Greetings,
I’ve been stuck with a difficult decision, and I’m not sure whether to attend the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities) or Purdue University (West Lafayette) for a degree in Chemical Engineering. Anyways, here are the facts:
-Both schools are roughly the same price
-I like both
Purdue:
Ranked about #10 in Chemical Engineering
Fixed tuition for 5 years
I got into the honors college here
Minnesota:
Ranked #4 in Chemical Engineering
Lots of opportunity for internships/jobs in the Twin Cities
If I could get some opinions that would be great.
They are pretty close academically. One major differences is that Purdue is 57% male, while UM-TC is 52% female.
Consider :
- Minneapolis / St. Paul is a much more urban environment than West Lafayette.
- Our son the ChemE interned at Minni for a summer - wife and me loved visiting. Shout-out to Dinky Town and Great Inter-City Trains!
- The Purdue mascot has eyes that look cold, staring and shark-like and ready to be hunted by Quint. Make sure you have a big boat…
- Goldy The Gopher looks cute, cuddly and ready to be hunted by Carl Spackler
Srsly - Looks like you can’t go wrong, and you will get a education at both. Good Luck!
For both, you are in a pre-engineering program and must apply to your major later, based on your college courses and grades.
Minnesota assures admission to major with a 3.2 GPA in prerequisites; for lower GPAs, it is competitive admission:
https://www.advising.cse.umn.edu/
https://www.advising.cse.umn.edu/cgi-bin/courses/noauth/apply-major-statistics
Purdue does not have any indication of how competitive each major is, so you may want to ask directly how difficult chemical engineering is to get into (past GPA thresholds):
https://engineering.purdue.edu/ENE/Academics/FirstYear/T2M