Engineering Undergrad Help (URGENT!)

The links I gave previously include comments on which schools offer OR, if you are really interested in that.
Not every school offers this, per those links.

There are a large number of great engineering schools, but it’s not clear whether you really want hard core engineering. I consider OR and IS to be at the fringes of engineering, actually. At my school, when I attended, OR was called “IE/OR”, and people referred to that major as “imaginary engineering”. The graduate business school I attended had an Information Systems major, with no engineering component at all. it is somewhat different from Computer Science proper.

Additionally not all schools that are great in engineering are equally great at investment banking recruiting, particularly for NYC- centered jobs. Some of the further-away schools that do place in IB tend to place more for branch offices in their region, not the main office in NYC.

One other school that might meet your objectives is U Michigan. If your parents would go for it.

Being able to pay it back doesn’t make it smart. $130,000 at 6% over 45 years is still nearly $2,000,000. Are you going to make that much MORE to offset the opportunity cost of that money? I don’t think so. That’s only your differential. If you consider the total $180,000 difference at 6%, that’s $2.5M.

Your point about switching majors is a very valid one and reason enough alone to be wary of HMC. You’re pigeonholed pretty tightly there.

Now, rankings…again. Where does HMC fall on the list? Cal Poly? Rose Hulman? Olin? Nowhere, because they don’t offer doctoral degrees and institutional reputation is largely built on the backs of the researchers, not the teachers. As an undergrad, do PhD programs (and all the good and bad that comes with them…large class sizes, high exposure to TAs, world class research) matter to you?

Lastly, it doesn’t matter where you go if you don’t do well. No diploma is a license to print money. Your grades open the most doors. Your school will help some, but only for your first job or two. After that, the field is pretty much even.

There are a few caveats and institutional banking is one of them. There is an unwritten law about which schools are OK. That said, if you don’t have the grades, you’ll still be locked out.

The ED1 deadline for Mudd has passed. Did you end up applying for Ed for Mudd? Either way, given the dealine, isn’t this conversation moot?

@eyemgh So, would you suggest that instead of attending U of Toronto, I should just stay in my own province and go to UBC, which would probably be only 10k per year instead of 20k? I understand trying to save as much $ as possible for undergrad, but immature as it may be, a part of me feels that I should be proud of where I go for undergrad and unfortunately, even though they’re great programs, I can’t say I’ll be happy attending U of T or UBC (even more so). Maybe it’s the caliber of students & their college successes at my prep school, or the fact that Mudd and Cornell, for undergrad programs, are perceived as more “prestigious” within the States (Mudd in Silicon Valley, Cornell throughout the nation), but I always envisioned myself throughout high school attending a selective university, not my “in-state” college. Sorry if this sounds snobbish, but I don’t feel like all my hard work in one of the most rigorous prep schools in the States should result in me going to a large university in Canada, which I could have easily achieved by just staying home & attending my local HS. The whole college process last year was very frustrating [and humbling] for me, and rather than take the opportunity to go to one of my dream schools in the US, it’s like I’m giving up by just passing on Mudd for the second time and going to U of T / UBC.

No, PhD programs do not matter to me. What I’m after is a high quality undergraduate engineering school that has high starting salaries for their grads.

Ironically, all engineering programs are really tough and thus, I personally do not think I’ll do better academically at U of Toronto than at Cornell or Mudd. In fact, I’d say Toronto’s known to be the most cut throat of the three. So if I could have the option to go to a “less competitive, more collaborative” school where I’ll be happier and think I can do better, why wouldn’t I?

@vhsdad I already applied last night to Mudd. I was instructed to apply RD and then I could call them over the next day or so to tell them to change my app to ED1 or ED2.

@monydad Agree with everything you’ve said. Ideally, if I keep my Cornell app & got into it, I’d try the reqs for ORIE or IS&T, as I feel that those are two very versatile engineering majors. I don’t have any engineering experience, so apart from liking chem and math in HS I don’t know what Chem Engineering at U of Toronto entails. That being said I’m not sure if I want more hard engineering or, for lack of a better word, “easier” engineering major like ORIE. I know I want to keep my options open for jobs in NYC IB and Silicon Valley, even though I understand those are two pretty radically different career paths. Thanks for the links, I skimmed through a few of them.

Engineers often have trouble finishing in 4 years, major changes can also extend the time. What if an additional $70K was required because of changes? Would that be doable?

Just one more thing to think about.

And the “I worked too hard for state” argument is heard often here, and the response to that is that the work you did at your prep school hopefully gave you a leg up, so that you can excel in a tough college program, moreso than if you had attended a mediocre high school.

You might have an opportunity to be the “big dog” who gets the best internships and grades and research.

@OHMomof2 I’m in the lucky position that financially, I think that would work, though it really wouldn’t be optimal at all. I don’t want to put too much of a strain on my parents and have to use some of their retirement savings.

I understand where you’re coming from, but I personally don’t think I’ll be a “big dog” at U of T, as I have no prior engineering experience and it’s probably more of a competitive environment than Cornell or Harvey Mudd. I see U of T similar to Berkeley, and I definitely wouldn’t be a top dog there despite coming from a well-known prep school. I’d ideally like a more nurturing, undergrad focused engineering school, though I don’t mind introductory lecture classes. I’m also in a different position than most others who claim “I worked too hard for state”, as I went to a highly ranked prep school where a 1/3 of each class goes to Ivies, Stanford, MIT, etc… Just feel inferior compared to my classmates, I guess.

