I understand and appreciate your willingness to narrow down the possibilities of thousands or hundreds of schools down to a more manageable number of schools for your D to research.
Perhaps I overlooked it, but I didn’t understand from your posts that you were hoping to hear more about programs at the schools on your original list. Knowing that you’re interested to know more, however, might get posters to share any relevant information they have.
Could you indicate which schools would be better with respect to her sport? That way it can help posters provide more targeted feedback on a list of X number of schools rather than on 33 schools?
You’ve already given a good amount of information with respect to what an admissions officer might see with respect to her application. But what can you indicate about what her preferences are? I understand that she’s the type to bloom where she’s planted, but kids can still have preferences:
How does she feel about climate? Is she affected if she doesn’t get a certain amount of sun?
Does she have a preferred learning style? Does she prefer more theoretical conversations or hands-on learning? Would she do better in smaller classes, perhaps more discussion-based, or would she prefer the anonymity of a large lecture hall?
How does she feel about Greek (sorority/fraternity) life? (If you’re unfamiliar with university Greek life, here is an article on the pros/cons and here is one that talks more about the pragmatics of the process.) At some schools, Greek life is very important and at others, it’s nonexistent, or can easily be a take-it-or-leave-it situation. What would your D prefer?
How important is enthusiasm for intercollegiate sports and ra-ra school enthusiasm?
Does your daughter have feelings about how far away from home she would like to be (whether driving distance, flying time, etc)?
Are there area(s) of the country where she thinks she might like to end up after graduation? Oftentimes, there can be an advantage to attending a college in a particular region.
Although she has experience being one of the “top” people and being lower in the peckin order, where does she do best? Does she thrive equally, or is one better than the other? This is true both with respect to the activity/learning (whether her sport academics) but also with respect to her emotional and mental health.
Anything else you can share about your D that would help posters to understand what kind of environment would be her ideal can help posters in offering suggestions and information that might help whittle the list.
Beyond that, a student needs to decide if they even want to go to Caltech or MIT. Mine certainly didn’t, and he was very competitive for admission. He was the Rensselaer Medalist, and Medalists on either side of him went to MIT.
They are good schools, but not for everyone. They will not offer a well rounded, typical college experience. That’s ok for some, but not for all.
I graduated from MIT. While there I attended everything from MIT football games to MIT chamber music concerts. I was a member of the Greek system and spent virtually every weekend having a blast at MIT parties (both fraternity and dorm parties). These parties were open to all MIT students regardless of what, if any, dorm/frat/sorority you were a member of (most students were not in the Greek system yet were welcome at all their parties). The parties were always packed—MIT students work hard and play hard!
I took some of the most rigorous, enlightening, and interesting humanities classes (which were graduation requirements of all undergrads) from top professors in their fields, in addition to all of my STEM classes. I also had the opportunity to take some fun, exciting PE classes (hello, sailing on the Charles River!). I spent hours doing MIT-sponsored community service and volunteer work throughout the Cambridge and Boston area.
I was able to do all this, and forge lifelong friendships, while maintaining a full course load for my computer science bachelor’s degree. I would consider this a pretty “well-rounded college experience.”
Granted there are students at MIT who spend 24/7 tooling away in their dorms/library/labs but, hey, there are students like that at every college. The myth that places like MIT/Caltech do not offer all opportunities or produce well-rounded students is an unfortunate and erroneous stereotype.
I would not agree with this. Where yo ugo can matter, just not in the way that the rankings may lead you to believe.
You want a school that has a broad and deep curriculum, great facilities that can be used by undergrads, small class sizes if you can find them, and support for project based learning. Plus you want a school that meets your intangibles, outdoorsy, close to big city stuff, great study abroad, etc.
So, are there MANY schools where a student can walk out with solid ME skills? Yes. Will the experience and the skills they acquire be exactly the same? Absolutely not, and ranking has virtually nothing to do with that.
As for budget, my only advice is don’t apply to any schools that won’t meet the budgetary requirements even if the student gets hopeful aid. For example, with a budget of $50K, and EFC of $90K, there’s no reason to apply to Stanford, MIT, etc, because they don’t offer merit to close the gap. No school is worth heavy leverage.
My Dad went to MIT. We visited MIT. I’m not saying that students live a monastic academic life. It’s a VERY different experience than say Purdue though.
What an amazing experience! My daughter would probably enjoy the work hard play hard energy.
She has an interest in STEM but chose to veer from the standard Robotics/Math Team/Debate/etc. path because the year-and-a-half shut-down changed her options.
School was not there. So she went headlong into her sport, and despite some terrible odds had a modicum of success between June of last year to April of this year.
We just kept pivoting, deke-ing like a game of Frogger to keep both school and sport in play.
S19 had a similar college experience to mine (he just graduated from Caltech). He had a great time playing sports, partying with friends, and exploring the LA area while at Caltech. Like my experience at MIT, he took some amazing humanities classes that really challenged him and helped him grow and expand his knowledge in many different areas (as well as vastly improving his writing skills!).
Yes, we didn’t realize at the beginning of the college search that two schools can look similar in size, majors, etc., but be quite different in terms of:
How much credit is given for AP/dual enrollment classes?
Are you directly admitted to your major as a freshman or do you have to apply later? How easy is it to get into popular majors? What percent are admitted each year?
How easy is it to switch majors? Double major/minor?
How easy is it to join desired clubs? Is there an application process? What percentage are admitted?
