just received word that I was cleared from waitlist for Purdue engineering with an award of $12000. I was all set to go to Miami with the merit I received of $39000. Is Purdue worth $8 more per year? I would also incur travel expenses since I live in Florida. I didn’t expect this so my head is spinning right now.
how long have they given you to decide?
U Miami, or Miami OH?
Since you live in Florida, I assume UMiami: if that’s the case, 1° UMiami is a better university academically and 2°according to the numbers you indicated, Miami’s cheaper. In my opinion, it’s a no-brainer.
The only point for Purdue would be if you love snow and/or want to discover another state AND the $8,000 would come from a college fund, not debt.
Purdue has a much stronger engineering program. University of Miami’s engineering does not even come close. Overall university rankings are close…Miami about #47 and I think Purdue’s in the #60’s–they are not that far off. What type of engineering? Good question above, is the $8,000 a loan or provided by parents or college fund.
Private universities, especially lower down, have an easier time gaming rankings than state schools that see as part of their mission providing opportunities to many different subgroups in their state, @MYOS1634. In any case, at that level, deciding based off of rankings is silly. And in terms of academics, I’m quite certain that PU’s engineering faculty is far more accomplished than UMiami’s engineering faculty. PU’s engineering students are likely higher quality as well.
However, a big state school will be sink-or-swim. A mid-sized private like UMiami may have other advantages.
Especially a school like Purdue, where first year engineering students need to get a high enough college GPA to get assured admission into their desired major. See https://engineering.purdue.edu/ENE/Academics/FirstYear/T2M .
At Miami, would you be in your major from the start, or is entering any of your majors of interest non-competitive (i.e. you just need to be in good academic standing)?
Taking all the above into consideration. I am able to think more clearly now since the notification.
If you’ve read my posts, you know I’m not addicted to rankings, but overall academic quality at UMiami and Purdue is different - they’re not in the same category. Engineering may not be different, or even give an edge to Purdue, but overal quality is greater at UMiami.
Part of my comment is also due to the fact that in some communities, Purdue is considered roughly as equivalent to Cornell, which it isn’t.
It’s a good engineering school with a wide range of abilities and lots of weed out classes.
However, this isn’t just about academics, which for engineering are strong at Purdue. The question is, “is Purdue worth 32,000 more than UMiami”*? Georgia Tech or HarveyMudd would be worth 8,000X4 more than UMiami in my opinion, but not Purdue. The peer quality and resources are greater at UMiami, as is the geographical diversity, even if Purdue is better-known for engineering and does have an edge on economic diversity.
UMiami is in the same big group as BU, URochester, Penn State, UWisconsin, UWashington.
Purdue is in the same grouping as WPI, TAMU, UMN, V-Tech. Not bad at all, but not the same category as the above.
OP could email Admissions and the Career center at each university and ask about internship placement, co-op opportunities, and what percentage recent graduates have firm plans for the Fall.
Ultimately, OP may well choose based on none of the factors discussed here, but rather based on his wish to be with mostly engineering majors or not, public or private, snow or not, out of state or not, (plus cost!) … and hopefully will let us know. 
@MYOS1634, how are you coming up with your groupings or “academic quality . . . is not in the same category”?
BTW, I don’t consider UMiami to be in the same category as Rochester or UW-Madison. Look at alumni achievements and faculty and it really isn’t.
Roughly: Top 10, Top 25, Top 50, Top 100.
I agree it’s subjective and you could use other cut-offs (top 10, top 30, top 60, Top 100 are also used, for example, or Top 25, 40, 75, 100.)
Things I tend to look at for comparison are the top 25% cut offs and the percentage of students who reach 700 as well as ACT scores (especially in states where it is more commonly taken), how many were in the top 10% of their HS class, how residential the college is, graduation rate, and a couple more. I use URochester for comparison with a private university and included UWisconsin for a strong midwestern public.
75% cut off, Math: UR: 750 - UM: 720 - UW: 750 - PU: 690
75% cut off, CR: UR: 700 - UM: 700- UW: 660 - PU: 630
scoring 700+, Math: UR ? - UM: 38% - UW: 45% - PU: 24%
scoring 700+, CR: UR? - UM: 26% - UW: 14% - PU: 8%
75% cutoff ACT composite: UR: 32 - UM: 32 - UW: 30 - PU: 30
Top 10% HS class: UR: 75% - UM: 72% - UW: 56% - PU: 47%
% living on campus their first year: UR: 99% - UM:87% - UW: 92% - PU: 36%
% in grad school immediately after graduation: UR: 31% -UM: 33% - UW: ? - PU: 21%
Graduation rate: UR: 77% - UM: 71% - UW: 57% - PU: 38%
I’m sure a comparison of outcomes (I assume: % employed, % in grad/professional school, mid-career salary?) would yield different results.
The potential features Purdue may provide you would be: the presumption among future engineering employers and colleagues that you were well trained in a highly regarded, rigorous program; and exposure to more national recruiting, certainly more midwest recruiting, and probably less southeast-specific recruiting
Lots of engineering employment is regional.
Firms that are big enough, or “elite” enough, recruit nationally at selected “top” schools across the country. But most of these firms will still recruit regionally around where their plants./ offices are located.
Purdue is certainly a “top” engineering school. https://engineering.purdue.edu/Engr/AboutUs/FactsFigures/Rankings
I dont know to what extent it is recruited out of region though. It’s got a great national reputation academically, but it is not the top school in its own region. I worked at a large engineering firm in its region, and even there the University of Illinois was far more heavily represented, and recruited. I’m not claiming here that it isn’t heavily recruited out of region, I’m just really not familiar. You might investigate further, Maybe on the engineering major sub-forum.Or ask Purdue’s engineering career center.
