My D is interested in Chem E and also has an interest in possibly Biomed or Industrial / Systems engineering. She has been accepted to Utah (full tuition scholarship) as well as a number of other schools many with excellent scholarships. These include G. Tech, Minnesota, Duke, Wor Polytechnic, Northeastern, Rose Hulman, Wash U, Illinois Chicago, Illinois UC, U Washington, Mont State, Wash U, Clemson, U Mass, and Rutgers. She is pending some others like Penn, Michigan, Wisconsin, N. Dame, Northwestern, Drexel etc. She would like a school that does not have competitive majors such as Univ. Washington, has excellent professor - student interaction, and smart students. She needs to narrow down and visit 5 or 6 before end of April deciding period.
Should have ask, any thoughts from parents, students or alumni (ae) of these programs?
Your daughter has some great options. Other than competitiveness and faculty availability, does she have preferences on school size, location, extracurriculars, etc? I have two daughters - a senior ChemE at Rose and a freshman double degree (BME and music) at Michigan.
Rose is much smaller and pretty much all the ChemE faculty know my D by name. Since there are no TAs (students offer tutoring and can grade papers though) and an open-door policy, most faculty interact with the students a lot and are very accessible. The environment is collaborative although very challenging - my D is always studying with friends. Sophomores have a dedicated dorm with live-in student tutors as that year seems particularly challenging for many. As everyone is majoring in engineering or similar fields (incl. math, physics, etc.) and admission is tough, smart kids abound. Student body is only about 25% female. This D is quieter and hates crowds. She is thriving at Rose, but would hate Michigan.
While the younger D is only a freshman, with her I’ve observed that she has to work a little harder if she wants a professsor’s time - but she’s had conversations with many of them. Classes can be huge and GSIs (grad student instructors) teach many of the smaller discussion sections. There is lots of help available, but you may have to work a little harder to seek it out. Also, since freshman classes can be huge, my D has made more friends in music than engineering so far. That said, she does have several engineering friends that she studies with - and joining clubs like SWE can really help that. Not too surprisingly, D has mentioned that the male/female ratio in her engineering-related courses is much higher than in music. This D takes advantage of the concerts, sports and diversity at Michigan and loves it - she would feel stifled at Rose.
Hope this helps a little. Happy to try to answer any questions.
Thanks for the response. D did visit Rose and would potentially be a member of the golf team. She liked the students there although she felt it a bit small and not the usual college feel such as a Duke. She did enjoy speaking with the professors there. Sports are not primary concern - academics are. She wants to be around other smart kids which I feel would be the case in any engineering environment. She is not very concerned with location within the country although I believe that she would prefer a somewhat warmer climate without polar vortex etc. Some schools have competitive majors - that is you need to apply to the major after two years - which she with significant certainty does not want. Schools such as U. Washington and it seems Minnesota and WI have competitive majors. Also, she prefers smaller class sizes (one or two hundred maximum for intro courses) with interaction with professors who are relatively easy to understand. She is fine with a larger university setting, so long as the engineering department has smaller classes. For example, U. Illinois Chicago has a small engineering dept within the setting of a large university. She appreciates research opportunities as well as internship or summer work opportunities. She would also like to be able to finish her degree in the usual four years.
Northeastern has a very strong co-op program if that appeals to her. It could be a good choice, especially if she also received a good scholarship there. Not sure on class size. Boston of course has a polar vortex, but usually not as bad as this year.
So your D has applied to 20+ schools. For ChemE, UMN is probably the strongest among all schools on the list. However, it is not as strong in the other 2 engineering fields. ChemE would be very competitive there too. My D was also accepted by UMN last year with great scholarships and she is also interested in ChemE. (She is now freshmen in UMich and has declared ChemE major last month.) Your D should probably look for a school that has strength in all 3 area. More important, find a school she really like to go. The schools on your list have a very wide range in location, cost, size, and almost in every criteria. Just think about what are the most important factors and narrow down to a few. The problem is we don’t really know what you are looking for. For UMich, there are quite a few programs to encourage interactions among engineering students. My D is in the WISE (Women in Science & Engineering) residential program, joined the SWE (Society for Women in Engineering), and participate in the BlueLab. There are plenty more things the school offers beyond the classes. Also, which area of ChemE your D is interested in? ChemE is a very wide field. IOE too.
This list is MASSIVE with no unifying factors that I can discern. Why apply to schools that make you compete post-admission for spots if you know you won’t go anyway? I recommend avoiding those programs. There are just too many good ones that don’t come with the uncertainty. So, the first step is easy, scratch them all off.
