<p>Looking far ahead for my youngest, now a sophomore....DH and I are both Duke grads, and would love for him to go if he can get in. This kid is naturally smart; I'm not worried about his scores at all. Let's suppose a 2200 SAT for the purposes of the question (that's the lowest he would get, I imagine). He'll have a 4.0 or close to it unweighted (not a challenging school). He'll have 8ish AP's--school doesn't offer a whole bunch. Only hook is possibly that we are from WV--almost no one in this state goes out of state to college (10 out of 350 in my daughter's class, and we are a "high end" high school).</p>
<p>He'll be an engineering major--he's a tinkerer. (Too bad in one way, because I could see him at Williams.) He's an all-around kid, not quirky like my oldest (another reason I think he'd be good at Duke.) Plays football and academic bowl, ski club and American Math competition. He does enjoy competition. He's a friendly outgoing kid who interacts comfortably with adults.</p>
<p>Our Priorities
*engineering major (don't know what kind yet, obviously)
*kids from all over the US (not like UVa, Mich, UNC, although they are great schools.)
*residential all four years (at least 70%)
*doesn't matter what state or what setting (rural or city both OK)
*we can pay full-ride</p>
<p>The list below was the easiest part--but what about matches, because the below is all reach. Are there engineering colleges that are matches that still draw students from all over the US? This is the part I struggle with.</p>
<p>Any comments on the list below? Any specific engineering comments? I just don't know a lot about some of these schools. Are any more LAC-like than others? I have a soft spot for LACs. That's why MIT and CMU aren't on the list. Also DH and I aren't from the northeast, so no, we don't have any idea what the difference is between Yale and Princeton and Dartmouth. Thanks!</p>
<p>Yale
Brown
Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth
Duke
Vanderbilt
Northwestern
Princeton
Rice
Stanford
Tufts
Tulane
U Chicago
U Penn
Wash U
Swathmore???</p>
<p>I think you need to do some more research…to have Duke on the list but not Michigan doesn’t make any sense at all. I think you need to go back and look at the statistics of where kids come from at Virginia and at Michigan. At Michigan it’s got to be approaching 70% NOT from Michigan. I can’t speak for UVa and I’m guessing Duke has a similar percentage of students that are from the region as Michigan does from it’ region. Chicago doesn’t have engineering and there are many differences between Yale, Princeton and Dartmouth. If you are looking for tippy top schools, you’re missing some of the better engineering schools. Also when you do dig deeper, look closely at the concentrations within engineering - not all schools have the same concentrations (for instance Tulane has limited concentrations).</p>
<p>Anyway, you have plenty of time to dig deeper with your son and tweak the list. Sophomore year the best thing to do is simply to figure out if they want the big/small or urban/rural…then you can look at potential majors and once they have their testing figure out the college list.</p>
<p>I agree with Mom. The Ivies are not all equal when it comes their engineering offerings. In fact, I would choose Cornell and Columbia over the rest.
Bucknell, Lafayette, Union - all have an LAC feel to them. U.Rochester, B.U., Northeastern, Syracuse, GWU etc. - universities.
Has he visited any campuses yet? He may have a preference for city versus suburbs vs country or campus size.
You may want to take him to visit CMU or Case Western to see if he may actually like the slightly more nerdy vibe there. If so, also consider RPI or WPI. Some of these schools may also offer merit scholarships if he does as well as you predict. Saving $20,000 per year is nothing to sneeze at.</p>
<p>If he loves Duke as much as you do, then that is wonderful; it makes the decision easy. Just make sure it is what **he **really wants and not an expectation based on your dreams for his future. My husband and I were hoping our son would go to our alma mater but he actually was more interested in the CMU,RPI, WPI type schools. It is his life to live :-)</p>
<p>P.S. - My son loved Swarthmore but the engineering program there seems like an afterthought. The engineering facilities were “lame” though everything else we saw was awesome. I listed GWU mostly for the location, but their engineering program is not as strong as their liberal arts program.</p>
<p>Swarthmore does have an accredited engineering program, but barely. You have to really want to go to Swarthmore (a small, ultra-elite LAC in a beautiful suburban setting), and be willing to take a bare-bones engineering curriculum as a result. My impression is that many of the prospective engineers wind up switching to physics; maybe 10-15 kids/year graduate as engineering majors. On the other hand, in every respect OTHER than engineering it is two or three levels above most of the other small LAC-type schools that offer engineering (like Union, Lafayette, Bucknell). Also, unlike the others (and unlike Duke), it’s a place where there are considerably more students who speak Greek than join organizations with Greek-letter names, and where if you are invited to the party it’s worth asking whether there’s going to be beer or Marxist-Leninist theory there.</p>
<p>If you are going to include Yale and Brown on the list, there’s really no reason to exclude Harvard. All three of them are wonderful universities that are trying to revive and revitalize their engineering programs. There are lots of reasons for prospective engineers to go to Harvard or Yale (including incredibly good faculty/student ratios in the engineering departments).</p>
