Engineering Schools at an Affordable Price for Me

<p>I met very few engineers from Georgia Tech in Silicon Valley, more UIUC.</p>

<p>" I met very few engineers from Georgia Tech in Silicon Valley, more UIUC." That doesn’t surprise me at all . UIUC is much larger than Georgia Tech, for one thing. Georgia Tech is also east coast and many graduates may gravitate to the south or east coast in general. One of my kids (an east coast grad) was recruited by a couple of big Silicon Valley companies but indicated to the recruiters that he was only interested in their east coast locations. No interest at all in relocating to Silicon Valley. I would imagine lots of people from Illinois end up staying in the Midwest. But those that want to relocate could potentially go either way ( prefer east or west coast).</p>

<p>Yeah, I agree with sevmom, I could see why that’s true. And I do plan on going to grad school, so I would take location into account then.</p>

<p>@sevmom: </p>

<p>GTech’s College of Engineering is actually bigger than UIUC’s College of Engineering (8K undergrads vs. 6K undergrads, respectively).</p>

<p>For grad school, they’d both be highly respected (along with MIT, Stanford, Cal, CalTech, Cornell, UMich, Purdue, and UT-Austin).</p>

<p>Thanks for everything, you’ve been really helpful. I’ll post what I end up deciding to apply to; it shouldn’t be too long until then.</p>

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<p>Alabama isnt that far. it isnt further than GT, and it is closer than UT or TAMU.</p>

<p>with free tuition plus 2500 per year, the remaining costs would be very low.</p>

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Do you qualify for financial aid? Your post suggests that you don’t or perhaps not very much? Penn does not give merit aid so I’m confused about the cost comment. Penn has a strong well regarded Electrical Engineering department. Top high tech companies recruit intensely at Penn.</p>

<p>@thegc97 - My D will be starting at UMD and is in the Honors College. The average SAT score for Honors College students is 1400+ (Math and CR only). That being said, every year there are kids with those scores or higher who do not get into Honors and kids with lower scores who do get in. It is truly a holistic evaluation and they look at everything you bring to the table.</p>

<p>PurpleTitan, Interesting numbers about the size of the engineering schools. The overall undergraduate size of the schools are very different,of course, with UIUC being much larger than GT, and the CS undergrad numbers are similar (1235 to 1313 GT in 2013). There may be less GT grads in Silicon Valley more because of where they end up wanting to work . I wonder how heavily Silicon Valley companies recruit at UIUC and GT undergrad career fairs specifically for their SV locations?</p>

<p>I just looked at UIUC’s engineering website, and it says they had 8393 engineering undergrads in 2013. GT 9278 but CS is separate I believe. The CS numbers seem comparable.</p>

<p>I guess you can’t trust Wikipedia.</p>

<p>It would be interesting to see the totals of how many grads actually do go to Silicon Valley from the respective schools. A lot of recruiting does tend to be more local. Google has a large presence in Pittsburgh these days (and their office is expanding there), and even though some of their CS grads I’m sure end up in SV , I’m guessing a lot also end up staying in the Pittsburgh office. </p>

<p>75% of Carnegie Mellon’s CS majors end up in the West or Northwest. Only 9% in the mid-Atlantic region and it looks like only 4 of the over 100 graduates who were going to work stayed in the Pittsburgh area:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.cmu.edu/career/salaries-and-destinations/2013-survey/pdfs-one-pagers/SCS%20Post%20Grad%20Handout%202013.pdf”>http://www.cmu.edu/career/salaries-and-destinations/2013-survey/pdfs-one-pagers/SCS%20Post%20Grad%20Handout%202013.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>For engineering, it also looked liked very few stayed in the Pittsburgh area:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.cmu.edu/career/salaries-and-destinations/2013-survey/cit.html”>http://www.cmu.edu/career/salaries-and-destinations/2013-survey/cit.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>That’s very interesting, dadinator. The Google expansion in Pittsburgh is recent so I wonder if they’ll start getting more people there. Of course, CMU CS attracts a very natonal student base so it is not surprising that lots of kids would end up on the West Coast (since many kids want to be where they think the action is and there are kids there from the West Coast and other parts of the country originally ). Illinois and Georgia Tech will have more local students (many will want to relocate to the West but many will probably also want to stay more local). I am in Virginia and many of the kids from our state schools end up in the DC area. But , of course, some do relocate to the West Coast at graduation but more seem to stay on the East Coast. At least, that has been my observation over the years.</p>

<p>dadinator,I was curious about the CMU figures since my husband went there many years ago. The CS numbers are much higher (understandably because of CS ) for relocation to the West and NW than other majors. Just a few examples : civil (67% Mid Atlantic, West 8, NW 0), mechanical( 30 MA, 12 W, 9 NW), Chemical (32 MA, 12 W, 6 NW), Tepper business (28 MA, 6 W, 4, NW, 44 NE). So, it really varies by major and CS is clearly attracting a very national student base that is gravitating to SV and the NW.</p>

<p>Having an office in Pittsburgh can help increase the company’s visibility to students at universities there, as well as have more opportunities (for both the company and students at local universities) for trial runs through summer employment or internships.</p>

<p>Note that CMU is hardly the only university in the Pittsburgh area.</p>

<p>“Note that CMU is hardly the only university in the Pittsburgh area.” That’s true and I went to the other big one!</p>

<p>More useless info I found interesting that I’ll post since I took the time to look it up: numbers for Fine Arts grads at CMU- Drama ( MA 20 %, W 22, NW 1, NE 44-obviously makes sense as lots of kids are going to NY or LA to try to break into acting or other aspects learned in the drama department), Music (MA 45, W 18, NE 18, NW 0), Art ( MA 59, W 8, NW 0, NE 13).</p>

<p>Just drove through the University of Maryland campus last month. It is a very pretty campus with a great Honors Program. Here is a link. <a href=“http://www.ece.umd.edu/node/199”>http://www.ece.umd.edu/node/199&lt;/a&gt; Many kids in engineering though do not participate in an Honors program so you probably would not be at a disadvantage if you did not get Honors. Other public possibilities: Pitt, Virginia Tech, UVa, and of course your NY instate publics .</p>

<p>@sevmom‌ sorry I meant the honors college, like the Gemstone program. I think that’s something different. </p>