Illinois for engineering!!! Wash U may be a highly rated LAC but it does not compare to your flagship. We were lucky to have UW as our flagship and I checked to see what some STEM courses were at Wash U when son’s Indiana cousins went there. Wash U is great for premed but not as good for other fields. Do not let the private school status with national recognition replace excellent engineering at Illinois.
Timed out (was editing and H got me talking about other stuff…). Harvey Mudd may have a great reputation here on CC but for national recognition but Illinois IS highly regarded nationally, especially for STEM. Wash U isn’t as great as some think for science and engineering. Premed and associated Biology majors but- one size fits all for general math, chemistry, physics- no way. She wants courses geared to engineers, not premed students. They can be better than many flagships, bit not Illinois.
Our upper Midwest flagships are two tiered schools. They get top tier students and offer top courses. No reason to look elsewhere. There will be like minded students. When she thinks about the prestige in her chosen field - a school employers know and trust she may find UI best. Also thinking nationally UI has a good reputation. Plus- think about opportunities while a student.
PS- we didn’t encourage our gifted son who was a math- added comp sci- major to look at many schools because we had a better school in his interests than so many of the top private schools. Why pay more for a lesser education? He did grad level math at a top 15 or so math U. He would not apply to so many possible elite choices, sigh.
I think your D will impress employers most with an Illinois engineering degree. Plus have a good all around education.
Here’s my take:
Mudd is terrific for a certain type of kid. It also has a high likelihood of destroying her GPA. That’s fine if she will go to grad school (Mudd is #2 behind Caltech in percentage of the class sent to PhD programs and #3 isn’t close), but employers likely aren’t rounding a HMC 2.9 up to a 3.7.
U of I will have huge classes, but because it’s one of the top engineering schools in the country, it will have a lot of elite talent among the engineering student body (and you know that it has elite engineering faculty), and if it is anything like the UIUC CS student body, there will be a ton of student-run special interest groups for her to join and a ton of research that she possibly could take part in. Engineering classes will likely be just as challenging as at Mudd but grading may be a bit easier (though still tough). Most non-engineering classes will not be up to the same level of rigor.
WashU engineering, I’m not sure will be all that competitive though it will still be plenty rigorous. It’s a beautiful campus and students there seem to love it. True that it is socioeconomically skewed. You go there and it feels like a country club.
Given that Mudd would be painful economically, I think it should be off the table.
BTW, @wis75, WashU isn’t a LAC (though I suppose it could feel like a big LAC).
I know a lot about Mudd since it was tops on DS’s list for a long time. He was accepted, but without the hoped for merit scholarship (and even then it woudl have been a financial stretch). Academics there are quite intense. He was an excellent student, with near-perfect stats … and I still had concerns. Also did not get far enough in the employment research to understand if the extra work was worthwhile. Certainly if that is what a student craves, it would be meaningful. I did like the Claremont setup.
BTW, I agree with @wis75.
I get that she wants to go some place exclusive (I was the same way in HS) and U of I (even Engineering) probably was easier to get in than Mudd, but the reality in the real world is that pretty much everyone in engineering knows that U of I is one of the top engineering schools around (and they have a huge alumni base in both engineering and CS, which helps in the CS world; don’t know about engineering) while fewer people in the working world would know about Mudd’s rigor.
Outside of tech (if she wants to go in to consulting/business/finance), U of I would be seen as a regular state school (other than by other folks who are acquainted with U of I engineering and CS), WashU would have the most prestige, and almost no one would have heard of Mudd.
DD was accepted to HMC last year. This was my concern: Everyone there takes the same classes the first year+, You take same math class with the math whiz, the chemistry class with the chemistry whiz etc. DD is smart but not a whiz at anything. I thought she would forever be the low one on the curve. So she now attends a larger school where there are multiple levels of calculus (for example) and she passed on the honors version where all the math whiz’s are. Depends on how your daughter rolls as to how she would feel in that situation but I did not think my DD would do well. Fortunately, she’s quite happy where she is and I’m not even sure she’ll stay in STEM.
Somehow I missed that OP’s child is female. IMO that is a tilt factor for HMC. It’s really invested in its female engineers (and CS majors) succeeding and it has some pretty awesome outcomes in that regard.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/23/harvey-mudd-college-history-women-graduates_n_5380741.html
^ that would be a really different experience than WU or IU.
Just another article re HMU and CS: http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2013/05/01/178810710/How-One-College-Is-Closing-The-Tech-Gender-Gap
HMU could offer a radically different learning experience for her.
However, if it is painful to afford, maybe not.
I wouldn’t choose WUSTL over UIUC for engineering unless the student prefers it, which doesn’t seem to be the case. The difficult decision would be Harvey Mudd vs UIUC. I guess it depends on the degree of financial hardship Harvey Mudd would bring.