<p>You should probably research Johns Hopkins and USC, too. They are probably high matches, or lowish reaches, for the student you describe. Places like Lehigh or Bucknell would be matches.</p>
<p>Of the super-selective schools, most of the Ivy League is not well known for engineering, and many of them are rather limited in engineering offerings. Cornell and Princeton have the best engineering reputations among them. Other super-selective schools known for engineering include MIT, Caltech, and Stanford.</p>
<p>But many of the good engineering schools are state universities, including flagships in places like CA, IL, MI, MN, WI, TX, etc. as well as other state universities like Texas A&M, Georgia Tech, NCSU, Virginia Tech, etc…</p>
<p>Agree with a couple of the suggestions already made – Michigan pulls from all over the country, and is quite “Duke-like” in the school spirit and vibe, I think. Harvey Mudd also comes to mind with the LAC component. I know you said you can pay full fare, but USC also has great merit scholarships if your son turns out to be a National Merit Finalist – and who among us wouldn’t want to save a lot if our kid loved the school anyway?</p>
<p>Agree with those who say the ivys are great schools but not necessarily the best option for an engineer. If he is not quirky, Harvey Mudd, though a great, great school, might not be the best fit for him.</p>
<p>I don’t understand why you are eliminating CMU - more than MIT it really is strong in the arts and doesn’t just attract engineers and comp sci majors. It does have a great proportion of people who know exactly what they want to be when they grow up though. Big foreign contingent. (Especially with the grad students.) It’s a nice size, Pittsburgh is a nice city. </p>
<p>Tufts has a small engineering school. Half the class comes from the NJ, NY and the New England states. Like most of the other schools on your list it’s a small to mid-size research university. </p>
<p>For my older son we found it best to look for the best programs. Those schools generally had very low admissions rates. We found that the smaller engineering schools were not only good safe schools, but had the added bonus of throwing merit money at top students.</p>
<p>If you are looking for LACs Harvey Mudd always advertises itself as an engineering LAC. With the five college consortium with adjacent campuses it really can offer a less engineering all the time atmosphere than most of the small engineering schools. (WPI and RPI also have consortiums with local colleges, but appear to be considerably less convenient.)</p>
<p>As for your list - with the exception of Tulane and Swarthmore, it’s just a list of the top colleges in the US - many not known for engineering.</p>
<p>OP- Has your s taken the SAT or PSAT yet? On what are you basing these projected scores?</p>
<p>As a HS sophomore, my younger s thought he would be a history major and pursue law. Then business intrigued him. Then medicine. He started out as a chemistry/history major and graduated as a Chemical Engineering/psychology major. Just food for thought…</p>
<p>straightshooter, I believe it might be legitimate. This is someone very early in the process…with a high school sophomore. I sincerely meant when I said more research is needed…the strongest engineering schools aren’t all in the east so this list looks like a list that might be compiled by a new to this process in the east person who doesn’t have alot of knowledge about engineering might put together. Tulane has always been a favorite place for the east coast. The concept of having an LAC like atmosphere + engineering adds a new twist which has been discussed on a couple really good threads (one that i started this year). Another noticeably absent powerhouse engineering school is Georgia Tech which is about 1/2 Georgia 1/2 not Georgia in the school. If the OP can get the small vs. big - university vs. college figured out the OP should be able to put together a solid list after the sophomore is a junior and has a few standardized tests under the belt and perhaps a better understanding of what might be studied.</p>
<p>Take a look at Harvey Mudd, Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, University of Michigan, and University of Illinios (UC) also.</p>
<p>Case Western Reserve and Carnegie Mellon are both schools that have top notch engineering programs, are manageable in size and have lots of other course offerings outside of the engineering area. I haven’t been to CMU but CWRU has a nerdy vibe on campus but the students are pretty social.</p>
<p>I think an important question can be if he wants to continue playing football in college or wants to be at a school where it’s an important part of the student experience. At a Divison III school it’s likely he’d be able to make the team, but football won’t be a central part of the university experience for most students. At somewhere like Michigan, it’s more of the opposite.</p>
<p>For the type of kid you describe-athletic, non quirky, social =the schools that seem to fit the best might be schools like Duke, Vanderbilt, UVa. I would not necessarily dismiss UVa at this point- there are plenty of kids there from all over the country , tons of loyal alumni, lots in the DC area . The kind of kid who may gravitate to a school like Duke probably is not the best fit for a school like CMU, MIT, etc. But let him check out lots of different kinds of schools. He is a sophomore and his interests could change by the time he is ready to apply to college.</p>
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