<p>It’s not as hard as at Columbia. I know two students from my daughter’s high school who have successfully transferred from Cornell Engineering to Cornell Arts and Sciences – one as a film major, the other as a music major. One of them had a GPA so low that he would have been a poor candidate for transfer to another university.</p>
<p>To the OP: If your daughter is considering Engineering versus other mathy/sciencey programs, I think she is probably better off starting in Engineering. Yes, as Oldfort correctly points out, some universities put obstacles in the way of students who want to transfer out of Engineering, but transferring into Engineering is even worse. Engineering is a highly structured curriculum, with very rigid requirements. This means that students who transfer in often find it impossible to complete their degrees in eight semesters. Paying for extra semesters is expensive! On the other hand, students who transfer out of Engineering and into a liberal arts major (even a relatively structured one such as chemistry or physics) can usually graduate on time, although they may find that they have very few free electives.</p>
<p>It’s entirely ignorant and sheltered, is what it is. It’s a very large bubble. When she gets pistol whipped or something in Rochester, dont act surprised…</p>
<p>My daughter is an engineering student at Pitt and loves it. She’s starting her third year. The school is big in numbers but it doesn’t feel like that when you’re on campus. When you’re in engineering you tend to run across alot of the same people in class so you don’t have that “lost in the crowd” feeling. However, there’s always new people to meet!! I have been very impressed with the faculty advisors she has - I even know their names!!! There seems to be a fairly widespread merit aid program, she knows many people who are on full tuition scholarship or $10000/yr scholarship. There’s alot of opportunities - DD has been to China, is double majoring (with her scholarship extended two semesters to let her do that) and is starting a CO-Op with a major company tomorrow. She’s also been to the symphony and Les Miserable recently. As a senior in HS she applied early and we knew in December that she had been accepted and about her scholarship… didn’t visit until March, it relieved alot of stress knowing that she had at least one good option in her pocket. If you have any other questions please feel free to ask.</p>
<p>thumper1,
Be very very proud of your D. My D is zoology major (close to Biology), she would not attempt double major, let alone engineering, her major is tough enough. More so, none of engineers at her school would take first Biology class famous at Honors dorm as weed out killer. I have no idea how your D. is doing Engineering and Bio double major and having 3.2. Very impressive!</p>
<p>Makes sense to me. When I was applying, I threw out all the mail that I received from women’s colleges, unread. I wanted an environment with all genders, an environment where I could be friends with all genders. Perhaps the OP’s daughter is the same.</p>
<p>I strongly disagree with the suggestions of WPI, RPI, and other tech schools. The OPs daughter specifically does NOT want a tech school.</p>
<p>Other possibilities:</p>
<p>Johns Hopkins (a reach, but you never know)
Villanova
Temple (maybe too big, though)
Loyola College (depending on what field(s) of engineering she might consider)</p>
<p>A quick look at the brochures for the Smith (and some of the other women’s colleges) will show you how many opportunities there are with men.</p>
<p>Dadof2, my D starts Smith in a week (!) so I’m not the best qualified to answer all your questions, but the Smith board here has a very active and helpful group of parents and students. I can say that it meets several of your criteria: great engineering program with a brand new state of the art facility, not too techy, small size.</p>
<p>HiIm back after driving DS back to school this weekend.</p>
<p>Thanks again to everybody for the suggestions and comments. I’ll bring up a few of these schools to DD for a look. Just a few responses to some of the replies.</p>
<p>Smith intrigued me as a possibly more supportive environment for women in engineering, but I tried several times to get her to look into it with no luck. Maybe Ill try again .</p>
<p>She has spent a week in the VT dorms for a couple of summers just spent a week at UMCP this summer in a women-in-engineering program. These experiences reinforced her desire for a smaller school. She may end up applying to Maryland anyway (just because it is such a good option other than the size). Delaware is a leading contender on her list despite its 16K size, but felt much smaller than Maryland and VT. </p>
<p>I dont think she wants to apply to what would be long-shot reaches for her based on her stats (JHU, Tufts, Rice, CMU, Cornell). She doesnt want to deal with the likely rejections, but more importantly doesnt want to be the dumbest student there. (I know, I know .) That makes me wonder how insecure she would feel at some of the more selective schools that are on her list (URoch, Bucknell, ). She may be drawn to a school where her SATs put her toward the top of the population. Truthfully, based on her past study habits and reluctance to work on her essays, Im not sure how hard she wants to work. She’ll have to ratchet it up wherever she goes.</p>
