My son was accepted to Michigan, Brown and USC and waitlisted at Duke for engineering. He is currently interested biomedical or mechanical engineering. He also enjoys writing, music and Spanish. We live on the West Coast and he prefers warmer weather but that won’t be the deciding factor. Would be paying about the same for each school. Would be grateful for any thoughts.
I would say Michigan, USC, then Brown.
State schools like Michigan have solid engineering programs, not to mention name recognition and national ranking. They offer multitude of engineering course and program options, state-of-the-art undergraduate teaching labs/facilities, a balanced mix of engineering science and design courses, and generally produce graduates that are marketable in their respective professions or for graduate studies.
I have not been to U Michigan lately, but recently visited a number of its sister institutions including Purdue, Illinois and Virginia Tech. Must say, I am very impressed by what these schools have to offer for their undergraduate students, much more so than what is available at some of the private schools.
The only academic drawback for these major universities is (large) class size and heavy use of inexperienced TAs in some introductory courses. For example, at Virginia Tech some sections of introductory math courses are not being offered in a traditional classroom setting, they are being offered online.
USC has a well-established college of engineering with lots of research activities. I think it is a good place to study engineering, though in my mind, it pays a lesser degree of attention to its undergraduate programs than I would like to see. My son is studying engineering at USC but likes Virginia Tech better, he transferred to USC after a year at VT thinking that the grass may be greener on the other side.
My D wants to study engineering and has Brown as one of her options, she attended the school’s recent event for admitted students. As much as she likes the social/cultural atmosphere, she did not walk away with a positive view of the engineering program itself. She sat in three classes: a math (calculus) class, a computer science class and an engineering mechanics class. She was very complementary of the CS professor, but did not think much of the other classes.
Brown has a very small engineering program. Consequently, teaching facilities and resources are sparse and seem to be out-dated. A new engineering building will be completed by 2018, but it is going to house primarily research laboratories. Clearly, Brown Engineering is investing in its graduate program, but not much is being done for its undergraduate program.
Thank you for this detailed response. It is very helpful.
For straight engineering, @emotive may be right in his ordering (and maybe Duke is better than USC and the equal of Michigan, esp for biomedical engineering). Most high school seniors, however, are not really sure what they want to study, and that should also be taken into account for the OP. Brown is probably the best overall school when you’re talking about what makes an undergraduate education good: class size, student quality, teaching, breadth of faculty strength across all fields and emphasis on undergraduate education. In other words, if the OP’s son is not sure about engineering, then the order may really be flipped to Brown, USC, and then Michigan. Brown has very strong CS and Biology and life science departments if engineering is not the be-all-and-end-all for the OP’s son. Also, Michigan and USC are also very large schools, whereas Brown is medium sized. You will get a lot of graduate student instruction at Michigan and not much professor facetime; it’s the reality of a large research university.
Also very helpful. Thank you.