Then if she wants smaller class sizes, eliminate the giant programs known to use graduates for much of the teaching.
Then use other non-academic criteria, recreation, entertainment, support for her hobbies, etc. Does she want a typical college experience? If so, Rose isn’t it. WPI is small too, but Does have a warm, happy, “normal” feel to it. It won’t have the sports like many of the rest though.
Don’t underestimate weather. “What the heck was I thinking choosing a college in [insert freezing northern state here],” is uttered more frequently than you’d imagine. If she doesn’t know cold, it can be brutal to the uninitiated.
Finally, money. Don’t underestimate the offer at Utah. That award is equivalent to $160,000 at any private on your list.
That should narrow the list down quite a bit. Good luck.
Thanks to all; The criteria that she used to apply were that the schools had to have good chemical engineering as well as biomedical engineering with potential for scholarship. She is potentially more interested within bimolecular areas and medical applications of chemical engineering. She thinks that she does not prefer the mechanical and electrical aspects of BME. U Washington would be in state but one has to apply to the major and be accepted after two years. This should not be an issue however why go to a program with additional hoops to jump through. We are going to narrow down to 5 and visit those. Have visited Rose, UIC, U W, Wash U. All of the responses have been very helpful!
@dukemd, in my mind there are two issues with programs like UDub. First, as certain as we all are, there is additional risk. If a student for whatever reason doesn’t get a seat in their desired program, their time up to that point is effectively wasted.
The bigger issue is that programs like that don’t start engineering in earnest for two years. They have high attrition rates due to the imbalance of rigor and stimulating learning environment. More and more engineering programs every day are going in the opposite direction.
My son did things quite opposite. He visited LOTS of schools his sophomore and junior years and then narrowed the list to schools he knew would fit his criteria well. He put very little emphasis on prestige as defined by US News, but rather on the quality of the undergraduate engineering experience along with some other non-academic desires.
He was a strong candidate and was accepted everywhere he applied except Stanford (another well qualified double legacy from his class got in) with good merit money. Interestingly two schools, frequently overlooked, that are also on your daughter’s list, made his final three, Utah and WPI. He ended up at Cal Poly (no Chem E).
Utah is a good, vastly underrated program. They are making strides in modernizing the engineering curricula and facilities. The dorms are amazing (they were build as Olympic housing). The campus and town are both quite nice. The outdoor activities are unparalleled. Unlike Washington and Oregon, they get LOTS of sun. It’s an easy fit if you’re LDS, but just as easy now days if you aren’t. SLC has become very diverse. They are rabid football and basketball fans, but maybe more interesting gymnastics is a huge draw. They pack the place every meet. It’s definately worth a visit. It was hard to turn away from free tuition.
WPI is very cool. It has a small, but extremely happy feeling to the place. The facilities are nice too. It’s close to Boston which makes travel to and from SeaTac easy. Three things are really unique about WPI. They are well known for their project based curriculum. Students have done real engineering by the time they graduate. They solar trashcans you might have seen in Portland were a WPI student’s undergraduate project. They also work on 7 week terms. Students only take 3 classes, two technical, one liberal arts. Lastly, their travel abroad is based on participating in real engineering progects world wide from Venice to Bangkok. Unlike many other primarily tech schools, they are working VERY hard to recruit females. She won’t be as much in the minority as she would be at Rose. It is also worth a visit.
Good luck to her!
- How affordable is each school, after applying scholarships and financial aid?
- Do any of the scholarships have a high renewal GPA (a 3.5 or higher renewal GPA is particularly risky)? If so, would the schools be affordable if the scholarship is lost?
- Do any of the schools have a high GPA requirement or competitive admission to enter or change to any of the desired majors?
Thanks to all again! More to the story! She is a 2014 grad who took a gap year to figure out what she wanted to do - and thank goodness because we all were thinking LAC’s! She decided on Chem E as a flexible major although likes the idea of industrial or BME as well - both probably better as grad programs. She is valedictorian, Nat AP Scholar with Distinction, Nat Merit Scholar. Have 4 kids all of which are college material and three are looking at engineering and not medicine. Net prices are approx for G Tech, Ill UC, Northeastern, Rose- 44k; Rutgers - 40k; WPI, U Colorado, and U Minn - 32k; UIChicago, U Dubb, Clemson, U Mass - 26k. The Utah scholarship is full tuition so long as 3.6 GPA maintained except full tuition OOS is 32k with WUE. WPI is the valedictorian scholarship of 25k per year without GPA requirements. I believe that U Minn, U Dubb, U Wisc, and UIUC are all competitive majors. We live in Southeastern WA and not Seattle and she has gone to school with many LDS students and respects their lifestyle - so Utah is fine and similar to here. She has visited Rose, Wash U, U Dubb, U Ill Chicago. Everyone here seems to confirm that it would be good to see WPI, Utah, G. Tech - I have liked the concept of WPI although she is somewhat intimidated by the project based learning concept - although an adult’s perspective - or retrospective view - is different. Perhaps one of the bigger ones as well such as Clemson or Colorado. She is a hard worker who prefers exercise / outdoors to parties / movies.
