I’ve done some reach on forums and other places but I’m not too sure because I keep finding conflicting discussions. Some say it’s not a good college for that major and some say it is. I just want someone to tell me the facts with no bias.
P.S. I realize that it is ridiculously expensive, especially for me who is out of state.
It’s a difficult question to answer. “Good” cannot be defined in absolute terms, but rather to your other options. What are your other options? Ultimately, determining what school is best for you is a constrained optimization function, with cost being the constraint. You have to weigh how well the education from each of the universities you are admitted to aligns with your expectations and also the expectations of employers and graduate schools (if you are looking for a job or want to go to graduate school. This is of course different from student to student.
University departments are usually ranked based on research, not pedagogical quality. There is a benefit of going to a school with strong research; the faculty are more intimately involved with the material and the way the course is taught is influenced by ideas from their research. At strong research universities, there are more research opportunities, and there is a culture of at least some students pursuing a path in research at the highest level. The WPI CS department has historically not been very strong at research and is ranked from 70-90 among research CS departments.
WPI focuses on pedagogy, and teaching well. It’s a relatively close knit place where there is plenty of support if you are struggling. Professors try to engage students with the material and help students succeed. For those who need this support, WPI is great. If you’re more independent, then you might need less such support (though engineering is hard anywhere) and it might not be worth the additional cost.
Quoting WPI marketing, “A WPI education has never been more relevant than it is today, because the demand for innovative thinkers who can solve problems on a global scale has never been greater.”
There are two major projects at WPI, the IQP and the MQP. The IQP is related to understanding the social aspects of engineering and the MQP is an applied design capstone project – often with a corporate sponsor. The courses tend to lean practical – you solve problems and learn new concepts that can often be directly applied in real-world. There are pros and cons to this approach. Students hit the ground running quickly in industry and graduates are pragmatic problem solvers. There is certainly a great demand in the industry for people who are smart and understand the concepts of their field, who can work with others in teams and arrive at solutions, and can “get things done” (i.e. implement their solutions). This approach is at the heart of WPI’s educational philosophy.
There are other approaches to education that are different and which you might find better (or worse suited).
Some like University of Toronto, Yale University, and University of Chicago tend to focus more on the theoretical. They are not primarily concerned about getting their students jobs at engineering companies. Their primary objective is to advance the base of human knowledge. These universities emphasizing understand concepts from first principles with more depth and structure. This approach presents a larger, more versatile toolbox of ideas that an engineer (including many graduates of their programs) might not use in their jobs. But if you want a primarily theory-based education, this is a better approach. And students might not be as well prepared for their first job unless they are naturally tinkerers and pick up this “hands-on” experience elsewhere.
Some other schools, like Georgia Tech, Cornell, and Michigan embody both the theory and practical philosophy. They are more intense than WPI and cover more theoretical ground. But they are also practical and are less idealistic in their philosophy than the above schools, working to prepare all their graduates with skills that are directly applicable in the industry. Some students find this approach too harsh and are weeded out, while they might have struggled but succeeded at a less intense place.
Some other schools like Northeastern and University of Waterloo are co-op universities. They focus on a synergy of academic learning and practical experience. Applying knowledge at a company is useful to develop confidence and crystallize theoretical knowledge and to have an idea of “how is what I am learning useful?” I’ve worked with many students from Waterloo who’ve landed jobs at Microsoft, Google, Facebook and other large companies and this approach tends to work very well for many students.
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I personally thought the teaching at WPI CS was not in any way extraordinary, but that might be my bias (and I have no other CS department to compare it with). Though in the engineering departments, the teaching was good to very good. For CS specifically, I would go elsewhere.
WPI is private, so there is no out-of-state tuition differential. Of course, it is an expensive school and you need to determine whether it is right for you.