Off-topic for a laugh.
I blanked on the subject of what this thread was about and saw the comment about ND engineering. I thought to myself, “How wonderful that someone’s talking about North Dakota. We don’t hear much about that one on CC!” 
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Every ABET accredited program does this.
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Same here! In my mind, ND will always be North Dakota (and SDSU is South Dakota State University, of course!)
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Mr Headroom
Unfortunately not as many as you think.
Universities as a whole have gone down in quality and up in price.
Big decision when deciding where to go.
I only got on this thread because someone was trying to decide on Notre Dame and felt I could help.
Good group of folks at CC
This hasn’t been my daughter’s experience AT ALL at Purdue.
The threshold to be guaranteed your major is a 3.2 and 93% of students get into their first choice major.
My D has never experienced a language barrier with a professor. Yes, there are profs from all over the world but that doesn’t mean that there are communication problems. My D loved having profs from different backgrounds and cultures.
My D’s largest classes haven’t been close to what we experienced at Cornell. I think her biggest class was 250 students and not since freshman year. And she plenty of classes that had 20 students, also in freshman year. This semester one of her courses has 10 students.
And it’s absolutely incorrect that students take 5 years to graduate. The 4 year plan of study is just that, 4 years. The stats are skewed at Purdue because co-op students are in those stats and they still take 8 semesters to graduate but just spread out over 5 years.
And collaboration and communication is the way of engineering at schools all across the country, regardless of ranking. Purdue engineering starts and ends with group design courses. Communication courses are required. My D has an extra certification on collaborative leadership which was a series of courses in communication.
And yes, my D is employed and has a great job lined up. She will eventually go back to school for her MBA down the road.
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Not sure exactly what this means. I’m guessing it refers to the proportion of faculty that are Asian. Every engineering school has a lot of Asian faculty, including ND.
It’s true that Purdue has secondary admission to major, which is a dealbreaker for some people, but it’s a small minority of students who don’t get their first choice of major. Most schools (including ND) do allow free choice within engineering majors.
The teamwork thing is addressed by the zillions of group projects that are done by engineering students at every school.
Professors answer emails when they want to. There is no university that mandates weekend responses. Most profs answer within 24 hours and try to learn their students’ names because they care about their students. That’s not a function of being at ND.
So, these aren’t factors that are unique strengths of ND. ND seems like a great school and many people have wonderful experiences there. We have several friend who are alums. People should go there because they want to. There are many other schools that have the same qualities.
FWIW, my son did an engineering visit at ND. My spouse spends time there because they have federally-funded research projects with collaborators there (who absolutely do tons of work in their own research labs and aren’t exclusively focused on teaching undergrads). Our son decided not to even apply to ND.
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Disagree. I am a parent of an engineering student at Georgia Tech who has had two consulting internships and likely will end up in consulting. I can’t speak to other schools, but going into something engineering adjacent is common at Georgia Tech.
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Consulting is not necessarily engg adjacent. There are many different kinds of consulting. And I am sure some kids from GT get into consulting, But there are all kinds of impediments — self perception, external branding, exposure, peer attitudes etc. Percentages will likely be different.
And Mich engg is different than Mich business. And to some extent those two cohorts can’t swing quite as easily into each other’s turf.
One of my D18’s favorite professors at Michigan, who is of Korean descent and has a thick accent, wrote several of her LOR’s for grad school. She received an A in his class.
The professor was cognizant of his accent and that it may give students trouble, so he took the time to make sure his class understood the material. I believe it’s just a matter of teaching quality and character, not a “language barrier” problem.
If we didn’t have professors from other countries here in the US, then our university system would suffer.
Lots of “special” college experiences out there. In my daughter’s case, when she got to mill about on the field after Michigan beat Ohio State 42-27 two years ago. She counts that as one of her best moments of her life.
ETA: Lots of Michigan alums in Silicon Valley. Lots of connections here.
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We’re talking engineering, not schools as a whole. There are MANY strong engineering programs. Notre Dame is not among the titans.
We grossly overcomplicate the importance of school choice for engineering. It leads people to take out loans or leave their kids with debt so their kids can have a “special experience.” Nearly every MIT alum (not parent) on this forum regularly says they would not leverage for MIT, because of the quality of education elsewhere. This is not to cast aspersion on MIT. It’s a great school for the right student. We’re talking MIT, not Notre Dame.
At the end if the day, it isn’t the school that confers success. It’s individual horsepower, curiosity and drive. The differences in schools are purely at the margins and always magnified by the beholders, me included.
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I’d love to see evidence of this. Up in price- for sure, no argument from me.
But down in quality? Let’s see the evidence. I think a kid looking for academic rigor-- i.e. “a quality education” can find it at 200+ universities. But the kid needs to WANT it, which is not the case universally- not at ND, not your local state college, not the top 50 R1 universities.
There are plenty of ways to avoid rigor in college. And students know it.
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Put it this way - there’s no assurance.
My kid will make more than the average Notre Dame grad - from Bama. There will be kids who make more than my kid from ND.
YMMV - but I wouldn’t say the statement is 100% inaccurate - different kids will have different experiences. Ultimately, it will be their drive, determination, luck, and location (big part) moreso than the college name - short of a select few in engineering.
Whether one attended or not, the stats are out there and don’t lie.
I attended one of these (top private in field) but my comparison is not fair because it was a different major - but as it turns out, myself and most of my classmates that were full pay unnecessarily spent a lot of our parents money. Still had a great experience but likely could have at #2 too which was 1/3 the price.