My D is a Mudder, graduating in 2 weeks! If your kid loves Mudd and you can swing it, send her there. There is noplace else like it.
Thanks to all for your comments! We have narrowed it down to UIUC and HMC. Called HMC to see if they would compare to WashU and they said no. She took WashU off the table - better Engineering at UIUC and she just wasn’t feeling at home there. Re finances - for either schools she would be taking the federal loans - I think the kid needs to have some skin in the game. We would have two in college for her first year; the second year is where we would feel the pinch as HMC indicated her aid would drop significantly (+$17k/yr!) when my son graduates. Besides her fed loans we would probably be taking $45k in loans total for HMC to cover the increase years 2-4. If I only hadn’t seen her face light up like I never have before at HMC this woukd be a lot easier. Needless to say the price difference between UIUC and HMC is significant over four years; about $100k. When she applied we knew it was a stretch but was hoping for the Presidential Scholarship which she was invited to interview for but didn’t get so here we are.
HMC, while great, is not worth $100,000 more than UIUC for engineering, especially as you’d be taking out a lot of loans.
Is she your youngest child? And did you take out any loans for your older kid?
How hard will it be to pay off that $45K? That’s a lot of debt to take on just because you saw your daughter’s face light up. I’m not trying to minimize the fact that you want her to be happy, but do you have reason to think she’ll be UNhappy at UIUC? I mean, if she’ll end up perfectly happy there, then why take on all that debt?
If she has a history of depression and Mudd is really the only place where she’s seemed to be happy, then $45K is not too much (as long as you’ll be able to pay it off reasonably soon and not be mired in debt the rest of your days).
HMC is worth certainly worth 100k more, as are many schools, if you can afford it or the loans aren’t too painful. And any kid there likely chose it over UCLA or UCB as well, so plenty of others feel that way. Private personal top notch education without struggles. Ya, it’s worth it.
I am always surprised at the hype about Illinois; the Illinois system is financially troubled. My first job was at UI Chicago, and I hear from faculty there that the pension system is only 40% funded and doctors refuse to see them because the state is over six months behind in payments. Faculty are fleeing. But don’t take my anecdotes as gospel!
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/04/opinion/higher-education-in-illinois-is-dying.html?_r=0
https://www.marketplace.org/2016/03/14/education/illinois-cuts-funding-its-public-universities
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-illinois-higher-education-funding-20160119-story.html
If my son had gotten into HMC, I would have taken the extra loans and been thrilled. Bear in mind that Mudd grads make some of the highest average starting (and continuing) salaries of any college (I’ve seen this in several reports). High investment, but also higher than average return on that investment.
However, UIUC is also a good school for STEM.
You and your D do have a difficult choice to make.
UIUC is a great school for engineering (tops nationally) but the state’s financial troubles (including unpaid scholarships leaving students scrambling or stranded) and the over reliance on Chinese students to patch budget woes now impacting teaching, it’d give me pause. You need to dig into it because it does matter even if engineering is top notch - there’s more to college than great faculty and high level lectures.
Add the vast difference in experience at a large university and at a LAC/small college that combines strong liberal and engineering.
On the other hand 45k in parents loans is a lot, even if your odds are good she’ll get a well-paid job after HMC. It’d certainly impact your life for 10 years. What would it take away from you? How would it impact your other children?
I’d ask on the HMC board about summer internships. Ten years ago, my son earned over $10,000 most summers. I have no idea if the placements are as good at other colleges.
Just one more thing to think about.
UIUC is on a much stronger financial footing than the other state schools. On the other hand, we can’t give Gov. Rauner the heave-ho until 2018, so more damage is likely coming. UIC, UIS and the directionals are already taking a pounding.
^ Also, I think that the OP needs to consider the quality of life factors here. HMC besides being in California, benefits from the close-knit 5C’s social and academic vibe. UIUC, which is of course a great university, suffers from a drab, concrete campus and let’s face it, Urbana-Champaign is no Charlottesville or Chapel Hill. It just seems like OP’s DD is a better fit for HMC, will be happier there, and will probably make enough money in her first 10 years to pay her parents back for the extra cost.
Miscellaneous meanderings - The Mudd salary comparison is probably skewed by the fact that grads tend to locate in CA and other high cost of living areas where average salaries are higher. All engineering programs are hard, but to me it seemed that Mudd was particularly intense (in a collaborative environment, where most students are passionate about their students). The GPAs tend to be lower than other places, but I think that is mostly just a factor for students considering med school school. I thought the 5C’s setup was great, but I’m not sure how many Mudd students have the time/interest in taking advantage of it.