Can anyone share their experience with the Product Design and Innovation program?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
1

My D applied to this program for the fall of 2017. Technically, she applied for Design, Innovation and Society (DIS) and will apply for a double major in mechanical engineering at a later date (assuming she gets in to RPI).

I’ve read some old threads that shared some experiences but was hoping to get more recent views on the program. Some questions I have are:

  • What is your general opinion of the program?
  • The studios appear to be very project-based, which is what she wants. Is this correct?
  • Is there a good ratio of females to males in the program, or is it ~70:30 like the rest of RPI?
  • How is the workload if you choose to double major? I hear the studios are time consuming.

Thanks!

2

I am not personally a part of the program but my roommate has taken some courses in the sequence. I’ll answer these questions part by part.

  1. Opinion: He seemed to generally enjoy the program and found it helped him a lot in his major.
  2. Projects: The point of the program is that it is entirely project based. There have been very interesting startup companies and design projects that have come out of RPI's DIS program. I know several people that got internships or co-ops simply because of their experiences in DIS.
  3. Ratio: The ratio is actually 68-32 and has been slowly getting better. From what I'm aware, the major is slightly better than average but is still predominantly male (probably like 60-40). I know this can be a concern for many people but it's usually not as bad once you're a student as it actually seems. Many college campuses are predominantly female and there seems to be no reputation regarding that.
  4. Double major: Please note that double majoring is called 'dual' majoring at RPI. It's literally the same thing as at any other school except 'double' majoring literally means getting a second degree while dual is what it normally is. As far as the workload, it depends on the student and how hard they're willing to work. Personally, I couldn't do it since without free electives to take easy courses that I can do well in then my GPA would take a hit since it's very difficult to just take all engineering courses and not have any filler every once in a while.

The dual works out nicely though. For the course schedule see: http://catalog.rpi.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=4&poid=859&bc=1

Also for additional info on admissions that I found helpful when making my decision:

For info on the RPI Class of 2020: http://catalog.rpi.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=4&poid=859&bc=1

For my opinion on RPI in general, you can check out my post earlier in the thread: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/rensselaer-polytechnic-institute/1958991-a-freshmans-guide-to-rpi.html#latest

For more student opinions on RPI: https://colleges.niche.com/rensselaer-polytechnic-institute/reviews/

3

Thanks @joedoe - that was helpful.

On the dual major, we are a bit concerned about the fact that there is little flexibility in terms of electives and the workload looks rough. But the program looks like a great fit for my D. Something to think about.

4

My sons have a friend in the program or at least what he told us he is in sounds like this program. He told me that he is really enjoying it.

5

Thanks @techmom99!

I know it is a small program (about 30 students each class) so I guess there aren’t too many students or parents that have knowledge of the program. It looks like a great hands-on, project based approach that so many students love. I’m surprised their isn’t more interest. RPI also doesn’t market it too well - I stumbled on it by accident really.

6

@fatherofsam , My daughter applied to this program too. She’s interested in combining it with CogSci. (It’s apparently a known path to combine it with CompSci, and the CogSci requirements are quite similar to CompSci, just skewed a bit more toward cognition and human factors.)

This fall, we went to the departmental page and used the online inquiry form to request more information and, in particular, ask about the viability of DIS+CogSci and if others had done it. No response. I encouraged my D to escalate by emailing a specific advisor, but she decided to let it go and worry about it when/if she gets in. She would have to get admitted and get a decent merit aid offer for RPI to be in the final running - it’s a fantastic school, but the distance/location is a negative for us, and she’s not entirely convinced about such a tech-centric and male-dominated college. I’m glad you started this thread, though - will follow to see if more information emerges!

7

Hi @aquapt - glad to see another applicant post here.

My daughter reached out to admissions back in the early fall as well. They weren’t super responsive but we did learn that 1) there wasn’t really a cap on the number of students admitted to DIS and 2) that the studio class size is about 20 students.

RPI is in the running for my D - it’s in her top 4 schools. Merit aid is a must though, as we won’t qualify for need-based aid. We’ve been looking at schools that are a good fit + offer merit aid. This has been a challenge given she wants a program that has both design and technology… and would prefer that they are emphasized roughly equally rather than just a minor…

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Hi, @fatherofsam - thanks, that’s interesting about the class size and the lack of a cap.

