<p>What are some decent engineering schools which have a good quality of life? Meaning good weather, diverse, lots of things to do and students dont study 24/7.</p>
<p>Pitt has everything except good weather! There is usually only a couple of big snowfalls every winter and very few days where the temperature is in the single digits. There's several colleges in the immediate vicintity and a lot to do in the city.</p>
<p>how about stanford--very happy students, nice weather.</p>
<p>Stanford, if I'm not mistaken, has the highest quality of life ratings for engineering [as always, it's arguable].</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>I know stanford has a awesome quality of life but its damn hard to get into. I was thinking of University of Texas Austin and Michigan.</p>
<p>Pitt?...hahahaha...Pitt? Pitt sux--dont EVER go there.</p>
<p>and hows virginia tech?</p>
<p>Depends on what you want, VT. Some people want rural, some want city life. Not only does a city give you lots of sporting and cultural events, shopping, restaurants, etc, but it also usually gives you alot of job and internship opportunities. To each his own.</p>
<p>I would also have to vote for Stanford. Good weather, diverse population, and perhaps most importantly, they aren't constantly trying to weed you out. While it's no cakewalk to get A's at Stanford, at the same time, at the same time, it's nearly impossible to flunk out. Basically, as long as you put in some minimal effort, you know you're going to pass, something that is far from assured at the engineering programs at many other schools.</p>
<p>Rice is a little rainy, but everyone there is pretty much deliriously happy. The campus doesn't feel like it's in Houston. As I'm currently visiting in SoCal, I can vouch for it being incredibly gorgeous here... Caltech's really pretty. Olin seems like it has a great quality of life, too. Wash U's pretty, and St Louis is a nice town. Like everyone says, Stanford's really gorgeous, too. Lots of good options out there!</p>
<p>UOP is a great engineering school one hour from San Francisco, beautiful school. Looks like an ivy league school.</p>
<p>Univ of Wisconsin. What with global warming and all, the glaciers are hardly evident.</p>
<p>The OP's question makes me wonder: What engineering schools do NOT offer a good quality of life for their students (ie, live and breathe engineering work 24/7 with not a lot of other things to do)?</p>
<p>Lfk725, I am strongly tempted to say MIT and Caltech, for these schools are known for simply taking over your whole life, particularly if you're an engineering student. Drinking from a firehose is an apt description. </p>
<p>But I don't think they're the worst. I think the worst are the large public schools - Berkeley, Michigan, Georgia Tech, and the like. The sad truth is that many of these schools not only combine a massive amount of work, but, far worse, also exhibit a strong attitude of simply not caring about the welfare of their undergrad engineers. MIT and Caltech are certainly no cakewalk, but at least the engineering majors don't actively weed people. The public schools do. Moreover, even those MIT and Caltech students who get bad grades (but who still pass) will almost certainly still get a half-decent job due to the prestige of their degree. And even those who do flunk out of MIT and Caltech will be given opportunities to come back and try again, although I agree that both schools ought to do more on this score.</p>
<p>However, the famous public schools often evince little such compassion. If you're doing poorly at these schools, nobody really cares about you. Not only that but many employers simply won't consider hiring you because of your bad grades. These schools generally don't have an "MIT-exception" or a "Caltech-exception", so if you're just sliding by with a 2.3 engineering GPA at Berkeley or Michigan, you may have problems in finding a job. But those who have it the worst by far are those who flunk out. Many of these schools just don't give a fig about you if you are flunking out. Some of them, like Berkeley, won't even let you switch out to another major that is more suited to you. </p>
<p>To me, a big measure of the worth of the program is determined by how the program treats those students who are not doing well. The star students at any top program are all going to go on to achieve great things. You don't have to worry about them. But what about those students who are not stars? Sadly, a lot of programs, most notably the publics, will, without a second thought, toss these students out like yesterday's garbage.</p>
<p>i dunno... uh cornell and columbia</p>
<p>Cornell is a great university, and a great place IMO. However, have no illusions the engineering program there is very tough. An acquaintance of mine attended Stanford engineering afterwards for a Master's degree, and he told me that Stanford was much easier.</p>
<p>I'm pretty sure there are places to get a good engineering education that are less "24/7" then Cornell. There must be.</p>
<p>Also I liked the weather there welll enough, but saying that the weather is "good, per OP's criteria, might be considered a stretch.</p>
<p>There is enough to do given the free time you have available as an engineer there to do things, but saying there's "lots" to do is a matter of personal taste, and also is a comparative issue.</p>
<p>It is definitely diverse though; there are people from everyplace.</p>
<p>At CMU the SCS admin told a story that a few years ago Apple hired the 135th place student in a class of 135. They wrote the next year and said, "Please send us all your 135th place students!" One more reason why we will let our son go there rather than UIUC. Although students at UIUC so seem to love it there, in my opinion it's a corn field in a university in a corn field!</p>
<p>I can't speak for Apple, but personally over the course of my professional careeer I've worked with a large number of UIUC engineering grads, and I have to say they are top-notch in my experience.</p>
<p>Based on the people I've known who came out if UIUC, if I had a kid interested in engineering I'd feel great about sending them there.</p>
<p>The same can be said for the people I've known from CMU, though.</p>
<p>I haven't been there, but it seems to me that being in a corn field with 40,000 other kids your own age, doing sort of the same thing you're doing, might well be more fun than being in a dispersed, diverse city that is set up mostly for married people with families and cars. Maybe.</p>
<p>According to the literature there are 135,000 college kids in the Pittsburgh area; I also heard somewhere it's second only to Boston in number of students. But I agree that students love UIUC probably for the reasons you mention; I was speaking from my point of view! The only reason UIUC was not up there at the top for our S was precisely that there were 40,000 students, and nothing anyone said gave us the impression that they were really watching our for the individual students (as opposed, for example, to Stanford and WUSTL who really seem to care). If our S starts slipping or goofing or whatever we want someone to notice and come to his aid, and CMU SCS sounds like they will do that. I was an NMF and went to an excellent state school (UMich) and was kicked out of the Honors College by the end of the freshman year. If I knew then....I would have picked a smaller school.</p>
<p>What about UCLA?</p>