper written by Dean Abriola when she was invited to a conference at Cornell to talk about the Tufts experience for women in engineering.
That’s not a very nice thing to say 
Does your D’s calculus teacher know about Engineer’s Without Borders?
http://ase.tufts.edu/ewb/
Or the engineering education field?
Sounds like we need to send some volunteers to your high school 
http://www.ceeo.tufts.edu/outreach/stomp.htm