<p>DH, I don’t see how the rankings given in your link have anything to do with the debate on this thread. It certainly is NOT a “list of top engineering schools in the country” since it only includes schools whose highest engineering degree is a bachelors or masters. That leaves out schools that offer doctorates in engineering – like both BU and WPI, and even MIT!</p>
<p>^ Actually we were actually debating about all the schools that the OP got into and WPI is an engineering school. Since he is interested in becoming an engineer, we have to debate about engineering schools, isn’t that right??</p>
<p>Also, as OP said, he wants to go to an engineering school for his grad school, I think you know that MIT, WPI and BU all of those schools offer masters degree in engineering. </p>
<p>And as for “list of top engineering schools in the country” my bad!! I intended to say “list of top bachelor/ masters engineering schools in the country”.</p>
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<p>Think about your arguments more carefully. In Reading SAT 75th percentiles BU is 10 points higher. In math, WPI is 30 points higher. That makes sense because BU is a more general university, and WPI is more focused on technology. </p>
<p>Also the size of the school should have no impact on acceptance rates. A larger school accepts more students, but likewise it gets more applicants.</p>
<p>^ Actually NO. Think about it. BU has 10 schools including CGS,COM, SED, CFA and SHA where students get in with lower SATs which bring down their SAT scores. Despite that, BU has a math SAT of 600 - 690 when WPI has 630 - 720. (Being an engineering school that is not very high. Usually engineering schools have a SAT math score from 650-760) That means if you only count the SAT scores of their main 4 schools CAS, ENG, SAR and SMG, that SAT would be a lot higher than WPI’s SAT scores. Personally I know 5 students who got into CGS with only 1450, 1540,1510,1490 and 1610 when the mid 50% scores of BU students are 1850–2080. So, if you only take CAS, ENG, SMG and SAR students SAT scores, it would be a lot higher than what they have now. </p>
<p>“Also the size of the school should have no impact on acceptance rates. A larger school accepts more students, but likewise it gets more applicants”-- exactly my point. As a small school WPI should have a lower acceptance rate than what it has now atleast it should have been lower than BU. I mean look at Holy Cross. It is also an smaller school, located in the same city but their acceptance rate is 33.0 % (according to US news)</p>
<p>The data used to rank these schools may not even be relevant to most people. The rankings therefore are irrelevant to all except those who find rank and prestige to go hand in hand. The reality is, MOST people can get a great education just about anywhere. Prestige or rankings in US News or the like don’t seem to have a direct correlation with employment, otherwise if WPI is ranked #51 in tech circles, its employment rate would be in the same neighborhood, and according to these same publications that rank everything every which way there is, WPI is one of the higher ranked in recruitment to industry right out of college. My point being that depending on the criteria used to rank, you may get a different idea of how well a college stacks up for your purposes. As far as the OP goes, he/she should choose the college based on many factors, the least of which is rank.</p>
<p>In order to rank those schools, companies use a lot of factors like academics, extra-curricular, library systems, professors etc. So I wouldn’t say it’s completely BS. </p>
<p>As far as job placement, I didn’t see WPI as one of the top 20 schools for job placement. As far as the recruitment goes for most of the polytechnic schools job placement is high then lets say a pre-med school or the schools with variety of majors simply because America needs doctors and engineers. Engineers can do the “actual engneers” job when they come out of college but a pre-med student can’t do a doctor’s job. So the job placement for polytechnic schools suppose to be higher than other schools. As far as average income for graduates goes, BC graduate make more than a WPI graduates make.</p>
<p>But that being said it’s totally on OP what schools she/he wants to go to. Rank should NOT be the only factor while choosing your college, because college is what you make out of it. It should be one of the other factors like your major, fin aid package, student body, professors, extra-curricular etc. Good luck op</p>
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<p>Okay, by that logic BU should have much higher CR scores because it is not just an engineering college. But the difference in CR scores is the same as the difference in math scores. So your point is moot. </p>
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<p>Source? </p>
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<p>Why would we make that arbitrary partition? If we’re going to only look at the top X% of students at BU then we should likewise only look at the top X% of students at WPI. </p>
<p>Your point is also wrong because we’re looking at 75th percentiles. The top 25% are probably math science students anyway… </p>
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<p>Do you have a serious argument? Obviously we could partition either of these schools in such a way that we find an elite minority, but that would have no bearing on the overall quality of the college. </p>
<p>The point stands that WPI has slightly higher math SATs and BU has slightly higher CR SATs. </p>
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<p>Explain why a smaller school would accept a smaller percentage of its applicants. Don’t just throw out a random data point.</p>
<p>To be specific, I am speaking of employment in what WPI trains most of its students (not premed) which is engineering. And so what if that is skewed because an engineer comes out of school ready to what he is trained to do? Better yet then to train to be an engineer, eh?</p>
<p>Still, I think rank, even in these cases, means little, so you are totally missing my point.