It’s not to say that a student won’t have a wonderful experience at UND or any school of choice. And it’s not to say it wouldn’t be worth it to that family - it may be and that’s great.
But you are right - you have to look at it through your lens - because other people don’t necessarily see many differences from many a school - especially when it comes to outcomes and future successes.
But it’s wonderful you had a fantastic experience at UND - and what else really matters?
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Speaking as a professional engineer, I also disagree that students won’t get great engineering educations at state flagships. My son was doing research in the biomedical engineering lab at UT-Austin when he was a freshman.
As someone mentioned, if a school is ABET accredited, it’s excellent. My dad was head of an engineering department at UT, and it was quite a process to keep ABET accreditation.
I loved my education at UT and highly recommend the school to anyone.
I think it’s a good idea to get the opinions of engineers, don’t you? What have all the engineers in this thread said? 
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I disagree with this. Dh and I both went to private T10 universities and T5 graduate programs that launched us into successful careers. But most of the people we work with went entirely different paths, including attending top ranked public schools or schools that are rarely mentioned on this site and are not ranked in the T100. Likewise, we have classmates who had very ordinary careers. The lesson we learned from going to top ranked schools is that it isn’t necessary to do so to be successful — effort and aptitude matter much more than pedigree. I think people who didn’t attend these schools tend to inflate the importance of the prestige factor.
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Some thoughts on your post…
First, at some private schools the published MSRP for tuition is not paid by many students. For example, last year Case Western automatically gave merit awards equal to 50% of tuition to most strong applicants with their acceptance notices (at least based on feedback from parents on CC). This brings the total COA, including room and board from around $80k down to the $50ks, which is still a huge pill to swallow.
Second, schools with large endowments like Harvard, Stanford, UPenn and Yale, could easily cover the costs for every undergrad and graduate student out of their endowments’ annual returns. According to Univstats, the total cost at Harvard is $83,538 for a student living on campus, but after the average financial aid package of $49,954, the actual COA is just $33,584 (if this is not accurate or someone has a better source, please chime in). Kudos to Harvard for providing this generous aid, but they could pay even more.
Third, the tuition for many second or even third tier private schools is close to that of top 20 universities. For example, tuition at Princeton (#1 USNWR) is $57,410, while Drexel (#105) costs $58,965, and Point Park University (#263) charges $51,560. It is hard to justify paying Ivy League prices for a school that has much weaker outcomes and lower prestige. This explains the rash of low ranked LACs either closing their doors or having financial issues. The good news is that there are many strong public universities, or even private schools with tuition that is significantly lower than the top private schools, especially for in-state students. For example, Purdue costs just $28,794 OOS and $9,992 IS.
Fourth, machinists coming out of our school district’s vocational program are earning over $100,000 at age 20 with no debt. Compare that to a philosophy/English/sociology student’s outcome upon graduation.
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It does sound like a difficult dilemma. For me, I didn’t have a choice — I didn’t get into my dream school. I just wanted to chime in from my own college journey that there are so many different roads that lead to a wonderful experience. Your student has to decide whether the cost makes sense, but it’s definitely not the only school where they can grow and excel. So much of that is mindset!
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One I don’t believe many plan for.
I remember in 2008 all the near retirees went into depression. Never changing their asset mix as they got older, many fell 50% and more.
If that happened to someone with a kid in college, even if it didn’t impact their current cash flow, it’d still cause alarm because the future would need to be funded.
I got my two largest bonuses ever the last two years. Raises and bonuses have been insane because right now it’s an employee, not employer market.
I just think many have forgotten the normal trials and tribulations and if we do see the predicted recession, huge layoffs like @eyemgh noted is a concern and smaller bonuses or raises or even a situation like in 2008 when I was furloughed and my 401k match was stopped - well there’s going to be a lot of families that will face strain they never could have imagined. I hope I’m wrong but inevitably we get into these cycles. We did just three years ago when the feds had to backstop private payrolls, my job included
It’s for those reasons I would only choose a school I’d have no issue affording. Not one I can but with sacrifices or belt tightening but one I can even if I was unemployed for a year etc.
One should prepare for the possibilities - especially when the government is purposely working to head our economy into this direction in order to tame inflation.
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I agree. This is not when you want to be stretching to fund college, or hoping it will work out on a wing and a prayer.
Recently Nordstrom notified their upcoming summer computer science interns (and perhaps others), that the summer internships they accepted months ago were terminated. This leaves the students scrambling to find other employment or take classes to fill their summer at this late date. I’m sure it is not alone in making this decision. In fact, a family member with a large investment bank was asked to identify team members for layoff a month or so ago. As others pointed out, finance is likely to be impacted as well.
With the very high demand for computer science majors during admission, the number of students graduating with a computer science degree due to its popularity and profitability, and the constriction in the tech sector, this has the hallmarks of a tough upcoming job market at least for that major.
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Do mean private schools like Wentworth, Drexel, Pacific, Florida Tech, etc. are pathways to or favored recruiting targets of consulting and finance?
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Universities do tend to be more diverse than most local areas and high schools, so a university may be the first time that a student experiences hearing dialects or accents of English different from those heard previously. This includes the various dialects of English among those who grew up in the US.
Indeed, Indiana may be a place where many students from elsewhere first hear constructs like “needs fixed”.
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