For schools like this, the stats of entering freshmen such as considered by US News are less relevant, because lots of students get weeded out.What engineering employers are looking at, and comparing, is the quality of the seniors who make it through at the various schools, not the freshman classes that start out. And they don’t care about the quality of the liberal arts and other majors that may also be sharing the various campuses. They are not hiring those people. They prefer people who have been well trained, in rigorous engineering programs. A Purdue degree will be instantly recognized within the profession.
But lets’ say you want to work in the southeast. You go to Purdue, get recruited by a national firm that has offices near Miami. You show up for work the first day, and you will find ten co-wokers from U Miami! Because the firm also recruits regionally.
(This is just a hypothetical, I know nothing about U Miami’s engineering school. Except it is not U Florida or Georgia Tech). So you could have gotten the same exact job by doing well at Miami. After your initial job, it’s all about your job performance, what you’ve done and what you know, not where you went to school.
Speaking of U Florida, would it be an option for you to transfer there? I imagine that experience would be more like Purdue’s, but you wouldn’t have to go so far to get it.
I believe it is considered to be a regionally strong engineering school of some size, and as such might have reasonably broad recruiting
.
@MYOS1634, so you’re really referring solely to the quality of the student body and where they live, not the quality of instruction, academic opportunities, or academic reputation, which is what most people refer to when they talk about academic quality. And even then, you’re looking at the student body as a whole, not the students in engineering (which is what would matter most to an engineering student).
Mind you, I’d take the cheaper option, but to say that PU is far worse academically than UMiami in engineering because PU’s non-engineering students don’t have the stats of UMiami’s non-engineering students or because PU doesn’t have much campus housing is just plain silly. (BTW, if you use that second criteria, almost all unis in Europe wouldn’t be top-rate according to you because most students live off-campus/at home).
Let’s agree to disagree.
But yes to me peer quality matters, as does residential life. Other criteria that matter to me include class size and attrition, which relate to learning experience.
I didn’t say Purdue was far worse but in another grouping.
I agree op needs to ask the career center, think about where he wants to live and work, etc etc.
Re: recruiting, #21 and #51 from this thread may be of interest; reflective of practices of two big employers of engineers:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/569439-which-college-has-the-best-connection-with-nasa-lockheed-boeing-p2.html
They both recruit at Purdue.
And they both recruit in Florida. At seemingly everyplace else where there may be students holding a calculator EXCEPT U Miami.
Re # 7:“Part of my comment is also due to the fact that in some communities, Purdue is considered roughly as equivalent to Cornell, which it isn’t.”
in 2006, CC poster rogracer, a recruiter for a major aerospace firm, posted the following:
“We have internal company metrics correlating on-the-job performance with a number of factors, including undergraduate institution for 10s of thousands of employees. Purdue engineering is not inferior to Cornell’s. In fact, it may score slightly better IIRC. In either case, both schools make our preferred institution list, so it will come down to the individual and not the school.”
So it would seem that, while they may not be equivalent by someone else’s reckoning, they seem to be by evaluation of that one large employer.of engineers.
Regarding SATs, etc he posted
" Identifying engineering talent based on average SAT scores of the freshman class is like trying to find the world’s best tennis players by analyzing their tennis rackets. "
The difference is, large employers like his don’t need to look all the way back at SATs taken in high school. They have huge databases of performance of the graduates of each college that they were able to hire at their actual firm that they can look at and evaluate.
So, Monydad, would you say that for this student, Purdue is worth the $32,000 extra?
The general consensus tends to be that engineering is a remarkably democratic field, where the best rise regardless of where they went to school, and that engineers are paid the same regardless of name on their degree. I agree some distinction can be made between, say, MIT, and Georgia Southern, both in terms of education and recruiting.
Does OP want to work in aerospace engineering?
It seems we’re in reverse agreement, we both think they’re not in the same “grouping”, but you think that Purdue is better.
For what it’s worth, I don’t look at SAT scores, class size, etc, for employers, but for the student experience. Being in a small class with driven students can be meaningful, or not, but it’s a factor for the quality of the student experience. OP may well PREFER being surrounded by mostly STEM students rather than have a variety of majors in his classes, to be surrounded by more economic diversity than what UMiami offers, loves snow, can’t wait to get out of Florida, and doesn’t care one bit about discussion-based classes where many students haven’t done the reading (especially if he intends to be one of them ;).) We don’t know since OP hasn’t been back…
No to aerospace engineering. I am visiting Purdue this weekend so I can make a better informed decision.
The recruiting list referenced above was interesting but clearly outdated.
@MYOS1634, first off, an engineering major won’t even have that much opportunity to take many small discussion-driven classes. Secondly, I’m not even sure that UMiami would offer an engineering major more opportunities to take small discussion-driven classes with engaged smart classmates than PU. You seem to have confused UMiami with a school like Swarthmore for some reason.
To me, the relevant factors to consider are these:
PU would likely offer a top engineering student more engineering opportunities.
PU would have more research by more renown-faculty going on.
PU would be more sink-or-swim with large classes.
UMiami would have more rich kids, who, despite all advantages, could not get in to a better school.
UMiami would likely offer more services.
Cost.
Maybe consider the cold vs. global warming as well.
Like I said, I probably would pick the cheaper school (though global warming gives me pause), but those are the factors I would consider.
As I said it may not matter to op but to some it matters, which could include op. I certainly don’t confuse um with Swarthmore. I really don’t care about UM all that much because it is too homogeneous socioeconomically to my taste and you clearly don’t like it much at all. Just trying to think of what’s best for op within the parameters given, which are few. I really believe that it is an overall better school in terms of student experience but a case can be made that strictly for professional advancement Purdue is better and is worth$8,000 extra. Let’s not fight on this, especially since op is Mia
OP isn’t missing. He posted again in #16.