Please provide any thoughts comparing or experiences with these three schools, especially for Mech E.
They are all three very good schools. I would think that the intangibles like price and location would weigh heavily in the decision, and be more impactful than the differences in the engineering per se.
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Do you ski??
RHIT is the outlier here based on size and that it’s tiny and in the middle of nowhere - literally - not even in Terre Haute - a few miles away.
All are fine schools.
If it were me, and all was equal, I’m going to Mines - so I can ski/hike and Golden is super cool.
RHIT grads draw great salaries.
RPI - fine reputation but read a lot of not great stuff on this board - so I’d look deeper into it - but has a great rep.
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They’re all strong for MechE - no need to choose one over another on the basis of program strength. It’s all about what environment you’d prefer.
Teaching style differs. RHIT has a particularly collaborative and project-based approach. RPI has a somewhat unforgiving, “grind” reputation but is a great school if you love what you’re studying enough to buy into the grind ethic. Mines is somewhere in between, I think, and offers an interesting mix of nerdy and outdoorsy. All will be challenging.
All have a gender imbalance - Mines and RPI are both 69% male; RHIT is 76% male. I second tsbna’s assessment that, all other factors being equal, I’d lean toward Mines for the overall quality of life and surroundings… but everyone’s perspective on what promotes quality of life is different, and another person could be more drawn to one of the others and that opinion would be equally valid.
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My daughter lived in Brazil, IN for just a few months (her boyfriend is from the area and then covid hit…) and really didn’t like it at all. There were Rose-Hulman kids living in their apt building and she just thought the area was boring and there was nothing for the kids to do (daughter had nothing to do with the school, but she was about 22 years old at the time, so the same age as many college kids).
Golden CO is a great town. Lots of stuff going on at and near the school, easy access to the mountains for skiing, hiking, biking. Easy to get to downtown Denver for theater, sports, government. Other colleges in the area so you can participate in those sports and activities (CU, DU, Regis, Metro). Very close to Red Rocks for concerts.
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All three are very well-regarded engineering schools. You will likely get a great job with a degree from any of them.
RHIT and RPI were two of my daughter’s top choices for chemical engineering (she chose Illinois Institute of Technology over both for various reasons). Note that we researched and visited both but she is not attending either. A few things to consider (other than academic reputation):
RHIT is small (2,300 undergrads) and located outside of Terra Haute, IN. The campus and surrounding area is beautiful but kind of isolated. Plus, Terra Haute is not that big. The staff and faculty that she met were very welcoming and it did seem that the school does offer a lot of school-sponsored social activities. RHIT is on quarters so academics will move pretty fast. Also, note that RHIT does not have many dining options and all food comes from a single food service company, so you can expect decent but not great or memorable food. It does have two very nice, hands on Innovation Centers (BIC nd KIC) that I am note sure RPI can match.
RPI is a nice medium-sized school. D3 sports for all but hockey (D1). Definitely a more-traditional semester-based approach. The campus was nice and partially integrated in Troy so there are quite a few on-campus and off-campus places to eat (more of a “big campus” feel). The larger size just allows it to offer more on campus social opportunities to its students. The Arch/intern semester is a cool concept but appears to have some flaws in actual implementation.
My children all have friends attending CSM (all freshman) and it sounds like they really like it but I cannot add much more than that.
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RPI (5800 undergrads, 6800 total)
Colorado Mines (5500 undergrads, 6700 total)
Rose-Hulman (2100 undergrads)
Each of these schools has its own distinctive personality and opportunities. RHIT stands out immediately from the other two based on its size. As @aquapt has already said, it is known for its collaborative and project based approach to teaching and learning. It sits in the heart of the Midwest as others have described.
Colorado School of Mines sits on the edge of the greater Denver metro area with the Rocky Mountains as your backdrop. The Mechanical Engineering Dept. has a long list of specialty concentrations. Neither of the other two can match this.
RPI has a several distinct features which make it different. First is the Arch, a program which is going to put you on campus for the summer after sophomore year (instead of earning money at a summer job) but freeing you up for a semester to pursue a co-op or internship (paid?) or other away-from-campus experience. Second, RPI has a policy of continuing your undergraduate financial aid package if you continue at ROI for a 5th year of grad school. This is significant because it’s almost impossible to get financial aid for a master’s degree anywhere else. Third, RPI is less just an engineering school than the other two. It’s School of Management is excellent in its own right, but it also provides the opportunity to pursue a BS/MS combination with degrees in bith engineering & business. There are also non-engineering majors at the Schools of Architecture, Humanities & Social Science, and Science, providing a greater sense of academic diversity. It’s location provides access to New York’s capital district in one direction and the 6 million acre Adirondack Forest Preserve in the other direction with opportunities for hiking, camping, skiing, water sports, etc.
With 3 such different colleges, it’s not really which one is better but which one offers what you want. All other things being equal, @eyemgh said it best, “price and location would weigh heavily in the decision.”
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Our daughter, from Florida, toured, applied, and was accepted at RHIT and Mines in addition to several larger state schools. She did not consider any schools in the Northeast, so RPI was not on the radar. She chose Mines and is a there studying MechE. During a two day stay in Terre Haute and RHIT we were impressed by the everyone we met at RHIT but she would tell you she chose Mines over RHIT for a couple reasons. 1) She felt and still feels Mines is the right size school for her 2) Golden vs Terre Haute for the town (main street Golden is very cool), the weather (300 Sunny days a year) and the outdoor recreation (She has hikes, bikes, ski’s, along with Volleyball, Tennis and Lacrosse) 3) RHIT’s program was very hands-on, but so is Mines. 8 semesters of Lab based courses. Mines has a new program called the Engineering Design Society (3 brand new Maker Space buildings) which is very entrepreneurial based, and you can customize it around an engineering discipline like MechE. 4) Finally, Mines has around a 50% out of state student demographic and she has friends from California, Washington, Michigan, Montana, Texas, etc, etc. which she says has been a blast because they each bring a different perspective making her experience that much better.
In terms of costs, she received the max (non-full ride) scholarships from both RHIT and Mines which made Tuition a wash, but Housing in Golden is more expensive. Freshman Year housing was comparable, but you should figure around 5K more per year for the next three years. The good news is Mines gave her 34 hours of credits from High School of which 21 credits applied to the MechE degree, so she will have no problem getting done in 4 years taking no more than 15 hours per semester.
Lastly, as I indicated earlier, she had several large state school options (UF, Purdue, Clemson, etc.) and she has friends at all these schools. While she is confident she could have gone to any of them and found her place, she has compared her experience to her friends and she feels that has done more at Mines academically, athletically and socially than any of them by a factor of 3. Kiddingly, she was accepted at CU Boulder and that’s the only school she said could rival her experience at Mines but she admits CU Boulder is not for everyone and was not for her.
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