How easy is it to get into required classes? Do Honors students have registration preference? What percentage of students complete their degree in 4 years?
These are all questions I wish we had explored more thoroughly earlier in the process instead of after applications were submitted. We probably would have crossed some schools off the list before going through the application process.
Your daughter sounds like she will do very well wherever she ends up. My kid (also grade-skipped, now starting sophomore year at Mudd) started off their college search with MechE +/- Data Science in mind too. It wasn’t until I was in your shoes that I found out here on CC that Mudd doesn’t have MechE, it only offers General Engineering and that you take courses to “concentrate” in an area of focus. That doesn’t seem to hurt Mudd’s reputation as an engineering school, but since I didn’t realize this distinction back then, I thought I’d point it out since I think all the other schools on your list do offer MechE degrees. FWIW it appears my kid has switched to CS as their intended major (an area in which they had never before expressed interest, so who knows if/when a student will change their mind once they’re in college).
Like other reachy schools, Mudd doesn’t accept AP/IB/DE courses for credit, and I expect almost all of the students attending Mudd have taken those courses and excelled at them. Mudd’s 1st year classes take that into consideration so I wouldn’t worry about backtracking on courses. My kid took IB Physics HL (i.e. two years of honors level Physics in high school, and got a 6 on the IB exam) and the core Physics class that the Mudd freshmen take was still super challenging for them. That said, I know Mudd does allow for testing out of some of the beginning core classes (Math, Physics) for students who have the requisite knowledge to do so, as well as having different flavors of Math, Physics, and CS to accommodate students’ pre-existing knowledge levels.
If you’re banking on the Presidential Scholarship to fund Mudd and that’s the reason for Mudd to stay on the list, I’m glad you realize the odds of that are darn low, and the best of luck to you. We are a full pay family and even so I think Mudd is the best fit school for my kid, especially after their first year experiences.
In looking at the schools that would be better for her sport, it appears as though her sport would be more easily practiced in areas that have greater population density (probably near bigger cities). Thus, I would guess that Missouri S&T, Rose Hulman, Purdue, UIUC, and UVA would not as easily mesh with training for her sport. Duke might be pretty unlikely, too.
In looking at the California schools you have listed, not all of them are ABET-accredited for mechanical engineering. For instance, Cal State San Marcos is not accredited for ME, but Cal State-Northridge (not on your list) is. As the UCs you listed all have an acceptance rate of below 20% for ME, perhaps adding UC-Riverside might make sense, as that one has a 56% acceptance rate according to @gumbymom’s data, though perhaps Long Beach & San Diego State have similar rates if those are preferred over UC-R. Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles is also ABET-accredited for ME and is medium-sized (about 7300 undergrads) compared to the other options under consideration in the area. If Stanford is in a good location, then has she considered Santa Clara (about 6100 undergrads) or San Francisco State or San Jose State?
For someone who really appreciates the hands-on nature of things, the Cal Poly options seem particularly well-suited to her interests. One school that has followed the Cal Poly model is U. of Louisville and its Speed School of Engineering gets good reviews. She’d get at least $16k in scholarship money, bringing tuition, room & board to around $25k, so less than the cost of a UC. And as a public school, it’s likely to be more amenable to your D’s transfer credits. (Mentioned, because although you have lots of schools on your list, if Missouri S&T or Rose Hulman don’t work out because of your D’s sport, and Pitt’s the only extremely likely admit, you might want to have another one on your list.)
True for SLO (I don’t know about Pomona) but not at Mudd where my kid is. In fact, this was one of the factors - not having capped majors - that tipped the final decision more strongly to Mudd than SLO for my kid. Probably the most important factor though was school culture/student body - Mudd’s aligns much more with my kid’s desired environment - and ease of travel since ONT has nonstop flights from our home airport.
I have a feeling, based on what OP is saying, the spouse will too. Plus, much of the credits will likely be taken and they’ll have grad school partly or fully paid for too assuming they win the diversity scholarship which they would.
Well, we probably would have kept one (maybe two) small liberal arts schools on the application list because she was considering continuing her sport at the D3 level, but she really preferred larger schools. When we learned how little credit she would get for her AP credits at the small liberal arts colleges, that was another strike against them. We probably would have knocked some off the list much earlier, and certainly before applying.
On the other side of the scale, she may not have applied to several large California schools as an out-of-state student had she realized how difficult it was to switch majors (like at Cal Poly) or to get into certain majors or classes (like at UCB, which also is not generous with AP credits). Of course, that analysis might have been different if we were paying resident tuition. She was turned off by the difficulty of finding affordable housing at UCB and UCSB, too.
That said, we are Washington residents and she was admitted to University of Washington, but did not attend there, either, because of similar issues: capacity-constrained majors, severe competition for certain majors and clubs, less flexibility to switch or mix and match majors and minors. I don’t know that she would have ever removed our in-state flagship from the list before applying, but she may have expanded her list with different large schools that were less capacity-constrained in place of some of the California ones.
EDITED TO ADD: Specifically, our focus moved to less-selective large R1 research universities and/or WUE schools in the West, like Oregon State, Washington State, Colorado State, UC Boulder, and University of Utah. Not sure if any of those would have your desired sports facilities nearby.
In fact, this was one of the factors - not having capped majors - that tipped the final decision more strongly to Mudd than SLO for my kid. Probably the most important factor though was school culture/student body - Mudd’s aligns much more with my kid’s desired environment - and ease of travel since ONT has nonstop flights from our home airport.