Maybe I’m underestimating myself, but I just don’t think U of T will be any easier in terms of getting research experience, doing well, etc. than the US options.

I would not call Cornell any of those things. Mudd,definitely.

@OHMomof2 I know, though Cornell does offer the two majors I’m interested in. Honestly, some place like Princeton would be perfect, but I didn’t get in last year so I can’t reapply. Anyways, besides the pt.

I have a couple comments here. First, forget starting salaries. The starting salaries of graduates of a given school has far more to do with geography than it does the quality of the school. A “crappy” school in NYC is likely to have a higher average starting salary than a “stellar” school in Nebraska simply because of where the graduates tend to live and the associated costs of living.

Second, PhD programs do have some potential impact on your undergraduate education. Do you have any interest in getting experience in undergraduate research? If so, then having a strong PhD program generally correlates well with strong research opportunities.

re # 48, You’d want some references before you accept that you would be “nurtured” at Mudd. IMO.

Re #46 I see no reason why an engineering student at either Cornell Or Mudd would need extra time.
That is not often the case at Cornell.
Cornell engineering students do not declare a major till second semester sophomore year. There are sophomore year electives that may be prerequisites for future courses in a major, but presumably you would be taking the ones that would help you decide.
IIRC Mudd only offers a general “engineering” major.

Re #45, be aware that, at least back when I was in school, Chem E was considered among the toughest engineering majors.

My son didn’t choose the cheapest school he got into, although it made it to his final three. I’m suggesting you do two things. 1) decide what you want out of a school based on more than just the ranking. 2) consider the real cost of spending more, in your case LOTS more. College is partly investment and partly experience. The experience component is important, but doesn’t have a tangible ROI.

Neither Mudd or Cornell are known as nurturing schools.

Lastly, my son went to a good private prep school, amassed very good stats, and didn’t apply to any of the schools you mentioned (no Ivys, no Caltech, no MIT). He didn’t see any of them as attractive based on what he wanted out of an engineering program. There’s WAY more to vetting programs than rankings and bumper sticker pride.

@boneh3ad I do want to do some research as an undergrad. For somewhere like Mudd that doesn’t have PhD programs, shouldn’t there be ample research opportunities still?

@monydad I know, I’ve read that Chem E is one of the hardest engineering majors. Unfortunately my parents don’t seem to believe me and think that it’s bogus…

@eyemgh In terms of a tangible ROI, Harvey Mudd ranks second (https://www.payscale.com/college-roi), so do you think that going in that much debt is still very dangerous? I shouldn’t have said the word ‘nurturing’- what I meant was that I wanted a collaborative engineering environment with good access to professors, etc… Something along those lines. I applaud your son for looking past rankings and bumper sticker pride-- I myself am trying to get past those things (for example: who in Canada/across the world has heard of Harvey Mudd? People don’t go there for its commonplace prestige), but they are pretty important to me, nevertheless.

Keep in mind that 99% of Harvey Mudd graduates are STEM (not education majors!), and the majority are Engineering/CS grads. You’ll notice that Payscale’s list is dominated by Engineering/Stem and “specialty” schools. It’s an interesting list, but I wouldn’t use it as a proxy to compare Mudd to U of T or Cornell…

You’ll have to check with each individual school. It appears that HMC does offer some research opportunity, but the range of available projects/labs is very limited. It is, first and foremost, a teaching-focused school, not a research institution. That means it’s not really set up to handle large MURI-type research programs, and the fairly small faculty size means the breadth of types of projects available will be more limited as well. That’s not to say this is necessarily a bad thing. It’s just one more factor to consider.

Two things: First, payscale is a terrible measure of anything. It’s a self-selected sample of graduates of a school, not a representative sample. Second, salaries at a given school depend largely on major and geography. HMC is primarily a STEM school (which has a higher average salary than other fields) and is located in California, which has a high cost of living (and associated high salary). Does an engineer make a meaningfully larger salary than one from UCLA? Probably not. Do they make more than an average engineer from Purdue? Probably, but likely not when controlling for cost of living.

Have you looked at Olin? A friend’s kid recently turned down MIT for it, mainly for the reasons you cite. Collaboration is basically its reason for existence.

Of course there are. Pro is you don’t compete with grad students to work on them, cons is they won’t be the ginormous things possible at large Us. My kid’s LAC has an official summer research program, paid - many schools do.

Mudd’s - https://www.hmc.edu/research/

@Gator88NE @boneh3ad You’re right, thanks for pointing that out.

@OHMomof2 No, I didn’t look at Olin. I’ve never visited, so I could be wrong, but from glancing on the website & seeing there’s no competitive sports team, it seems like it’s a much more studious/nerdy environment, even compared to somewhere like Mudd. Not that that’s a bad thing, but socially I don’t think I’d like it there.

Olin is less “driven” that Mudd, but it is VERY unique. It is tiny, less than 100 students per class, but it’s on the campus of Babson, so there is access to more typical college thigs. For better or worse, it has a Hogwarts sort of vibe. It’s very competitive. Your GPA will probably keep you out. Unfortunately, the same will most likely be the case at Cornell and Mudd. GPA, for most schools, is their primary screening hurdle.

@eyemgh No doubt that my GPA is probably too low for Olin. However, my GPA has increased from last year, has gone thru Mudd’s screening and I feel confident personally in my chances, considering I’m a recruit.