I am currently a high school junior at a private school in Massachusetts, looking to find a good college for an undergraduate degree in environmental engineering.
My stats are: 94.5% average unweighted, and 125% weighted ( don’t know exact 4.0 scale) , 1 AP-coruse which is history, and the remaining classes being honors level courses.Member of National honor society, two years of cross country and one year of swimming and a part-time job.
I have been doing research on good schools for environmental engineering, and know the basics such as MIT and UCal Berkley being some of the best, but I was just wondering if anyone knew of others, which have both lower prices and hopefully better chances for me being admitted.
I do believe that college is a good investment and will basically pay up to 35k a year, although I am not limited to this, I am just not made of money like a lot of others. My stats are pretty decent, but I also don’t think I can really get into any top schools such as MIT, nor do I want to pay the amount of money they ask for.
I was looking at other schools and right now my list is as follow:
Syracuse
Georgia Tech
Penn state
Does anyone have any comments on this list, or any experiences which might help me in this process?
Has anyone in this thread attended Syracuse for engineering, if so, how is their program?
Finally, does anyone have any suggestions on other schools that would be good for Environmental engineering and won’t leave me broke for the rest of my life?
Maybe not very sexy for a MA student, but how about WPI? We loved the campus vibe. It’s very hands-on and project oriented, if that appeals. Campus is beautiful and in a nice part of Worcester. We know a MA student who went off to an Ivy for engineering. They did not like it, transferred to WPI, loved it, and graduated with a great job in hand. Good luck!
I think that you should take a look at UMass Amherst. It looks like an affordable safety for you given your stats and since you are in-state, but it is also a very good university. I also agree with @TomSrOfBoston that McGill is a good school to consider, although it will be academically quite demanding.
I would be very surprised if any of the U.California’s come in even close to 35k per year. You would need to run the NPC for MIT since I am pretty sure that they only have need based aid, although it would be a high reach in any case.
Thanks for the help guys, and honestly when I am talking about 35K a year, its simply cause I really don’t want to be in such a huge debt coming out of college, like a lot of students are. I can, and if the offer is from the right school, would pay more than 35k, but its just the large amount of money thats been scaring me lately.
Thanks
Check out WPI BS in Environmental Engineering @ https://www.wpi.edu/academics/study/environmental-engineering-bs. Be sure to read TTG’s referenced site first to get a better understanding of the college wide project based program.
Environmental studies are interdisciplinary by nature. If you want to get out of town, look at the 45 + off campus project centers scattered all-over the world. Participation does not impact your tuition. See https://www.wpi.edu/admissions/tuition-aid. I know more about this place because I went there. They also offer most other engineering/science/management majors.
Brown University has an interesting program which is also very interdisciplinary. The school has a reputation for flexibility. See it at https://bulletin.brown.edu/the-college/concentrations/evst/. They do not offer the civil engineering major.
To cover all bases, you might want to consider the set of majors which best represent your range of interests.
You don’t have to be made of money, but there is serious competition at all these schools for admission/financial aid. This site may give you some incite into current first year graduate incomes by major. Environmental Engineering for the class of 2016 is listed on page 23 of the outcomes report at https://www.wpi.edu/student-experience/career-development/outcomes. The average income was $61,188 for a BS. If you page back to page three of this report, you can pick the results for any of the majors who graduated that year. Would you consider more traditional Civil Engineering or some other field? Depending on the school you select, when must you make the choice/commitment to a major? What else interest you? Not all programs are the same.
$35K per year—is that what your parents have specifically said is your budget and they can pay without private loans OR is that a number you’ve kind of gleaned from reading here? Check with them and make sure that number is ok with them. Also, you need to make sure AP Chem, AP Physics and AP Calc BC are on your senior year schedule. If not, first year engineering will be brutal.
One thing we learned with engineering admissions is that every school seems to handle admissions into your major a bit differently.
Some accept you straight into your specific engineering major.
Some accept you into a generic first year of engineering and then you have to compete against your classmates and re-apply to get your choice of major.
Some accept you into first year engineering and spend the year teaching you about the different types of engineering and then you get to choose.
What type of admission you would prefer depends on how much you feel your mind is made up about your career path.
The first version, with direct admission to the major, is sometimes used at schools where departmental capacity that is available to students who entered as frosh is limited, and direct admit students fill all available space, so that later change into that major is difficult or highly competitive.
The second and third versions are similar, except that the third version has enough departmental capacity in each major that each major can admit students with 2.0 GPAs and C grades. The second version occurs when departmental capacity for some majors is smaller than student interest, so they use college GPAs or a competitive admission process to select which students will be allowed into each major.
A fourth version, used at Wisconsin, is that more students are directly admitted to the major than departmental capacity, but some of them are weeded out after the first year with GPA requirements that may be significantly higher than 2.0.