<p>I am trying to decide between the two universities, and I am having a very difficult time doing so. I am a transfer student entering my sophmore year, and I plan on entering into Greek life, playing club sports, and majoring in economics and minoring in political science. School pride is extremely important to me, and the community and feeling of the place is as well.
It's probably important to note that I am from massachusetts as clemson is a southern school.</p>
<p>I hope one of you can help!</p>
<p>As for school spirit, I think they are about the same. Clemson will be bigger for football and Maryland will be bigger in terms of basketball.</p>
<p>I am from Massachusetts too and will be attending Clemson next fall so you won’t be the only one from MA :)</p>
<p>anyways I think you should go to Clemson, it’s a smaller school, greater sense of community (many people give back to the local community through community service), I think Clemson has great school spirit and the basketball team is projected to be really good this year. Clemson has one of the biggest club/intramural sports programs in the country and Greek Life is popular. Also, Clemson has a great economics/business program.</p>
<p>every day i’m leaning more and more twoards clemson. Are you going to be doing greek life there?</p>
<p>I don’t know if I will participate in Greek Life, I might not do it first year because I feel like it might close you off to a limited amount of people. However, I will go to rush and see before I decide</p>
<p>Any comparisons between the two for academics? These two are on our list of possibles right now. Looking at engineering major, biomedical or computer eng or computer science.</p>
<p>How are the internships/coop opportunities at these two schools?</p>
<p>What about the availability for housing for an out of state student?</p>
<p>Which is the more diverse campus, with more OOS students?</p>
<p>Which gives the most freedom on course selection when fulfilling core graduation requirements?</p>
<p>I can’t really comment on internships/co-op opportunities since I’m a freshman. To be honest Maryland by far (it’s not really close) has the better reputation for engineering. I think it’s in the top 15 or schools in US News engineering rankings.</p>
<p>Maryland is by far the most diverse campus. I will say that as a minority, it can get uncomfortable at Clemson. It is by far the most “whitest” school (not trying to be racist) I have ever seen. I think the latest numbers have clemson as 90% caucasian which is very surprising for a state where 27% of the people are african-american. At the Maryland about 35-40% of students are of a non-caucasian race. Clemson has more out-of-state students since it is trying to boost it’s national reputation.</p>
<p>You have to live on campus at Clemson freshman year and there are apartment options available for upperclassmen. I am not very familiar with housing at Maryland but I have friends from high school who are going there next year so I could ask them. I’m also not very familiar with course selection and requirements at Maryland. For engineering students at Clemson, core graduation requirements are simply to take 5 social studies/humanities classes (the requirements are outlined here: [Clemson</a> University : College of Engineering & Science : Humanities and Social Sciences for Engineering Curricula](<a href=“http://www.clemson.edu/ces/students/humanities_policy.html]Clemson”>http://www.clemson.edu/ces/students/humanities_policy.html))
you have to take one literature class, one non-literature humanities class, 2 social sciences class (history, economics…), and 1 other one of your choice. There’s a fair amount of choices for the core graduation requirements. The only one where you don’t have a choice is ENGL 103 but then again every freshmen college student has to take introductory english.</p>
<p>Overall, I think Maryland is by far a much better school reputation wise for engineering. However, if you do not care that much for reputation, Clemson has a very underrated engineering program that many people do not know about. Engineering courses are basically the same at all schools and as long as you get involved and participate in research, getting a job, internship or going to grad school is definitely an option. Also, if you are looking for a slightly smaller school than Maryland (Clemson is half the size) and are looking for a school not in the city, with a lot of school spirit and a school in the south with warm weather, Clemson is the place to be. My parents really wanted me to go to Purdue or Virginia Tech (they still want me to because of the reputation) but I want to be at Clemson because of the reasons above and because the fact that I believe that I can get a great engineering education anywhere I go.</p>