<p>Hey all, I'm a senior from MA looking to major in Electrical Eng or Electrical/Computer Eng. I'm 99% sure I want to be an engineer, but I've heard all those stories about people turning a 180 in college and whatnot. Ideally, I'd like to be on a fairly large campus near a city; however, I'm fairly open.</p>
<p>My list consists of:
MIT (absolute top choice and dream school)
Cornell (reach)
CMU (reach)
BU
Univ. of Maryland - CP
Northeastern
RPI
WPI (safety - I'm guaranteed in)</p>
<p>In case the first three don't work out, I think my next best choice would be UMD because of its proximity to DC and that it's a large school. How is it for engineering? Also, how would the rest of the list compare (excluding the reaches)?</p>
<p>Virginia Tech is a great egineering school, as well as UVA. Both large campuses but Vt is located kind of in a rural and urban setting. It's kind of hard to describe. They are both big campuses too.</p>
<p>have you considered GaTech?
awesome engineering program, but if you decide to switch you can always go into their business school. And it's right in midtown atlanta, which is a plus b/c atlanta is awesome.</p>
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I'm 99% sure I want to be an engineer, but I've heard all those stories about people turning a 180 in college and whatnot.
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Heard all these stories is an understatement. More than 1/2 the people who start in engineering end up switching. It's even higher in EE. There are a few schools that are exceptions, but it holds for most of them.
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According to most statistics, engineering schools graduate between one-third and one-half of the students who start out in engineering programs. Electrical engineering is particularly hard hit, with approximately 20,000 students graduating out of the 60,000 who enter EE programs each year EETimes.com</a> - Undergrad brain drain imperils U.S. industry, educators say
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The problem, I think, is threefold [ul][<em>]Few kids, unless they have a parent who is an engineer, really know what the working life of an engineer is like and if its going to be a fit for them [</em>]because engineering is so intensively math based, kids in HS don't have exposure to what the classes are going to be like so the don't know if they're going to enjoy (or tolerate!) them[]the classes are **hard* and a lot of kids discover they don't want to be spending 2-3 hours outside of class studying and doing homework for every hour in class[/ul]</p>
<p>Almost 90% of the students who start out in engineering at Cornell wind up graduating from engineering. At the lower tier engineering schools, the percent might be more like 40%.</p>
<p>U Maryland College Park is an excellent engineering school. It is among the top 20 in the country in electrical, both undergrad and grad.</p>
<p>FWIW (and I wouldn't use this as anything more than a rough rule-of-thumb), here's how U.S. news ranks your schools for 1) undergrad electrical engineering, 2) undergrad engineering in general, and 3) overall university ranking</p>
<p>A couple of observations. First, you're right, MIT, Cornell, and Carnegie Mellon (in that order) are clearly the class of this bunch. Second, if you're guaranteed admission to WPI, I'm not sure why you'd bother with BU and Northeastern, since WPI is a better engineering school than either of them---unless you just really want to be in Boston. Third, RPI is arguably slightly better than U Maryland, but both of those schools represent a fine middle ground between your reaches and your safety.</p>
<p>I agree with the suggestion to look at Georgia Tech -- good bang for your buck, and it's one of the top-ranked engineering schools in the country. It's a large campus in a relatively large city and you'll have lots of support from other engineering buddies; also, if that 1% slips in and changes your major there are other options in the schools of liberal arts, architecture, and management.</p>