<p>I think that kids (and probably parents) consider and reject schools based on criteria that arent all that important. My philosophy is that as long as they end up with a few good choices, it doesnt really matter what criteria they use. I was talking with DW on the 300+ mile drive back from Case this weekend, and she thinks distance will trump all, and that DD will end up less than a half-day but more than a half-hour from home based on her personality. Not too close (Loyola, UMBC), not too far (Case, Rochester). That may be Mom’s desire, rather than DD’s, though. Try as we might to the contrary, I think we parents treat our girls differently than our boys.</p>
<p>Thanks again for the feedback and best wishes to all.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, future college experience is somewhat unpredictable no matter how much time / effort you put into research. Until they actually attend, they will not know. Some will get lucky, some not. I would choose couple most important criteria and the rest is basically waste to think about. That is how we have approach this, D ended up at #2 of her list and in her 3rd year still being very satisfied, saying that she believes that it has worke out better for her than her #1 would have. Case was her #1. She still will apply there for Grad. School. Her college does not have a Medical School, so she cannot stay there.</p>
<p>While I, like susgeek, am a “cheerleader” for Stevens (my D is a biomed major there) the campus atmosphere is VERY different than Bucknell - on OP D’s list. </p>
<p>We visited Bucknell and my D couldn’t wait to leave. She said it felt like a religious cult. They kept pushing diversity, meanwhile our tour group was 6 white kids from NJ!</p>
<p>It’s the “paintbucket syndrome.” My former boss used to say that you could tell what problems to expect from paint by what they talked about most on the can. “Covers better!” “Won’t peel!” “Non-chalking!”</p>
<p>I have to say, all colleges, even ones that have much more diversity looked lily-white to me (though some had a fairly visible Asian population). I hadn’t realized how used I’d gotten to our high school which is at least 1/3 African American, and may be 1/3 Hispanic by now.</p>
<p>I would be careful with Smith because when I looked, I crossed it off my list not because of the women - but because I would have had to take most of my engineering classes at UMass Amherst. I agree that the 5 college program is great, but I was interested in the Smith program and not the one at UMass Amherst.</p>
<p>I do agree Delaware is a great option! And Trinity College as well, but is farther away.</p>
<p>Would she consider Smith? It can be an excellent option if she does not rule out women’s colleges.
U of MO in Rolla is considered to be a good engineering school, and I am pretty sure she would get accepted there.</p>
<p>Marquette has an excellent engineering program, but also lots of other good majors if she decides she doesn’t want to stick with engineering. You don’t have to be Catholic to go there. Excellent coop/internship programs as well. Good luck and keep us posted!</p>
<p>Comparing the two Rochester schools ( I’m good at this one since I live here and have taught at one of those and attended grad school at the other)- The U of R has an excellent reputation, but in actuality, is admitting kids it never would have looked at 10 years ago, i.e. lower test scores, lower grades, class rankings, AP scores. They do have a wide range of courses and majors going for them, which could be a plus for someone not exactly sure which direction to go. RIT seems to be concentrating on expanding its footprint until there is no more land on which to build! That could be why you felt the “commuter” vibe. The great majority of students do live there, but if you live in one set of apartments on the south side of campus, you might never know someone who is a year ahead of you in your major but who lives on the north side! Their majors lean much more toward the tech fields (Hence the name… “technology”!) and there’s not as much of an opportunity to explore liberal arts courses. Both schools draw large amounts of students from all over the world and also have many local students as well. In the case of the OP’s daughter, I’d say to take a closer look at the U of R, since should her interests change, she’d have an easier time of transferring credits within the same college. A degree from either school though, would be looked at favorably by good graduate schools.</p>
<p>Mathmom, both my kids noticed the (relative) lack of diversity on college visits. Both guys’ schools were close to 25% white, African American, Hispanic/Latino and Asian. S1’s school had 31 languages represented among its students. Diversity has been the norm for them in their school experiences.</p>
<p>Mezzo, can you elaborate on what you think is happening with UofR?</p>
Maybe Ill try again
.</p>