Engineering at West Coast Private Universities

Can anyone provide information on the quality of the engineering programs at West Coast private schools? I’m thinking of Gonzaga, U of Portland, Santa Clara, UOP, U of San Diego, and LMU. My son will most likely be applying as a civil engineering major.

USD does not have civil engineering. The others have ABET-accredited civil engineering (see http://main.abet.org/aps/Accreditedprogramsearch.aspx ).

Have you checked the net price calculator at all of these schools?

Is he looking for a Catholic school? All except UoP are Catholic.

What about your in-state public universities?

Looking at schools for a student with a 3.5-3.7 GPA. Catholic or nonsectarian is no matter.

Is size the reason you’re limiting it to privates?

I think students get more attention at the smaller, private colleges. I went to UC Davis in the 90’s. It was big then, now it’s huge. I loved my time there, but think I would have done better if I had professors who knew my name. No one cared if I went to class or not. I don’t want the same for my kids. I want my kids to be happy, but also want them to be held accountable for attendance.

“No one cared if I went to class or not. I don’t want the same for my kids.”

hate to be the one to break the news to you, but it IS the responsibility of the college STUDENT to go to class or not.

Do you really think its a good thing to have a college student’s class grade be based, in any way, on attendance??
College profs at many smaller colleges dont care. They are there to teach, not babysit.

What happened to college students learning to hold themselves accountable? Even at smaller colleges, professors aren’t all that different from at larger schools. By and large, they take the position that college students are adults and are paying to be there, so it is their responsibility to show up to spend their money wisely by showing up to class. In a smaller setting, it is only more noticeable when someone skips.

State of residency and cost constraints?

Net price calculators should be checked before making the application list; this time of year, there are typically some sad story threads of students who get financially shut out (all admissions are too expensive) or who have far fewer choices than admissions (because most are too expensive) due to wasting many applications on schools that would have been seen as unaffordable in their net price calculators if they had checked before applying.

I transferred from a school with 50,000 students to one with 3000 students. My professors at the smaller school definitely cared more about their students than the ones at the larger school.

Whether or not a teacher “cares” is going to be highly dependent on the teacher no matter where he goes. Then the emphasis they put on undergraduate instruction has as much to do with the school’ core mission as it does with size per se. Schools that do not offer PhDs, whose primary mission is undergraduate education tend to offer a high quality undergraduate experience. Cal Poly is an example on the west coast. My son goes there. The instruction and support in general are good, but no one will blink an eye if he doesn’t go to class and there is no grade inflation there. I tend to agree with @boneh3ad, although it’s nice to not be in a cattle mill, personal responsibility and resilience are important life lessons to be honed in college, the bridge between childhood and the “real world.”

As for small private west coast universities with GOOD engineering, there aren’t many. I can come up with two Harvey Mudd and CalTech. Neither is known for its hand holding. Quite the opposite, both can be a grinds, especially CalTech.

If he’s willing to expand to the Midwest or east coast he might want to look at Case, Lehigh, Olin and WPI. Good luck.

Thank you for the responses. CalTech and Harvey Mudd are awesome schools, but not realistic choices. He most likely will be a working engineer and wouldn’t ant ABET accredited school provide a good education?

yes it will.

OP’s other posts indicate that s/he would be a non-traditional student living in California.

Here are the universities with ABET-accredited civil engineering in California:

California Baptist University >
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo >
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona >
California State University, Chico >
California State University, Fresno >
California State University, Fullerton >
California State University, Long Beach >
California State University, Los Angeles >
California State University, Northridge >
California State University, Sacramento >
Loyola Marymount University >
San Diego State University >
San Francisco State University >
San Jose State University >
Santa Clara University >
Stanford University >
University of California, Berkeley >
University of California, Davis >
University of California, Irvine >
University of California, Los Angeles >
University of Southern California >
University of the Pacific >

ABET sets the MINIMUM criteria. That absolutely does not make them all the same. The access to advanced courses and lab equipment can vary widely.

Yes,me, Mom, will be a transfer civil engineering student at the University of the Pacific this fall. I’m super excited. Any feedback on UOP;s program would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Just because I like to argue - my school of 3000, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, granted PhDs and there was lots of research going on. Of course there are going to be exceptions, but I’d have to think a professor teaching a class of 20-30, and who knows all their students’ names, would have much more personal interest in their students’ success than a professor who lectured in front of 200-300 or more, sent students with questions to teaching assistants, and wouldn’t know their students if they passed them in the hall. At least that was my experience, and it makes sense that it would be the same elsewhere.

I found it a lot easier to skip a class with 300 students than one with 30 students. Unlike with the larger class, you know your absence is going to be noticed in the smaller class.

Right with you simba9

As someone who has taught a class of about 30 to 40 students, I can say that I absolutely did have personal interest in my students’ success, but only insofar as they had interest in it. If a student skipped class I wasn’t about to worry about it. I was there for the students who cared enough to show up. I had enough work on my plate otherwise that I didn’t feel very motivated to expend extra effort on students who clearly didn’t care anyway, so I focused my time and effort on those that did.

@simba9, not disagreeing, but school size does not always correlate to class size.

An example of that would be Case Western versus University of Maryland. Intro to Calculus for Engineers at Maryland main lectures are capped at about 115 students. Case has sections up to 450.

Maryland has a wider variety of calculus classes that makes the lectures smaller.