<p>@boneh3ad @Torveaux Well their main concern is that the quality of students isn’t as high as other schools. At my school, people who don’t really care about school get into A&M easily and my parents fear that the quality of students isn’t as high as other schools. Also, College Station is like in the middle of nowhere isn’t it? It’s not like UT which is in Austin, a big city, as well as GT which is in Atlanta. Purdue is in West Lafayette, but they aren’t really a top choice for me though.</p>
<p>Also, the reason i’m hesitant about UT and TAMU is that i REALLY don’t want to go to school with people from my high school. My school sends approx 500 kids to UT and even more to TAMU (class size 1500), and that scares me as to the amount of kids that i might have to share classes with. My school is full of obnoxious asians who only care about grades so yeah, you can see why i got tired of them easily.</p>
<p>I looked at the recruiters for other schools, and i saw that Rolls Royce is based in Indianapolis (close to Purdue), Delta is in Atlanta (GT), and Wichita State is in the “Air Capital of the World”, so there are a myriad of companies based there. It’s nice to know that there are some Boeing facilities in Texas, but the competition must be fierce since you mentioned the instate students are a lot.</p>
<p>That’s a semi-legitimate concern in general, but it doesn’t really ring true here, necessarily. The quality of the engineering students at TAMU and UT are not substantially different, especially in aerospace. I say it is only semi-legitimate if it was true is because while there are advantages to being surrounded by stronger students, ultimately, college is what you make of it and you certainly don’t need that to get a good education, a good job, or have a good experience.</p>
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<p>College Station is certainly (in my opinion) not as great a place as Austin, true. I wouldn’t call it the middle of nowhere though. There are some 236,000 people living in the Bryan/College Station area, which is some 54,000 more than in the area surrounding Purdue. Now, if you really are just interested in going to school in a larger city, then that is totally legitimate and then really something to consider here.</p>
<p>Ultimately, you will likely perform better in school if you are happy, so if being in a larger city will make you happier, it is definitely something to think about. That does rule out a lot of good aerospace programs, however. We’ve already discussed Texas A&M and Purdue, but also consider Michigan (Ann Arbor: 344,000), Illinois (Champaign: 231,000), Cornell (Ithaca: 101,000), Colorado (Boulder: 294,000), Virginia Tech (Blacksburg: 159,000), Penn State (State College: 153,000) and so on. Basically, aerospace engineering programs tend to be at state flagship universities that have the resources to administer such a program, and those schools tend to be land-grant universities, and lang-grant universities tend to be located in “college towns.” It is fine to prefer a major city, just keep in mind that it will be limiting.</p>
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<p>So your high school graduating class sends over 2/3 of its students to the combination of UT and TAMU? I am sorry but I call BS on that. Not only is that a very high college attendance rate without even factoring in other universities, but that also represents over 5% of the freshman class at Texas A&M from your high school alone. That is an exaggeration.</p>
<p>That said, I completely understand the desire to go somewhere away from your high school classmates. Keep in mind, though, that both of those schools have over 50,000 students, so even with a large number of high school classmates also attending, it is quite easy to avoid them entirely.</p>
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<p>You are missing the point a bit here. Essentially every school that has been discussed so far has a national recruiting footprint, especially in aerospace where the jobs are concentrated in a handful of dense pockets around the country (Southern California, Texas, Florida, Seattle, DC, St. Louis, etc). Having previously worked for Rolls-Royce, for example, there were plenty of Purdue graduates there, but there were graduates from all over: Illinois, Georgia Tech, Michigan, Maryland, UCLA, Berkeley, Texas A&M, Texas, and so on. These schools produce engineers that are highly sought-after nationwide. It is nice to have some companies nearby, but especially in aerospace, it doesn’t really paint an accurate picture of the employment potential of a given school’s graduates.</p>
