Congrats!
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A few thoughts.
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Virginia Tech (and Purdue, etc) typically do not offer a lot of merit. They benefit from a large pool of applicants, and also, a lower cost to begin with. As an example, we were offered 32K from WPI, and 3K from VT, and this puts them at the same price.
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Virginia Tech is probably a superior “overall” school. The campus is huge, far better than what WPI (or other small STEM schools offer). Better food, dining halls, dorms, more clubs, Greek life options (if you are into that). It gets an A+ from Niche, due to the overall strong in everything approach. WPI is more of a STEM strong school, with a smaller, tight-knit campus and student body, and some people may prefer that scene over the huge state school campus feel. VT has far more options when it comes to majors if you change your mind. WPI has 30+ majors, Virginia Tech has 150+.
We’re going to pass on VT because their major is not ideally aligned with what D2 wants to do, but I personally like the school very much, if the major were a better fit she might indeed be going there.
We’ve whittled our list down to WPI, RPI, Purdue (Polytechnic), Utah (resident tuition rate after year 1), Michigan State (very large merit offer), still chipping away and making some visits next few weeks.
@LoisLane100 , I feel like we’ve crossed paths before, perhaps 3 years ahp. My eldest son is a junior at WPI, an aerospace engineering major.
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Sounds like you still have a lot of deciding to do!
Basically, my son’s decision has been made for him. Although he was accepted to WPI with a Presidential scholarship, he wants his ‘own school’, he does not want to follow in his older brother’s footsteps, and he is not very fond of cities. Plus, he is not convinced that the WPI biotechnology BS major fits his biology breadth and research goals.
The only other school (out of 10!) that accepted him was Wheaton, although we are still waiting on that finaid package.
However, knowing my son and how he thrives when challenged, I can’t help feeling that Wheaton is not the best fit. THAT, however, I am keeping to myself.
That’s an excellent list, and we appreciate the insight. We might be making a campus visit to VT sometime soon as well, it looks great.
@WPIMom Make sense that your son wants his own school. For what it’s worth, Wheaton is an excellent school. He will be plenty challenged. My son goes there, was a very high student in HS and is having a great experience there and working hard. 
What will your son major or focus in?
@BGTENN , thank you for answering. Because my comments and questions have nothing to do with this thread, I will post them on your Wheaton College Rocks thread.
@WPIMom I think we did too. My son is getting his BS ECE in May, he was originally the class of 2022 but did the 4 year BS/MS program and it is cheaper for him to finish his BS ECE and finish his Master’s as a full time grad student next year. My daughter is finishing her freshman year very interested in neuroscience.
my son is headed to WPI !!! anyone else ? Probably environmental engineering and business. What is the process and timeline for housing anyone know ?
Congratulations! Here is a link with a lot of information of all the steps along the way. It will be updated for class of 2025 soon. Post covid I’m not sure how they will modify housing processes but they will update here frequently. Timeline to Campus – The First-Year Experience
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My son is a current freshman at WPI. If you are considering the school for next year, I’d seriously look at what the Covid situation is like before committing. This past year the school did a good job with the safety protocols, but they totally dropped the ball when it comes to student mental health. So many students were socially isolated and the school did a poor job of orientating freshman and getting them acclimated into the school community. Almost all of my son’s classes have been pre-recorded videos with no live contact with professors. One class was a live Zoom, and just one has been in person.
If the current Covid restrictions aren’t lifted, I would consider waiting a year and starting later.
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was your son accepted ? and will he play soccer?
Very old alumnus who worked there while the project based program was being launched. In my experience WPI has never admitted to or restricted by major. I always felt this was a big advantage as we really do not know much about majors and options from our secondary school experiences.
There is a lot of interdisciplinary thinking in today’s world and teams of students learn this in real world problem solving. Subjects keep melding. The seven week terms are designed to augment flexibility. We don’t want students to restrict learning to the old “them vs us” silo concepts. Reality is discovered within the cracks of interdisciplinary dialogue. We need to “learn how to learn” as it is a continuous, ongoing experience which must continue throughout your life.
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WPI alumnus who worked in WPI admissions office for ten years shortly after military service, graduation and co-authored an FHA environmental research study. I was one of three students in my class who actually majored in economics. Spent first year after graduation using behavioral mathematics in development of impact studies for the Federal Highway Administration.
When hired by the college to work in college admissions we collected SAT, math achievement test scores as well as secondary school grades and used linear analysis of variance (i.e.,not correlations) to test their relationship to success as measured by their WPI GPA. As weak as this methodology may be, it is more rigorous than simple statistical correlations. The study continued for over two years as we used like methodologies to test the relationships between their WPI GPA and professional recognition awards after years in the professional world.
In short we learned:
(1) The math SAT scores were significant predictors, but only in the first two years at WPI.
(2) Secondary school GPA’s were better predictors only for the first two years of college.
While sharing refreshments with the WPI faculty at the end of long days of work, we took a really bold step and decided to test our WPI classroom grades (i.e., our own faculties analysis)… we learned college GPA was not a significant predictor of professional success as measured by professional awards given.
I.E. there is more to do with our professional development than the standardized tests and GPA. This begs the question… what are we missing in traditional education?
Experiences such as this point to the need for new approaches. This was years ago, The WPI plan of project based learning was developed for many good reasons. It has now been proven effective.
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