<p>Say I'm looking to go to graduate school. I've read the is an ivy league eng education worth it, but that's addressing schools like Darthmouth/Harvard/Yale.</p>
<p>The schools on my list I would want to attend for Engineering are</p>
<p>If I got in, these would all be full tuition. Wuold they be worth it?</p>
<p>And the school my parents want me to attend is the University of Connecticut, which is a top state school but not for engineering, so can I get some advice?</p>
<p>The schools on your list range from good to fantastic for engineering. Ivy League engineering schools (in general) are great if you want to do something engineering-related (like management or financial engineering) but are mediocre for actual engineering work. </p>
<p>So it depends on what you want to do with your life. Engineering management or patent law? Get an Ivy League degree. Work as an engineer? Go to an engineering school, like the ones you listed.</p>
<p>As to UConn… that is a bit tougher. UConn is not a bad school, but it really depends on a lot of factors you haven’t listed, like which schools have or will admit you, what the relative costs are, how hard you are interested in working, what “type” of university experience you want, etc.</p>
<p>Yes, they are ranked pretty well nationally. You’d basically be paying for the connections and research opportunities. Any school ranked in the top 50 is solid in my opinion even though rankings aren’t the be all end all of getting a better education.</p>
Sure, but the opportunities are greater starting from the Ivy League. Remember that management and law are as much about connections as they are anything else, and going to the Ivies is the way to get those connections. MIT is a bit of exception, in part because they are such a well-respected engineering school and in part because of their close connection with Harvard. Top patent law firms want graduates from top law schools, and top law schools seem to prefer graduates from top liberal arts schools (i.e. Ivies) even if they majored in engineering. None of this is absolute, you always have a chance to change your path, but it is the trend.</p>
<p>I think Hopkins, Cornell, and especially MIT are great engineering schools but also fantastic universities in general. So you’ll have the specialized engineering opportunities (i.e. research and the big tech companies) in addition to more non-technical opportunities. </p>
<p>Princeton is a great school in general but I’m not sure about its engineering. </p>
<p>I don’t know a lot about USC or Vanderbilt, but I think Rice and Michigan have strong engineering schools.</p>
<p>i’d go to conneticutt…then grad school u could get to any of those for M.S…though to be honest, by the time ur a senior u’ll probably have the piece of mind that throwing that much more money down is not a good idea…if ur real good though those schools will pay your for grad school but you got to work really hard in undergrad to earn that</p>
<p>All of these schools are great all-around universities, let alone engineering schools. As Engineerjw said, the hard part is getting in. I would pay full tuition for any of these schools without a doubt.</p>
<p>I still don’t understand why UConn and these schools are your only choices. There are plenty of others - Minnesota, Texas A&M, VA Tech, etc. - that are excellent engineering schools and would cost less than the elites.</p>
<p>Can you - read: your parents - actually afford to pay $50k a year? If not, you need some cheaper options.</p>
<p>If you have an interest in using your engineering degree as a springboard for a career in management consulting, finance, or politics the elite school might be worth the extra money. If you want to work as an engineer, attend engineering grad school, or attend law/med school, I wouldn’t want to pay the $50k.</p>
It is too late to revise my college list, I can only scrap some off. What schools on this list are not great choices?</p>
<p>
Well we have to find a middle ground. This is why I am asking if it is worth it - we could afford it, but not easily, and I have two younger siblings.</p>
Should I assume that you have already applied to all of these? I know the VT and A&M deadlines aren’t until 1/15…
$50k a year does not sound affordable to me. Unless you are interested in one of the high-prestige fields I mentioned in the last paragraph of post #13, I do not think full price is worth it for your family.</p>
<p>UConn is not a bad school, especially if you intend to stay in the area. If you can get research experience, I don’t see why it should keep you from engineering grad school. I just think you might be able to find some actual middle ground elsewhere.</p>
<p>Vanderbilt has grant-based, no-loans-ever financial aid. They gave me a lot more than I expected, since my parents’ combined income is pretty high. I’m in engineering at Vandy if you have any questions-- I’ve obviously never gone to another one of those colleges to tell you how it compares, but I can give you my perspective on my experiences so far.</p>
<p>The workload is tough, sure, but if it’s what you want to do, you’ll push through it. I lucked out because I made friends with this girl in my calc I class and eventually joined her group of friends, of which like 5 of us are engineers. It’s so nice to have people to work with; I’d really advise this for any college you go to, to not only find a support system of friends, but also one of other engineers (these groups need not be mutually exclusive). I know that my GPA isn’t the greatest, since I did rather poorly first semester freshman year, but I still got an internship last summer because I put Vandy at the top of my application. Seriously, they told me this during the interview. </p>
<p>I know that chemE is probably one of our hardest degrees, and most people I know that start out enrolled in it either switch to BME or ME to enjoy life a little. On the other hand, I know a girl ChE who’s huge into her sorority, and is still sticking with the major, so to each their own. We do have a large number of Malaysians in the engineering school (their government has some agreement with Vanderbilt I think, but all of their students are required to be engineers), and most of ChE’s that I can think of are Malay. In light of all of that, I know that we have a very respected department – no idea of the ranking – that I get a lot of e-mail updates about.</p>
<p>I haven’t made time yet to look for research positions, but I might start to do that next semester if I can… but I’m taking 6 classes so maybe not. It’s about balance for me. That being said, research is readily available to anyone who has the initiative to find it, even if it’s just e-mailing a professor that’s doing research you’re interested in. I know plenty of people that started research freshman year; it’s just the priorities thing again. I also would rather to go more into industry than academia, which is why I chose to do an internship last summer instead of an REU or something similar.</p>
<p>And as for knowing professors well, I think it’s definitely an option. Class sizes are fairly small and get increasingly smaller as you get to higher-level classes. Those upper-level courses are where it would be easiest to meet a prof that’s invested in you, just because their attention isn’t being spread out over 100-200 students, like in genchem and physics. I’ve personally made the effort to stay in contact with profs that I think will be beneficial later on, even my marketing teacher (maybe I want to go into consulting one day? You never know.); these tend to be the classes where I’ve made good grades, but this may be correlation without causation, I’m not sure.</p>
<p>Ah sorry for the novel. Probably should’ve PMed you… Oh well.</p>