I think ive narrowed my college choices down to the honors college at Arizona State and the university of oklahoma. I’m looking to major in chemical engineering. I have already visited barrett and really liked it. Warm weather, attractive girls, nice dorms, great food, and great enfineering department with tons of internships in Phoenix and I would have 3 personal advisors. I haven’t visited University of Oklahoma yet but they seem to have a good engineering department as well but I don’t know as much about it. Any help choosing between these two would be much appreciated. Costs for both are about the same.
I would think that Oklahoma is not really that big of a step up in terms of prestige (idk if at all, really), so I would just take whichever college appeals to you more, which seems to be ASU!
Before choosing Arizona State I would read this blog post from Inside Higher Ed.
https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/just-visiting/asu-new-american-university-its-terrifying
I don’t know how well this pertains to BHC but I would ask current students about how this matches their experiences.
Son visited OU this weekend with many of the NMF kids. They put on the full dog and pony show re: making the subset of honors students a path for rising to the top. Dozens of new endowed professorships, etc. etc.
They hit all the right buttons for him.
HOw are you paying? In another thread you’ve indicated that you’re “on your own” for college.
It doesn’t matter that your top few choices all have about the same net cost IF YOU don’t have the money to pay for any of them. Your parents have said that they’ll pay for your airfare from Alaska.
What is the NET cost for each of your schools, including your least expensive schools on your list?
And how will you pay?
No one here wants you to be one of those kids we see every summer posting that they thought they could get loans or thought some other crazy plan would work. We don’t want you declining affordable schools now, and end up empty handed.
Due to scholarships, and some of the money I have saved I will be able to get through my first year of college with maybe 10,000 to 15,000 dollars that I would have to make up. I can probably get my parents to help me with that because that is just the first year and then I will be eligible for the GI bill which according to the GI calculations will bring down the cost to maybe $2,000 for everything for the most expensive school on my list and that will be for my 2nd and 3rd years, and if my sister stays in alaska I will be able to use it for the 4th year as well. So I just need to get through the first year of college finances.
OP I’d run the Net price calculator for each school and use that to help make a determination. OK and ASu are similar I have a friend who has a daughter at UofO and loves it, she is an athlete so that helps alot, not sure how it would be to be a regular student.
Further, this thread really has a home on the UofO and ASU pages, the OP raises an interesting point but the article quoted from Inside Higher Ed is more than insightful and goes to some of that which has been recently discussed on the ASU pages. Not to kick a dead animal again, but the blog does raise and some of the comments raise very insightful and worthwhile points pertaining to ASU in general. faculty and the quality of teaching is a topic picked over and one some of us have contributed to in the past, potential ASU students should go through the impact and assess how these and the future cuts proposed by Governor Ducey and the Republican legislature will impact ASU going forward. From my perch on the edge of ASU as an adjunct, none of these developments are really new or particuarly worrysome but they are rather just an extension of the same we have felt for several years.
Bottom line is ASU is a factory, Barrett has some value, in that you are able to get into classes before the masses, but beyond that there really is no value to the honors college and certainly none for graduates over and above an ASU certificate, that is a shame. But we like OOS since they often full pay and subsidise AZ students.
https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/just-visiting/asu-new-american-university-its-terrifying
I have a daughter who is a sophomore CS major (which is in the engineering school) in Barrett. She also considered OU and I have a son who is a HS senior seriously considering OU and the honors college there so we have done a substantial amount of research although have no direct experience.
I don’t agree with some of Michael Crow’s ideas but I think this blog is a bunch of hyperbole and in a lot of ways does not match my daughter’s experiences. For one thing, she has actually really liked the flexibility that the online classes she has been able to take give her. And Englishman’s disparaging comments about Barrett and insinuations about ASU in general (it is NOT an ASU certificate, it IS a 4-yr Bachelors degree no less than a degree from Oklahoma) are unfounded and not my daughter’s experience.
OP, you need to decide what is important to you. If class size is important, you can check out sizes in chemical engineering on both schools websites by going to the class schedules. You can also get information about the person teaching a class (whether adjunct or tenure track) from the websites. Class sizes for upper division courses can vary quite a bit across majors at ASU. I think both schools have large lectures for many of the lower division core courses.
My daughter has had very good experiences both in her Barrett-taught human events classes and in her honors English class at ASU. Being an honors student is also a plus for getting research positions with professors. I do not think the Honors designation carries a lot of weight on a degree at either ASU or OU, but the things that honors makes easier (such as research experience) and the required thesis at either school does make a resume stronger. I would expect that the Honors experience at either school is similar although Barrett requires more honors credit hours.
ASU actually has a better ranking in engineering in general but I don’t regard that as very important either. ( I am an engineer though not chemical). Again I suggest looking at the classes offered. A larger school may offer more different electives or it may offer classes more frequently. This is one of the things that attracted my daughter to ASU over some of the other schools she considered (including OU). It is also a concern for my son planning mechanical engineering because OU only offers the ME classes one semester or the other so it is significantly more rigid.
Finally, you can get an idea of the number of students in each engineering major at both schools here
http://profiles.asee.org/profiles/
Be aware the Barrett has an extra $1000/yr in tuition over ASU tuition and the Barrett room and board is significantly more expensive than OU and than other ASU options. Barrett also requires two years on campus (although that may not be all that hard to have waived the second year). I don’t know how off-campus living expenses compare.
Finally, I don’t know what you mean by 3 advisors as ASU. Honors students get advising from Barrett faculty but as far as I can tell, it is only for meeting Barrett requirements. They aren’t really much help in the major. And the advisors in the major are not faculty, at least in CS. They are people hired to keep make sure the students are on track taking (and passing?) the required classes in a timely manner. They know the major maps but they really aren’t experts in the technical field (like professors) who would be able to advise on the content of technical electives. I don’t know how the advising is done at OU, but this is a trend that I have seen at other state schools as well and I don’t really like it.