My Son received via email yesterday and invitation to join this program at UT. Looks like it carries with it some advantages regarding class enrollment and ability to enroll in smaller honors classes (no extra money though).
Anyone have any experience with this program?
My S21 has a meeting with the director of this program next week so I’ll try to come back and share any insights with you.
We are visiting the school in a little over a week. We are going to ask about it as well. Doing a little more digging on my own, I would say my S20 will accept the offer if he chooses UTK. It would appear to open door for undergrad research opportunities and one of the grand challenges is an area he wants to be in (nuclear fusion energy).
S21 just connected with a UTK EE grad who is pursuing PhD at Vanderbilt. He said that for a student who wants to Goto grad school, UTK’s connection to ORNL (research opportunities) makes it one of the best options for engineering in the nation.
That’s great feedback. It is what I have been telling (convincing?) my son for a month and a half now. His long term goals include grad school. As long as our trip goes well next week, I think UTK will be the choice.
We’ve known since S21 was in middle school that he was going to be a research scientist in nanotechnology which means he’ll need a PhD. Challenge has been what does he do for undergrad and where.
Consensus is that he needs a solid STEM education at a school where he can do undergrad research. The research opportunities matter more than whether the school is elite or not.
And then goto graduate school where he can do the specific research that interests him.
There are many threads on CC that discuss that where you get your terminal degree matters much more than Where you get your Undergraduate.
That’s pretty much where we have landed as well. Undergrad research is very important factor for S20 and we also recognized early on that it doesn’t make sense to blow out the budget on undergraduate school ‘name’. Look at faculty pages at different schools. Some people don’t even list their undergrad school.
As long as the undergrad school gives him the opportunities he’s looking for to build that resume for a good grad school, that’s what’s important. This is also why UTK has a bit of a leg up on his in-state option (Penn State). UTK has much, much more involvement in fusion energy science research, and that’s very important to him.
We met with the director of the program last week, Dr Kevin Kit. This was actually our second meeting with him as we met him 2 years ago when S21 was just starting to investigate schools.
Dr Kit was very personable and helpful to our son. However, We didn’t discuss The honors engineering program that much because he helped to confirm that S21 is making the right choice to focus on Chemistry and physics. Should also be able to take some engineering classes To round out his interests.
Discussed that some Classes Such as mechanical engineering will be more difficult to get into for non engineering majors versus material science classes which have much smaller demand. Dr Kit also discussed the many research opportunities available for undergraduates.
If S21’s interests were primary engineering, I would be very comfortable that Dr Kit and the Honors program would be a good fit.