My D hasn’t applied only to schools that offer that design+tech mix, but she definitely would prefer that kind of crossover. She was already accepted to the CompSci+Design combined major at Northeastern (with some merit aid, but not an “offer we can’t refuse” amount), and she likes NU and Boston a lot, so that kind of sets the bar for east coast schools for her. RPI’s program has some strengths that NU’s does not, but the school also has some drawbacks compared to NU, at least from my D’s perspective. We haven’t visited Troy yet, and RPI is definitely not the kind of school to commit to sight-unseen - we’ll have to see whether they make it worth planning a trip. (Not to sound like I think Rensselaer ought to fall all over themselves bribing my kid to attend! For all I know she might not even get in - I’m just describing where we’re at, decision-tree wise.)

Closer to home, she applied to the HCDE program at UW Seattle, and the CogSci major at UC San Diego, which has both Computational and Design tracks. She’s been accepted to CompSci at Cal Poly, and they have a “Liberal Arts & Engineering Studies” program within which she could theoretically include psych and design coursework in her program. UC Davis also has Design, CompSci and CogSci departments all with “Letters & Science,” but how well they would blend into a coherent program is in some question. She has also gotten into several Industrial Design and Environmental Design programs, but has since decided she wants more of a CompSci/CogSci/Design focus.

She still has 11 schools to hear back from (including RPI, UW, and five of the UC’s), so it’ll be an interesting couple of months, seeing what the final options are and making a decision! Does your D already have a “default plan” in place, or is it all up in the air until next month?

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Hi @aquapt - We sound like we are in similar boats, but your D is more interested in Design + CompSci or CogSci and mine has been leaning more toward Design + MechE. Frankly, we nudged her to look at blending in a more technical degree with design and she has embraced it. Of course, this has happened throughout the application process so we have had a bit of a moving target…

Our D has applied to 3 types of programs - industrial design (Cinci DAAP, Georgia Tech, CMU), engineering (Olin College, Case Western, Lafayette, Rice, WashU, Miami U in Ohio), and programs that offer a good balance of design + engineering (RPI, Lehigh). She considered Northeastern and a few other schools as well and should have applied… she just ran out of steam… We live in PA so most of the schools she applied to are on the east coast. She prefers a mid-sized school near a large city but not all of her schools match that.

So far, she has been accepted to Georgia Tech, DAAP and Miami U. At GT, she didn’t qualify for the big scholarships but she interviews for a smaller one tomorrow night. For DAAP, she got a little bit of merit aid but nothing to write home about. Miami U offered her a full scholarship + a small stipend. Of course, it is the worst fit of the schools she applied to as she would need to “weave” together their General Engineering (similar to Liberal Arts & Engineering) with some design classes, psych classes, etc.

We travel up to Needham this weekend for Olin’s “Candidate’s Weekend”. Olin offers a great program but the school is so small that I can’t imagine her getting much of a traditional college experience. She really likes Olin though.

Rice + WashU are reaches. She may be fortunate enough to get in to one of these but will likely get no aid which will remove them from contention.

So, we are still waiting to hear where she gets in and what merit aid she receives. Each time she gets an admission decision or aid decision we have another piece of the puzzle. I suspect she won’t make a decision until mid-April…

10

Yes, lots of overlap in our processes!

D also considered Lehigh and Olin. If Olin had been a small sub-program within a larger university, I think she would have applied; but the prospect of an entire college smaller than her senior class, and the lack of a pure-academic Plan B if she didn’t turn out to love a studio/project-based program as much as expected, was too big a leap. Lehigh teetered on the edge of the list but eventually fell off. CMU was once such a top choice that we did a two-day visit, but the visit re-calibrated her interest level, and eventually she didn’t even apply.

My older D is at Rice, graduating in May. D2 has visited her there, liked the school, almost applied. But most of the design-y stuff there is within MechE, which is more your D’s thing. The Design Kitchen is very cool. Merit aid is scarce for all but the kids they need to lure away from MIT/Stanford, but at least sticker price is $15k or so less than the most expensive private U’s. D2 might have gotten in with the sibling-preference bump, but not necessarily. Her stats are slightly lower than her sister’s were (owing to a severe allergy to even the most minimal standardized test prep). Her high-reach schools are Cornell and Stanford (the latter of which would require an Act of God, but Dad did grad school there and wanted her to try).

Yes, definitely a moving target. D was leaning more toward Enviro Design last summer, but time and AP CompSci have shifted her focus. And likewise on not making a decision until at least mid-April. If she’s lucky enough to get one of the rare direct-admit spots in the HCDE department at UW Seattle, that could easily vault the UDub to the head of the pack; but departmental decisions aren’t announced until 4/15. As of now, Northeastern is the offer closest to her heart, but Dad really doesn’t want her that far from home, and there’s not enough information on the table yet to project how that negotiation will go.