Arm chair psychologist mode…My guess is that she fears project based learning because she’s a perfectionists who is afraid of being dumped into a program where she’s are expected to be ultra creative and feels that from lack of experience in the field she won’t rise to the challenge. If that’s the case, or even close, WPI is not like that at all. They are very nurturing, both academically, and non-academically. If she hasn’t already recieved the letter, she’ll likely get one soon telling her about WPIs support for high achieving students who want to pursue things like Fullbright scholarships. In the end, it was a tough choice for my son to pass on WPI.
BTW, you might be able to parlay her WPI award into a matching amount at Rose. Good luck!
Are all of the prices affordable, including leaving enough money for the other three kids’ college costs and your retirement?
That scholarship with a GPA 3.6 requirement is very risky.
To eyemgh: You pretty much hit it on the WPI opinion! Thanks for your input. Based on your input, she is excited to visit WPI and will do so next week or so. Money is an issue with four kids especially given the unfortunate circumstances and uncertainty regarding health care these days - I could go on and on about this obviously… And then there is market volatility with regard to retirement plans etc. As a direct consumer who falls into the educational donut hole our goal is to be conservative given the current economic circumstances and seek the best educational value that provides the desired outcome professionally and personally while providing an excellent roi. D likes and excels at science and math and thus engineering and we are all on same page as far as roi goes as well as potential to branch out into a number of post-graduate programs including law, business, medicine, and other engineering fields. Very exciting. The 3.6 GPA is a bit daunting in that we would not want to needlessly pressure D or the rest of the family. This is certainly a topic for discussion with Utah.
What you need to do is calculate how much you can afford to contribute to your daughter’s education and still be able to contribute a comparable (inflation adjusted) amount for each of the other three (presumably younger) kids’ educations while having enough to comfortably fund your own retirement.
You and your daughter do not want to get into the situation of spending so much on her education that you have to tell the younger kids that their budget limitations are much lower, as the ensuing family drama can be very damaging.
Frank question here; if money is a concern why do you plan to visit 6 schools?
I realize that visiting all target colleges is ideal, but as a practical matter it is not feasible for many families. I know that many folks here on CC disagree with that…and certainly I have a bias because I arrived at my alma mater sight unseen, years ago when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. In fact every college I was admitted to would have been a ‘sight unseen situation.’ Of course Lake Jr. did multiple road trips to inspect campuses, but the schools were all within a day’s drive.
In terms of funding, there is a difference between 30 - 40/ year, which would be affordable, and high 60’s for tuition - and tuition does not necessarily correlate with the quality of education. The most important thing is good return on the tuition dollar. That is schools where there is readily available meaningful summer internships / jobs and placement into either job market or graduate school at or prior to graduation. Further, schools with relatively easy professor student interactions, smaller class sizes, and ease of changing majors within the engineering department is desirable.
Meaning that you can afford all of $160,000 for your daughter’s four years of college, $160,000 plus inflation for each of the other three kids, and whatever you want to save for your own retirement?
Well, in terms of cash flow, college tuition has the greatest rate of inflation of any service or commodity. Physician pay is actually being substantially deflated in contradistinction to the false beliefs of the public who correlate physician pay with the rate of overall healthcare inflation. Indeed, physician pay is a fraction of what it was a few years ago. The future is completely uncertain within medicine which leads to a great degree of caution with regard to college expenditures. In addition, there is great uncertainty regarding the markets with regard to the future return on retirement funds. We view college expense as tuition only - room and board would exist either way. That said, it makes sense to invest 120k over 4 years for a college tuition that will produce a job with substantial income. From a practical standpoint, one should not pay extra for non-academic experiences or anything that doesn’t lead to making a student a productive, honorable member of professional society. It is difficult to avoid the siren’s song of the Ivy’s - however - most professionals in society are successful upon graduating from non-Ivy or near-Ivy institutions. Fortunately, I believe that all of my children have this belief. Two want to be engineers - or move on from an engineering background - and from my experience these individuals generally low key practical hard working folks.