Got it. Well, I’ll stick by Cal Poly SLO as a recommendation. The size of the major is at least that, and their job placement program in general is highly regarded.
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Cal Poly SLO Materials Engineering based on 2022 projections shows around a 74% admit rate. SLO OOS cost of attendance estimates are around $47,631/year.
Cal Poly SLO is a wonderful school but not for everyone. It is on the Central Coast of California with a small town vibe. Alaska/United and American Airlines service the Regional airport.
If the school is within budget, SLO would be worth a visit.
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Cal Poly actually has a pretty large college of engineering with almost 6000 undergrads. A little over 200 are MATE. Our son chose it from OOS with stats to be competitive anywhere.
All that said, I don’t know much about the MATE program. The school is isolated, as @Gumbymom said. For some, that’s a huge plus. For others, a minus.
Haven’t read the whole thread but here are some good schools for MatSciEng off the top of my head: Northwestern, Penn State, Michigan, Cornell, Ohio State, Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, UC Santa Barbara. I think I saw Stanford, MIT, Berkeley and Mines upstream; they also have great departments. Georgia tech too. If I think of anything else I’ll add it.
Materials Science is usually a smaller department. Different schools have different strengths. I think Rutgers has a ceramics engineering major for example. Don’t discount metallurgy. I know it sounds old-fashioned but there’s a lot of great research and development happening in the field for alternative fuel/energy applications just as an example. On the other hand, a lot of researchers in materials science that work in the field of computer/chip engineering are physicists.
Looking at the course requirements for an undergraduate degree at each school and looking for departmental presentations (if available) will help your kid figure out a path. I remember Georgia Tech had great presentations from the Materials Department for potential freshman applicants.
Good luck!
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What is his class rank or decile? Trying to put the 3.7 into perspective.
He’s top 17% (ranked 69 out of 412). It’s a typical, highly competitive suburban upper middle class public high school. He had a tough time with grades in 10th grade when they did block scheduling, hybrid in person/remote scheduling. Other students did too, but if you look at his transcript he’s nearly a straight A student in 9th and 11th grades. More Bs in 10th grade (2020-21). He took both AP Physics 1 and AP Chemistry, plus AP Calc AB, in 11th grade (and AP English and APUSH). His only B last year was in AP Chem (he did get a 4 on the AP exam). It was a nice improvement from 10th grade.
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Thank for the suggestions.
I wonder how many schools consider the student’s particular area of interest (e.g. MSE). So many schools now just send students into a 1st year engineering curriculum and assume they don’t really know which direction they want to go, or want them to prove they can handle basic sciences and math. My kid is very certain he wants to study materials, which is unusual for a high school student. Of course that could be used to game admissions if it’s known to be a factor, but he can demonstrate his interest via the 3 materials summer camps he attended including in person at ASM headquarters this summer.
He doesn’t not want metallurgy, he just is open to everything materials at this point. We know Colorado School of Mines is pretty much a metallurgy school and the department head told him not to go there if he wants to study polymers. But it’s still on his list.
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Do others at a 17% rank get into engineering at TAUM from his school? I am not sure if I would call 7 points below the auto admit a safety. Also, as someone else said, Ohio State OOS engineering isn’t a safety.
Yes, they do. His school sends droves of kids to TAMU, many for engineering. And top 10% guarantees admission to TAMU but not TAMU engineering. I forget the exact stats but somewhere around half of engineering admits are holistic review, and he’s at one of the top traditional public high schools in the state. He does need to get his application submitted soon. But his 1520 SAT score and rigor (13 APs including physics 1, physics C:E&M, chem, calc AB and BC) and strong ECs/awards should make him competitive. It may be more accurate to call it a target/match than safety, which goes to my original question. But I’ll be very surprised if he’s not admitted directly to engineering in College Station, as long as he submits his application in the next couple of weeks (aiming for end of August). I may be eating my words later on but that’s how I feel now.
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It’s safe to say $45k/year is a minimum under current circumstances.