Good luck with the Olin weekend and the GT interview! Sounds like she’s already got some good options and will have more. If you get more “intel” on the PDI program, let us know! :slight_smile:

11

Interesting how much overlap my D had with yours.

Yeh, Olin is so small… my D’s class is 800 students. We will cross that bridge if she gets an offer. She considered Harvey Mudd out your way as well but there was little chance of merit aid and she really only wanted to go that far if it was Stanford.

Her “dream school” was Stanford. We told her she could apply, but wouldn’t likely want to pay (if she miraculously got in) if she had other good offers on the table. She decided against applying given the considerable writing supplement they required and the small chance of really attending. In addition to standardized tests, my D was also allergic to the darn essays… it was like pulling teeth as she “doesn’t like writing about herself”.

We visited Cornell - great campus and engineering program. But couldn’t find a good program that balanced her interests. Their design was enviro design and wasn’t sure how we could mix that with something more technical.

Rice seems like a great school. Thoughts on the school since your D1 is there? As you mentioned, it doesn’t have much design though. But, there are some good ME profs their that leverage user centered design, etc. WashU is a bit similar, but they have a design school and a “roll your own” engineering major and she could likely mix in design classes. But, without any aid, neither of these is likely on the table.

Your D has a bunch of good offers and prospects as well! UW and all of the UCs are great schools let alone Stanford and Cornell. Good luck with the rest of the application + decision process. Our D is the first one going through the process… we have 2 more to go… and we have learned how much stress this is for both our D and us!

12

Yes, that Enviro Design program at Cornell is what originally attracted my D. (Aside from the fact that it’s Cornell. And the gorge.) But the portfolio project, to apply, was a major undertaking that slowed the whole process enough to allow second thoughts. Her primary academic interests were clustered more in A&S than in Human Ecology, and the DEA minor seemed to be in better proportion to her interest level than trying to get into the major. The unanswered question is how accessible the DEA minor would really be, given the space limitations in studio classes. (Case in point, the design minor at CMU, which we learned is virtually fictional and many years doesn’t even accept applications.) But that question is sitting in the “worry about it if you actually get accepted” archive for the moment, since her realistic odds of getting in are somewhere south of a coin toss.

Rice is a great school, especially for STEM. D1 never intended to be a STEM major, although I think her interdisciplinary spread might have tilted more toward the sciences at another school - there were things she was deterred from doing because it didn’t seem worth risking her GPA in the steep curves and heavy workloads of Rice STEM. Nonetheless, she got some terrific research, internship, and mentoring opportunities in the social sciences. The residential college system is a huge plus. As you note, there’s a fair amount of “design thinking” built into the MechE program. I definitely wouldn’t look to the visual arts department to supplement or dovetail with that, though. Arts are very much in their own silo, and the one art class my D took was disappointing. On the one hand, it is easy to change majors and/or to take classes outside of your own major at Rice, and that is a huge plus that isn’t the case at many schools. On the other hand, that freedom of lateral mobility does not imply a particularly interdisciplinary mindset. Most programs are fairly self-contained.

The other aspect D1 is encountering now is that, upon graduation, it’s much easier to find a job in Texas, coming out of Rice, than elsewhere. And while it’s been a good and broadening experience, going to college in TX, it’s not really where she would prefer to put down roots. So, that’s an aspect to consider, although networking in other parts of the country may be more robust for STEM majors.

Hope that helps - feel free to PM me if you have more specific questions. It’ll be interesting to see where our kids end up!!

13

My D and I attended the admitted students day this past Saturday. She also worked with admissions to arrange for her to attend 2 classes the prior Friday. I want to provide a few bits of info for future students interested in PDI (also known as Design, Innovation and Society) since IMO this program is a hidden gem at RPI. I won’t repeat info found on the web site as you can read that separately.

She attended PDI Studio 2 which is the freshman studio in the Spring semester. This was a nearly 3 hour studio course that you can find out more about from the DIS website. She also attended a Science, Technology and Society class as well.

First of all, admissions was very helpful in allowing in arranging for her to attend the classes. She had done the research to find the classes, times, professors, etc. but they reached out to each of the professors and ensured that she could attend and that they were ready for her.