If OP is interested in rank then yes go elsewhere. If interested in a good education, well, then the field is wide open.</p>
<p>Forget rank OP, this is some type of smokescreen. Go where you feel like you fit.</p>
<p>Theorymom,
I’m glad to see you posting here, as your info on these colleges far more up-to-date than mine.
$40,000 in loans doesn’t scare me, as my S earned between $5-10,000 every summer.
How does WPI campus compare to that of BC? How important to OP is it to live right in Boston, vs an hour away? I checked the website of BC, and don’t see any cross-overs to an engineering program. If I were the OP, I’d call Admissions and discuss if its possible to cross-register.</p>
<p>al6200—:“Explain why a smaller school would accept a smaller percentage of its applicants. Don’t just throw out a random data point”— The reason smaller school would accept a smaller percentage of its applicants is simple. They don’t accept a huge number of students like larger schools do. Take a look at HC, Tufts (not small medium). They only accept about 1500 students out of 10000-15000 students apply their each year and their acceptance rate is about 27-35%. While WPI is a small school (as someone already said), it’s acceptance rate is 63% (more than BU)</p>
<p>Then "Your point is also wrong because we’re looking at 75th percentiles. The top 25% are probably math science students anyway… " Actually we are looking at top 50% students since I took the data from BU website. </p>
<p>2) “Source?” Take a look at the stats of these colleges(math only)-
650 -740-RPI/GT
Harvey Mudd College-750 - 800
Cooper Union-640 - 780
WPI-630 - 720</p>
<p>As you see WPI students score below than other Tech colleges and for all of those tech schools, their SAT math scores begin at 650 except CU. But their highest is a lot higher than WPI.</p>
<p>3)“The point stands that WPI has slightly higher math SATs and BU has slightly higher CR SATs.”— I don’t think you get my point. Yes BU students have higher CR and lower math. Reasons all of those extra schools which are not basically a “science” school. In order to get into COM, SED, CFA and SHA, a student needs to score higher on CR, WR than math.</p>
<p>If you take only BU engineering schools and WPI engineering schools, I am sure you would see the difference between BU and WPI students. Bu students are a lot smarter than WPI students (at least at the point when they get into college as freshmen, but maybe they get better later on. I am not saying that it’s a bed school. All I am saying is students at BU are smarter than students at WPI.)</p>
<p>bookwarm-- BC doesn’t have any cross-engineering program. The OP is saying that he/she wants to go to BC for a year and then transfer to a good engineering school. From that I am guessing that he/she wants to stay in Boston area.</p>
<p>but OP as #theorymom said Go where you feel like you fit</p>
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<p>I have already explained this to you, and frankly I’m getting tired of repeating myself. A small school accepts fewer applicants but it ALSO gets fewer applications. </p>
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<p>I linked to the 75th percentiles though, and added together WPI and BU are equal. </p>
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<p>I never said WPI is comparable to Harvey Mudd College. And that is not a typical engineering school, it is the very cream of the crop. You might as well have linked to MIT or Caltech. Also your RPI numbers are wrong. </p>
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<p>None of those are typical engineering schools. </p>
<p><a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools;
<p>According to the Collegeboard (page 13 of the above PDF), the average Math SAT of students planning to study engineering in college is 579. </p>
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<p>So you concede that BU and WPI are on par academically? </p>
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<p>They have about the same SAT percentiles. Also I see that you dropped my counterargument about you making arbitrary partitions. </p>
<p>Considering the fact that you are repeating arguments which have shown to be false multiple times, and directly contradict the evidence, it is pretty clear that you are not here to provide good advice. Rather, it appears that you have some sort of petty axe to grind against WPI. Did they reject you or something?</p>
<p>I can say this, (although it probably doesn’t help the OP, who I feel should go to BC because that place “feels” better for that student) <em>my</em> S has chosen WPI because he feels most of the students are quite smart-(as smart as or smarter than he is, in fact) most of the classes rigorous, and most of the professors talented. My S scored an 800 in the Math SAT and had 34 ACT composite with a 36 in science and CR.</p>
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<p>As a current student, I can say that there is a lot of variance in WPI students. Most people are relaxed and not cutthroat academically, and had SATs around 700. Then there are some international students who were top students (as in top 100 or so) in their home countries who I’d suppose could not get into MIT/Yale/Princeton/etc. because admissions is tougher for international students. So there are some really brilliant people here. </p>