<p>Sounds like your parents are woefully uninformed about the student body at both schools. In college, it is really about the student body in your school within the university. If you are in the Engineering College, everyone is of high quality at both schools. S1 was not a huge fan of the TAMU campus, per se, but he applied there because it is awesome (UT as well). College Station is quite literally a college town versus the metro center of Austin. That is not good or bad, it is just a different vibe. Still, there are nearly 100K people in CS. It is also short drive to Houston if you really want a big city.</p>
<p>I get not wanting to go to a school with lots of classmates. I had similar thoughts at your age and went OOS. Two of my classmates went to the same large flagship. Oddly enough I had classes with each of them in my first year. (fortunately, I liked both so it was not a problem) As an adult, I don’t think I could recommend making that a real reason. Maybe if it was truly a tie-breaker.</p>
<p>Think about what type of aircraft you are interested in working on. Wichita is home to Cessna and Beachcraft, more focused on private craft than on commerical or military craft. Boeing is moving away, but does use sub-contractors there. </p>
<p>Delta being in Atlanta does not mean so much. Airlines buy aircraft, they don’t have large numbers of their own engineers. Delta is more likely recruiting people with statistics or management degrees.</p>
<p>To some extent, this is really a moot point.</p>
<p>If we were talking about high school, then yes, I would agree and say that the quality of students can make a significant difference in the quality of education you receive. In high school, the underprepared students have the ability to hold everyone back. In fact, teachers sometimes make significant modifications to their syllubuses to accomodate less prepared students.</p>
<p>In college, the isn’t the case. The hand holding ends. All students, regardless of educational background, are expected to keep up with the pace, or they will simply wash out. The pace at most engineering schools is usually quick in order to cover the necessary topics to meet accreditation requirements and/or the program’s own objectives (if they happen to exceed the accreditation minimums).</p>
<p>@boneh3ad So the career fair isn’t a good representation of employers that recruit on campus? Like even RR could come down to UT and recruit there? Also, when looking at a school, how important is research/coops/internships? Do these affect job placeability along with GPA?</p>
<p>Career fairs are a wonderful way to get an idea of who recruits a school. Big companies attend recruiting fairs across the nation, though. If a school is a good program, companies from all over fly in for the fairs.</p>
<p>@boneh3ad Looking at this list for the past UT Engineering Career fair, i don’t see RR, PW, or Airbus, 3 of Aerospace’s biggest employers… Does this mean they don’t recruit or they just didn’t come to this fair?</p>
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[li]This is only one of the two career fairs at UT in any given year. There is no telling who shows up to the other one, as I didn’t see a list on their site. It appears to be equally large, however.</p>[/li]
<p>[li]Airbus does not have much of an engineering presence in the United States. They therefore don’t spend the money that would be required to recruit heavily over here because the proportion of students interested in heading back overseas for that sort of career is fairly small so their return on investment would be small. I am not sure that I have seen them recruiting actively at the career fairs of any school on this side of the pond. The reverse is true in that Lockheed, Boeing and Northrop don’t recruit all that heavily over in Europe for the same reasons.</p>[/li]
<p>[li]So it appears that at this particular fair, two of the big three gas turbine manufacturers were absent. I can’t really say if that is a trend or not or if they instead go to the other fair there. What I can say is that plenty of other major aerospace companies clearly recruit there at this particular career fair: BAE Systems, General Electric, L3, Lockheed Martin, NASA, Northrup Grumman, Raytheon, Sandia National Laboratories, and Boeing. I left off the space-only companies since you aren’t interested. That is clearly an impressive list and only represents one of the two career fairs.</p>[/li]
<p>[li]UT has a strong brand name and engineers would get plenty of consideration even at companies that don’t actively recruit the UT career fairs. If we assume that Rolls-Royce or Pratt & Whitney actually don’t show up to the other fair, either, you could still get a job by applying directly (though having some face-to-face contact is always preferable).</p>[/li]
