Particularly academic support, especially for freshman…I’m talking U of M, UIUC, UW, Purdue, maybe Ohio State?
Just wondering how competitive things are, academic support, weeding out at lower level required courses, and anything else that stands out as a big difference that’s important.
Just want to make sure we have great fit at a university before commiting. UIUC is DS19 first choice, but the other schools are in the running (assuming acceptance which hasn’t come out for Purdue yet, and he is deferred at Michigan right now- so may or may not be an option)
My DD just finished her first semester of the first year engineering program at Purdue. Her intended major is chem e. She had a great first semester and loves the program.
Lots and lots of academic supports. All large lecture classes have small group recitations led by graduate students. She LOVED her TAs. TAs and profs have office hours, and host study sessions before exams. There are “help rooms” for each subject and tutoring is widely available. Most dorms offer on site tutoring. There are also many informal study groups.
Students obviously need to make the effort to get the help but it’s very, very available.
Courses were definitely challenging and she worked a ton outside of class, especially for engineering 161. There were definitely students who did self select out of engineering but not many. Most students seemed pleasantly surprised when final grades posted.
Note that Purdue does have a “competitive” transition to major process that requires a 3.2 in core courses to be guaranteed the major (necessary for CS, chem E and BME) but some majors just require a 2.0.
Feel free to private message me if you have any other Purdue specific questions.
Ty so much! I don’t want to make the assumption that DS19 will be admitted, I believe decisions for Purdue come out in Jan some time. Where else did yourDD consider/apply?
Obviously, if the student is admitted to UIUC, pay attention to whether the admission is to the desired major or to DGS. This affects whether the student is assured the desired major or has to chase grades/GPA to get in later.
So my son is a sophomore at Michigan in industrial engineering. We are from Illinois and applied and visited all the schools you are applying to except Ohio State. (err… There is this competition between them and Michigan if you did not hear… Lol).
We know people at all the schools also. Our impressions from visiting and comfirming with others is that Purdue and Illinois would be most competitive and will drop people from their programs… Weeding out if you will. All schools have these same classes but it seems the two wear it on their sleeves. At both we were told with pride that like 35-40 % will drop out of engineering due to hardness of the programs.
Our experience with Michigan is they want you to succeed and will help you in anyway possible. They have tutors sections for all class’s. Peer to peer tutoring if you prefer. TA /Professor help of course. Math and science tutors. Study groups, etc etc etc. The program is tough and they expect a grade drop from high school. They state like a full grade drop to a 3.3 pretty much all 4 years
At the open house they said a “B” at Michigan is like an “A” anywhere else…
As far as help in other ways… My son and another student started a tech club. The school was 100% behind them. They applied and got 2 grants (worth $15,000). The day the group was registered they had multiple alumni reach out to them. One was from Silicon Valley. They are putting on a conference this spring and they call and have meetings with professors that came to them to help and Alumni that they can just ask for advice. The Alumni thing is alive and well at Michigan…
As far as switching from one major to another at Michigan is really not a big deal. They want the kids to be successful and happy. At UIUC you might not be able to transfer majors. Students do change their minds and sometimes what they intended to go into is not what they thought it would be also.
As a note Physics and math are very tough at Michigan and I think Purdue also. But it’s supposed to be… They are going into engineering.
So my son was able to take the full 18 credits (they suggest 12-15), work a job, play flag football and start a club that takes a lot of their time since they schedule lectures /activities with companies every 2 weeks. So the work hard /play hard attitude.
My D is a senior at Purdue and her experience there has been amazing.
In the spirit of “compare and contrast” - the programs listed are all very good. I think W. Lafayette as a college town is nowhere as much fun as the other towns. But at Purdue the engineers rule the school - 1 out of 3 students is an engineer and the undergrads outnumber the grad students 10 to 3. That means there’s a lot of the opportunities and many of the cool jobs that would go to grad students at other schools go to undergrads at Purdue. That to me is where Purdue stands out - the research and work opportunities for undergraduates is outstanding. My D has gotten a great education plus a totally unexpected array of hands-on experience in research, fabrications, design and project management.
My D only has one friend who missed the cut-off GPA (for ME) and that happened because they had a lot of applicants for ME and they raised the bar for the GPA. That was really rough on him… but ultimately he didn’t transfer out because even in his second choice major he is going to get where he wants to go professionally.
Let me just clarify one thing here: none of these schools want their students to fail out. The high attrition rates in engineering programs have been an issue for a century, and it’s not (at least these days) because schools are trying to remove students from their programs. That said, different schools have different approaches to trying to solve that problem, and some do a better job talking about it.
@boneh3ad… Totally agree. There are lots of students that think engineering is what they want to do and then find out it’s not or they can’t get past the prerequisites for it. It’s no different then all the students that want to go into medicine then find out they are having a hard time with their course load or their interests are not there. It just seems engineering gets amplified for students not finishing for some reason. At our Illinois engineering campus visit 2 years ago, one of the engineering heads in his talk litterly did the “look to your right, look to your left, one of you won’t be here after the first year and the other one might not make it past second year” That’s a nice cozy feeling…
@adaorange. Please be aware that every student or professional that I talk to that went to the schools you mentioned and others tend to love their experience at their colleges for engineering. You don’t have any bad choices.
I’m really glad your son is having a great experience at Michigan. Do you know where to back up your numbers as far as drop out rate? The only thing I could find (UIUC) was freshman retention by college and it was around 92%, which was exactly what the UOfM freshman retention rate was for COE. http://www.dmi.illinois.edu/stuenr/PB/Retention_2017_cohort.xlsx
@adaorange congratulations… That is a feat in itself…
My friends son sent to Illinois for CS. His father after 2 years wanted him to switch out since he was struggling but doing coding research with sattilites on the side. His father told me he didn’t know if he would make it. Well he got a job with a small start up. He was the only CS person for a company of 3. 8 years later he has 10 CS engineers under him! I tend to hear this type of story all the time.
@adaorange… It was told to us 2 years ago by the associate head of engineering in his talk to the group that was there. The numbers stated were much higher then you stated. There was like a ten minutes question /answer just on this subject.
And oddly enough, he is deferred at U M. So maybe UM won’t even be an option. Who knows? I just want to cover my bases, since UM is in state for us and just about on par with UIUC for engineering.
Yes instate for Michigan is a great value for just about any field. Also. Don’t be to concerned with being deferred. It’s sorta a thing with Michigan,especially being instate. Lots of kids get accepted in the next phase. Good luck.
But at Purdue the engineers rule the school - 1 out of 3 students is an engineer and the undergrads outnumber the grad students 10 to 3. That means there’s a lot of the opportunities and many of the cool jobs that would go to grad students at other schools go to undergrads at Purdue. That to me is where Purdue stands out - the research and work opportunities for undergraduates is outstanding. My D has gotten a great education plus a totally unexpected array of hands-on experience in research, fabrications, design and project management.