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.
If price is a factor, how much are the prices?
Michigan is the strongest school for Engineering.
For engineering, it should come down to Michigan and USC. Can’t go wrong with either, so he might want to look at the specific type of engineering in which he is interested, as well as check out each campus since these two schools have significantly different vibes.
@CASCOUT @goblue2128 Also, consider Duke, if admitted - esp. since OP’s child is considering BME
goblue2128, USC is not as good as Michigan in Engineering. That being said, the OP’s son cannot go wrong with any of those outstanding options. If cost is not a concern, I would go with fit.
If not Duke, then UMich is great
Michigan is better than Duke for engineering period.
not for BME rjk, but in all other disciplines, especially Electrical and Mechanical, Michigan is clearly a more rational choice than Duke for Engineering. But at the undergraduate level, I do not think it matters that much.
One area where Duke equals Michigan does not make it a better engineering program Alexandre.
LA is one of centers of the music industry, but Ann Arbor also has a great music school adjacent to the campus as well as many local clubs and the Ark. Edge to USC. Spanish - definitely USC. Writing - Michigan with a long and storied tradition of writers for over a century. Environment - Michigan except for allergy season. LA water tastes awful, you are surrounded by 20% of the world’s fresh water at Michigan. Weather - you have to like cold to live in Ann Arbor.
For an ME, Michigan has an amazing array of student projects (solar cars, drones, submarines, airplanes) and clubs and it’s proximity to the auto industry is great for internships. For a BME , Michigan is the 2nd largest research university by budget ($1.2 B) with most research in the medical area. Look at the UROP program below:
http://www.engin.umich.edu/college/research/undergrad
Nothing but great choices, but Michigan will give him a more traditional college experience vs an urban one at USC
Thank you!
I agree rjk. As colleges of engineering go, Michigan is clearly the best on the OP’s list. But in BME, Duke is actually better than Michigan, so if that is what the OP’s son wishes to major in, it could make sense.
TooOld4School, you would be surprised just how large and strong Michigan’s Spanish language department is. I would say it is in fact better than USC’s, although LA as a city obviously has a much larger Spanish-speaking population than Ann Arbor.
“I agree rjk. As colleges of engineering go, Michigan is clearly the best on the OP’s list. But in BME, Duke is actually better than Michigan, so if that is what the OP’s son wishes to major in, it could make sense.”
My point was that schools like Duke are given way too much credit for being excellent in all of its academics offerings. USNWR undergraduate rankings have so polluted the thinking here at CC that many posters just automatically assume a highly rated school is strong in all of its disciplines.
No doubt rjk. The US News is a joke. To insinuate that one methodology/formula can somehow rank universities such as Cal or Michigan the same way was as universities such as Dartmouth or Wake Forest is truly laughable. And to make matters worse, the US News does not even audit the data. But I think most people are well aware of the severe flaws of the US News rankings. There aren’t many people in academe or industry who agree with those rankings.
@goblue2128 Can you elaborate on how the vibes are different?
I think that to the naive, the private schools get the nod, especially Brown and Duke. Yes, Duke probably has a somewhat better BME program. Michigan, at BOTH the undergraduate and graduate levels has order of 9 out of 11 departments ranked in the top 10. BME and Chemical are typically laggards in the roughly 12th position. Half of the remainder are in the top 5 nationally: http://www.engin.umich.edu/college/about/facts
In other words, while your BME concentration would be slightly lower in ranking, you won’t take all of your courses in your main concentration, which means that your “other” courses will be taken in superb departments. Several other facts to keep in mind: 1) the school has a VERY large research budget; 2) the school’s physical plant is quite modern with several new buildings (Electrical and computer science and several others) coming on line in last 5 years or so; 3) from the standpoint of interdisciplinarity, Michigan is almost unparalled; 4) as a pioneering institution in computation, the resources for computing are the envy of many an institution.