<p>There are also some students who are kind of, um, not so bright. </p>
<p>I can also vouch for the quality of BU students. As I mentioned earlier, they have one of the top (if not the top) debate programs in the entire country. They are also well known for having funny, likable speakers. </p>
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<p>Also, your son would probably be well served by meeting the head of the Math department when he arrives at WPI. I also suggest that he look into what’s called “REUs”, which a talented freshman student at WPI would be competitive for. Basically, you get $5000 or so from the National Science Foundation to study mathematics with a faculty member at a university over the summer.</p>
<p>“I have already explained this to you, and frankly I’m getting tired of repeating myself. A small school accepts fewer applicants but it ALSO gets fewer applications.”-- That’s what I am trying to say. WPI and HC both are small schools. The applicant pool at both schools are almost similar(although HC gets a few more applications than WPI), but why the acceptance rate at WPI higher than HC? Usually the acceptance rate at good schools are between 10-50% while the acceptance rate at WPI is 63%. That proves that there are plenty of ■■■■■■■ at WPI. </p>
<p>“So you concede that BU and WPI are on par academically?”-- they might have almost the same, but still BU gets higher rank than WPI even in engineering and BU mostly houses smart ppl while WPI houses a few smart ppl.</p>
<p>“Rather, it appears that you have some sort of petty axe to grind against WPI. Did they reject you or something?”— WPI accepted me with $25100 scholarship (including fed grant $43,600) and I also got accepted to BC, BU, NEU and HC. Don’t believe me? Look at the threads started by me and if you want I can send you a copy of my acceptance letter.
After my cousins experience at WPI, I would never go to that school. That school houses some really great professors and students, but it mostly houses some ■■■■■■■ who somehow become good by coming in contact with those good professors.</p>
<p>“Why would we make that arbitrary partition? If we’re going to only look at the top X% of students at BU then we should likewise only look at the top X% of students at WPI.”-- I didn’t look at a certain% of a certain school. I looked at middle 50% and based on that BU definitely looks better than WPI. BTW, for RPI the average score is 650-730 which is still more than WPI.</p>
<p>When I visited WPI, I felt like it’s one of the worst schools, I have ever seen. I would say only about 10% professors speak fluent English. If you ask a freshmen who his/her math teacher is, they will respond with something like, “the asian guy”, “the indian guy”, or “the eastern european guy”. I also found that a lot of students there weren’t friendly at all and few were proud to go there. </p>
<p>It felt like a prison to me and that’s why whatever ppl say, I would always say that WPI isn’t the great place to invest your money. But again it’s people’s own decisions. I also often find that ppl who usually get rejected from RPI, CU, HVM, GT and MIT tend to attend WPI.</p>
<p>goes to show you how very different various people’s experiences can be. </p>
<p>When we visited WPI it was the exact opposite of DHman’s experience. The students were happy, the math professors understandable, the energy excellent and the students friendly. S sat in on a math class on graph theory and the professor was completely understandable. He was very impressed with the game design folks. He met lots of students while staying over, and he did not get the impression at all that these students did not like being there or that it was at all prison-like. They did not sit around playing video games, but instead played soccer and tennis and enjoyed the evening outdoors. The stress level probably waxes and wanes depending on the timeframe and where they are in the semester. </p>
<p>DHman, you may be exagerating with the 10% figure for English speaking professors. If you look at the faculty list, most got there degrees here in the states and you do not spend many years in the states without learning the language. We visited math, computer science, game design and music departments and every single person we talked to spoke fluent English. I am certain there are some with very heavy accents that might make it difficult to understand, especially if the subject is not easy for you, but we did not meet any. We did meet quite a few people who were deciding between RPI an WPI and leaning toward WPI - S decided between these two as well - the two schools semed to be compared on the same level.</p>
<p>Yes I would say the folks who don’t get into MIT (and CalTech etc) probably get into WPI. S did not apply to Georgia Tech or Virginia Tech or any tech school that was public and large - although I am fairly certain he would have been accepted at those.