<p>[li]Also check the student chapter of AIAA for each school. They often have lists of recent meetings, and those meetings often have companies that participate in part for recruiting purposes. Browsing the UT AIAA chapter’s site says that JPL has been there recently as well. Their AIAA site is admittedly pretty sparse, though.</p>[/li]
<p>[li]The same statements apply to Texas A&M.[/li][/ul]</p>
<p>“My parents don’t want me to go to A&M as they would rather pay full pay at any OOS college” - It’s their money… that is fine IF they have done their research. </p>
<p>Just make sure they understand current college costs. Many parent are dismayed with sticker shock when they realize how much more it costs than in their day. </p>
<p>Great - that should I think cover state/OOS. You’d be surprised how many panic psots appear in CC when parents realize that they had encouraged their kids to apply to expensive private colleges without realizing it could cost them $250K. </p>
<p>@boneh3ad Yeah you were right i overly exaggerated the #s for my school lol… but my school still sends the most kids to UT out of any high school in Texas.</p>
<p>My main problem with UT Austin’s program is that basically everyone takes the same classes, with almost no elective courses offered (the technical courses are very strict and aren’t really flexible ie you either take atmospheric flight or spaceflight, and whichever one you take, you must take these courses, with no other choices)</p>
<p>So after taking in all of your tips and talking with my parents again, this is my revised list:</p>
<p>UT Austin - In State (no auto admit) Match
Purdue - Match (probably full pay oos)
Iowa State - Safety (12k scholarship based on calculator)
Ohio State - Safety (stats match those of scholarships for 15k, competitive for full ride scholarship)
Texas A&M - Safety (top 8% so auto admit)</p>
<p>So these colleges make no sense without my stats themselves, so here they are:
3.8 uw GPA, 4.3 W GPA out of 5.0
ACT 36 no SAT
Decent ECs
rank top 8% in top 5 public school in Texas
17 APs all 4s and 5s
Financial aid is going to be all merit as family makes too much</p>
<p>That sounds like a pretty good plan to me. If I read that right, does that mean your top choice would be Purdue? Is that a finished list or are you planning to expand a bit?</p>
<p>I ask because it seems some of the major Midwestern engineering schools interest you so it’s just a little surprising to not see Illinois or Michigan on there. I’m not 100% sure if Michigan leans more toward aeronautics or astronautics, but I do know for sure that Illinois has a large amount of aeronautics research, and therefore a nice array of aeronautics electives.</p>
<p>Also, I wouldn’t worry too much about a rigid course structure. You’ll find that at most engineering programs. There’s so much to cram into the degree that you have to stay somewhat rigid. That’s especially true in Texas where the state mandates a maximum number of hours that can be required for a degree.</p>
<p>@boneh3ad Now that you say that UT Austin makes a bit more sense. They are my first choice cost wise as it is both a great school and cheap. Purdue would be my next option if UT Austin rejects me, which depends on how hard it is to get into Cockrell without being Auto Admit. UIUC and Michigan cost more than Purdue for OOS, as well as the fact that I have no chance at a scholarship, which is why they aren’t on my list. I can probably get 5-10k at Purdue from their Presidential Scholarship, but there would still be a difference from that cost and UT instate.</p>
<p>Are there any other schools where i could get some scholarships easily oos?</p>
<p>All salient points. I don’t know that I’m qualified to speak on the odds of financial aid at most places. I’m only familiar with a handful and I think you’ve already covered most of them (e.g. Illinois, Michigan, Texas A&M).</p>
<p>Per Purdue, we know a CO Engineering student that was (I think) offered scholarship. It may be worthwhile to do some checking on their website and the Purdue threads. Even if there is not a guaranteed (“slam dunk” ) scholarship based on stats, there may be possibility of awards. Good luck! </p>
<p>Just wanna chime-in, University of Alabama Huntsville offers a great financial aid package (even though you won’t necessarily “need” financial aid.) The school is home to one the largest research parks in aeronautical engineering. I have not heard of this school until my friend applied there with full ride (tuition, course fees, board room)+ extra spending money for NMF. I can’t say much more about it but I hope someone elaborates if they know alot about Huntsville </p>