It varies from school to school. Purdue send all students through a first year program, but the barrier to first choice major isn’t that high. Wisconsin and TAMU do the same, but the barrier is very high. Cal Poly is completely opposite. Students compete only against those who declare the same first choice major on their application. Then they start in that major on day one. Moving to other majors can be challenging though. Schools are all over the map. You’d have to look up each school that he is thinking about applying to.
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Note that Texas A&M now does this. 3.75 college GPA automatically admits to the desired engineering major; those with lower college GPAs face a competitive admission process with essays. Materials engineering appears to be somewhat competitive (i.e. not one of the majors that admitted all interested students) but not a very competitive major (that admitted fewer than half of interested students) or highly competitive major (that a student below 3.75 college GPA has very little chance of getting into). Take a look at the ETAM threads in the Texas A&M forum section.
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Would you consider adding Pitt?
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Perhaps. I mentioned it to him the other day. At one point he said he wanted to go to college in the northeast so it would fit.
This is not my area of expertise, so I did a little bit of research. Below are a list of ABET-accredited schools with the number of majors it most recently graduated in materials engineering. The schools on your list are bolded.
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Alfred - 8
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Case Western – 10
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Clemson – 44
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Cornell – 28
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Drexel – 27
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Georgia Tech – 55
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Illinois Tech - 7
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Iowa State – 42
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Lehigh – 23
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Michigan State - 28
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Michigan Tech – 23
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New Mexico M&T – 5
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NC State – 31
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Northwestern – 17
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Ohio State – 73
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Purdue – 44
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RPI - 25
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Texas A&M – 30
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U. at Buffalo – 0
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U. of Alabama – Birmingham – 15
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U. of Connecticut – 38
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U. of Florida – 61
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U. of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign – 68
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U. of Kentucky – 27
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U. of Maryland – 34
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U. of Minnesota – 39
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U. of Nevado – Reno – 14
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U. of North Texas – 24
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U. of Pennsylvania – 13
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U. of Pittsburgh – 27
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U. of Tennessee – 21
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U. of Utah – 27
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U. of Wisconsin – 35
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Virginia Tech – 66
Colorado School of Mines, Penn State, and Carnegie Mellon don’t have materials engineering listed as one of their majors in College Navigator (produced by the feds), but they do have programs accredited by ABET for materials engineering.
If going to a school with a large number of majors, then Case Western initially seems like there might be better choices. If your son has researched the degree program and the opportunities available and thinks it’s a good match, that’s more important in my opinion than the number of majors. If he is particularly interested in big programs then I would definitely look deeper into Georgia Tech (reach), Iowa State (safety), U. of Florida (reach), UIUC (probably a reach), U. Conn (safety?), and U. of Minnesota or Wisconsin (targets).
If your son is looking for a bit smaller of an environment that’s in the northeast, then I think that Lehigh (high target) deserve a really good look. If the northeast is calling him, U. Conn, Cornell, and U. of Maryland might also be tempting.
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Cool school, but it’ll be expensive. A 3.7 isn’t high enough to command significant merit aid.
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Lehigh would be expensive- and is very metallurgy heavy!
Wish I knew how to quote prior posts. You mentioned the average UW GPA for Purdue engineering is 3.9. Do you have a source for this? I just rewatched a portion of their recent Purdue engineering admissions video and she said their average GPA for incoming engineering students is 3.8-3.9 but then she hedged saying some are weighted, some unweighted, so really they look at grades and rigor on the transcript. I have a hard time believing the average student at Purdue has a nearly perfect GPA, especially when their SAT target is >1300 (also from the video).
Highlight the portion of the previous post you want to quote, then press the quote button. (However, if you quote the entire previous post, the quote will be deleted after you post.)
If there are weighted GPAs in there, unless they are all weighted the same way which is disclosed, then the stated GPAs have little meaning. This is probably why so many people here and elsewhere lean on SAT/ACT, even though colleges commonly consider them less important than GPA.
I don’t. Grade inflation is rampant these days.
The 25th/75th for Cal Poly Engineering is 4.17/4.25. They weight, but it is minimal and caps at 4.25.
High average GPAs for popular engineering and CS programs is the norm.
EDIT: The 25the/75th for the 2021 Purdue admissions was 3.5/3.9.