I am not naive enough to believe WPI is the be all and end all of the second tier tech schools, but I simply did not see any of the negatives DHman did, and I suspect my and my son’s number of experiences there are at least equal to his - so they cancel each other out ;-/</p>
<p>so guys reading this in the future - take a grain of salt and make up your own minds based on research and visits - just as my S did and just as DHman did. We each came to separate conclusions, and each has as much credence as the other. This is why fit is so important and why you cannot predict if the fit is going to be right without a visit (or 2)</p>
<p>And I still say rank has little to do with it</p>
<p>I will add that my son had a very similar experience as #theory’s when he visited. He has chosen WPI over RPI.</p>
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<p>No, it doesn’t. And it doesn’t even support your argument that smaller schools should have a lower acceptance rate. </p>
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<p>But they have more or less the same SAT averages. You have never addressed this point. You have only responded by changing the goal posts (like comparing WPI to Harvey Mudd) or by partitioning the colleges arbitrarily so that BU is higher. </p>
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<p>Okay, so you have an axe to grind because of your cousin’s experience. Gotcha. To be honest, I have no problem with you saying that you don’t like WPI, or don’t think that it’s a good school. </p>
<p>My problem is with you using flawed logic and lying about data to try to discredit WPI. </p>
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<p>No, they don’t. The 75th percentiles at WPI and BU add up to about the same number (WPI is actually slightly higher). And you were trying to partition the colleges by making that whole argument about different departments. </p>
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<p>You are certainly entitled to that opinion. </p>
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<p>All of the professors speak fluent English, although some have accents. And if you can’t understand a professors accent, then frankly you have bigger problems then professors with accents. </p>
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<p>To paraphrase: WPI is ethnically diverse and the students are not snobs. </p>
<p>What a crushing argument. I shall transfer out of WPI immediately, now that you have opened my eyes to the fact that there are people who are <em>shock</em> not from the United States. </p>
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<p>This is true of all of the schools that the OP is considering (in fact, it is probably true of most of the schools in the country)… It is an incredibly weak argument.</p>
<p>I also disagree with DHMan06.</p>
<p>WPI is at the same level in terms of selectivity as Georgia Tech and RPI. The 75%ile at RPI and GATECH is 1420, while the corresponding value at WPI is 1380.</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd, MIT, and Cooper Union are in a different league than WPI, BU, Northeastern, and all of the schools that the OP is speaking about.</p>
<p>I have a 2200+ SAT and am in the top 10% of the class and I didn’t even apply to RPI (something I kind of regret) because I like WPI as an institution better and it is closer to me (about 30 miles away). Now, I know you guys will disagree with me, but there are professors at EVERY school who don’t speak english as a first language and have an accent, whether it is MIT, GATECH, RPI, or the local community college. </p>
<p>It is an “unfortunate” fact that not every top researcher speaks english as a first language and that many people who graduate from top phd programs and who become professors often come from other countries, although I find that many of the professors at WPI speak english very well.</p>
<p>“No, they don’t. The 75th percentiles at WPI and BU add up to about the same number (WPI is actually slightly higher)”-- come on. You can’t compare BU with WPI. WPI students are a lot dumber than BU students (just go do a survey and you will realize it). And last time I checked I saw BU ranked higher than WPI both by US news and Princeton as well as among engineering schools. Even UMA ranks higher than WPI among undergrad engineering schools.</p>
<p>IndianPwnerDude—“I have a 2200+ SAT and am in the top 10% of the class” I see you got accepted to WPI and GOT REJECTED from BU, cornell and CMU. It’s normal that you have sort of petty axe to grind against BU (although it’s hard to believe that you got rejected with that SAT). But where I am from, going to WPI with that SAT is a disgrace to that student. I don’t go to a prep school, just a regular public school, but ppl from my school rather go to Umass Amherst than WPI. And as I see, I would say that ivys were your top choice and applied to WPI as your safety (WPI is my safety as well with 1810 sat). but since u didn’t get in, u r forced to go to WPI. In my life, I have never experienced any student who go to WPI with 2200+ SAT score. This is the first time and I am quite surprised!!!</p>
<p>“To paraphrase: WPI is ethnically diverse and the students are not snobs.” So is every single schools on OP’s list expect BC and HC. But what I am trying to imply is that professors with accent is not a problem. But when u have professor who is teaching calc3 and can barely speak english that is bad. What the students gonna learn from that professor?</p>
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<p>So are you a ■■■■■, or what?</p>