<p>Not being an engineer at all (I'm a mom), I wonder if I could get some ideas of what my son (a high school junior) should notice during the few college tours that we will be taking, starting in 2 weeks.</p>
<p>He wants to be a computer engineer or electrical engineer. He wants to work with computers. I know he has little idea exactly what he wants to do with computers. He loves playing Halo-3.</p>
<p>He's going to limit his applications to the large flagship universities in both my state and his dad's state. This is for financial reasons.</p>
<p>What exactly should he look for during these college visits? I'm hoping to motivate him to try hard for admission to my state's university, since it's highly ranked for engineering, although he's a borderline applicant at present. He may not get admitted, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.</p>
<p>Any suggestions?</p>
<p>You’re not going to be able to get a good sense of the quality of the teaching or the profoundness of the research or whatever from a tour. Go check out the atmosphere, see where the freshmen live, look at the library, the computer lab, the social areas, etc. Honestly I don’t put much stock in campus visits, but if your son reacts strongly to the campus (either positively or negatively) then it as probably worth it.</p>
<p>First, I’m a physics major, so some of this stuff may me immediately obvious to any engr major, but not in my case…</p>
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<li><p>if your son doesn’t want to go into research (get a job right after), see if computers are heavily used in the curriculum. Everything is done in computers (straight programming in C++, matlab, etc). In my physics degree, almost everything is done analytically/by hand. This may not be an issue for engrs like it is in physics. </p></li>
<li><p>see what kind of electives the school offers, esp the smaller ones. Small electives tend to lose money for the department. if the department still offers “advance signal processing” or something and only 15 (out of 300) ee majors take it, it means the department has enough money to offer it.</p></li>
<li><p>sit in a class and see how often the kids raise their hands and interact with the professors. if everyone just kind of stares at the professor in awkward silence…</p></li>
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<p>As was mentioned, there’s not much to do other than to see what sorts of things students are doing on campus to see if it fits with your son’s personality. Virginia Tech and Alabama are very different places, so just seeing if he likes the feel of the campus is important.</p>
<p>I would go through the ECE departments at both schools to see what the facilities are like. Are there many research labs? Are there students studying? Does it seem like a nice place? </p>
<p>More than anything, you just walk through campuses and get a “feel” for them. It’s a very intangible thing.</p>
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<p>I wouldn’t use that as an indicator. Every school has good professors and bad professors. I wouldn’t generalize one lecturer to the entire academic faculty.</p>
<p>He should just get a feel for the campus and surrounding area. Make sure he chooses a school that he can see himself at. When I was choosing between 2 schools, I chose the one I felt more comfortable at, rather than just going with the higher ranked school. I have a lot of friends that don’t enjoy their college lifestyle because they didn’t choose a school that fit their lifestyle or personality. So that’s what I would go with.</p>