On Friday morning, we went to her class. As we were milling around outside the classroom making sure it was the correct room, the director of the program (Dr. Nieusma) saw us and asked if my D was planning to attend the class. He proceeded to give us a 10-15 min tour of the facility - the studio space, the 3-D printing lab, the wood shop and mentioned that they are creating a metal shop. These are simple prototyping spaces so the students don’t need to leave the building to work on their projects. More advanced capabilities can be found in other buildings at RPI. For example, he mentioned that the architecture building as the best wood shop. After I dropped my D off, he spent an additional 30 mins giving me more info on the program. He was very approachable, knowledgeable and passionate about the program.

I learned that they accept 30 students a year into the program. If their yield is high they may have a few more. They have about 120 students in the program in total. They have a significant amount of interest within RPI for internal transfers into the program and it is very competitive. Apparently, friends of students in the program find out about it and see what they are missing. Given the size of the program, many of the students said some of their closest friends are from PDI - it’s a community itself at RPI.

About 70% of the students in PDI dual major with mechanical engineering and 25% dual major with another engineering discipline, comp sci, communications or management. A few students don’t dual major but Dr. Nieusma discourages that as he has found that employers like the breadth of the program but also want depth in some area. The dual majors in engineering are fully ABET accredited.

The PDI studio class had all 30 students from the freshman class. This studio also had 2 professors teaching it - one with a humanities/social sciences background and the other with an engineering background. They had broken into about 6 groups of 5 and were working on a design project using some user-centered design approach. The class was about 60% female and 40% male and generally the classes are gender balanced.

After the studio class we talked with the engineering professor for another 30 mins. He spent a good deal of time explaining the program, what it is, what is is NOT, etc. For example, though there is a bit of industrial design in the program there is not much. It is more social science design based, and engineering design, etc.

My D attended the 2-hour STS class in the afternoon. In that class (about 20-25 students) 4 students gave presentations on a topic they researched and there was class discussion on each. After class, the professor walked my daughter to the coffee shop where I was and they were discussing the situation in Syria when they arrived. He chatted with us for a few minutes as well. My D loved this class as well.

Through our 2 days, we ran into several PDI students in class, at the admitted students session, at the Design For America booth in the activity fair, at lunch where current RPI students joined many of the tables. Without exception, they were extremely passionate about PDI and the professors. It is clear the students love this program.

I highly recommend that those who like project-based work, hands-on experimentation and innovation, etc. consider the program. Obviously my D hasn’t gone through it, but it looks fantastic.

One disclosure. My D just decided not to attend RPI but chose Georgia Tech instead. However, she really liked this program and I wanted to share what we know since there is not too much info online about it.

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Thanks @fatherofsam for the info. My son19 is going to be considering the dual major version of this. He loves designing things, and he wants to pursue ME. He loves hand on work and fooling around with 3d printers, wood shop, robotics, etc. He’s going to a summer camp there this summer, so hopefully he can learn more about the program when he is there.

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@RightCoaster - when your son applies, I recommend that he apply for the DIS program and then add the dual major with MechE. You must pick only one major when you apply. It is very difficult to add DIS as the dual major once you are admitted since there are only 30 slots.

My D was going to do the dual major with MechE as well and if he is a “maker” he will love that combo.

16

Thanks @fatherofsam, I did not know the program was so small and did not even think about how hard it is to get into. I toured RPI with my older son who was accepted recently, but for the Lally school. We did not spend a lot of time in the design area on the tour and I wasn’t really focused on it. My son19 will be there for a week this summer, so maybe he can meet some of the people from the DIS program and learn more.

I’ll have to read up more on the DIS program soon. Son19 already looked it over a while back and thought it looked cool.

What was the deciding factor for your D going to G tech over this program? Good luck to her!

17

@RightCoaster - there were several small things that had her leaning GT. The location (Atlanta vs Troy) and warmer weather, GT’s brand (she hadn’t heard of RPI until her college search), a marching band she could participate in, etc. The RPI program itself was a better fit but these other things added up.

And, this past Fri night before the RPI admitted students day event she heard that she was accepted into the GT honors program. This provided a smaller community she could bond with, some smaller classes, etc. I think her mind was made up at that point though she didn’t let on until after our visits.

18

@fatherofsam - I was on campus with my son for the accepted student day as well. The weather was cold, wet, and windy on Friday and Saturday but I heard it was gorgeous the next day and about 30 degrees warmer. I wonder how many prospective students decided to go elsewhere based on the weather they experienced.

In retrospect, I think it worked out for the better because had it been 75 and sunny, students who did not factor in the cold Troy weather would be in for a rude awakening come next Fall.