<p>I was accepted to Fulton. I wanted to get some feedback from people attending the University. Coming from the East Coast my parents are not that enthusiastic about the school. My parents said that they cant understand how the Engineering Department is ranked high by US World New Report, yet the acceptance rate is like 95%. On the East Coast high ranking Engineering Departments are very competitive. Can someone explain how this works for this University?
Also, if you are attending, how do you feel about this department and the university overall? </p>
<p>Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. We are most probably going to an orientation visit, but most of those visits are very rah, rah for the school as they accepted you and now want you to attend.</p>
<p>Are the students happy at Tempe?
What is the atmosphere on this campus?</p>
<p>I’m in the honors college, so my experience is not going to be the same necessarily as regular students on the Tempe campus. I am, however, OOS (Midwest), and I quite like it. I think this is largely because 1) I am in the honors college and 2) I am in a living community so I met a lot of people through that. From what I’ve seen people are happy, but there are so many people I obviously wouldn’t know everyone. I’m not sure what you mean by the atmosphere. As to the acceptance rate, it is a huge research university, and so even with a high acceptance rate they are going to have good professors. And because of costs I know people who could have gone to Ivy leagues and elite LACs that go here, though that is certainly not the norm, even in the honors college.
Also, do you have scholarships? Because I have to say ASU is way too expensive and not a good enough school to pay full OOS price. If I didn’t have a huge scholarship, I’d be going to be considerably higher ranked state flagship.</p>
<p>If you want to understand ASU’s high acceptance rate, you need to understand the philosophy of the school. Michael Crow, ASU’s controversial president, believes that all students who have the ability to complete college level work should have the opportunity to do so, irregardless of their past academic performance. As a result, ASU’s standards for admissions are very low–and despite the university’s best efforts, ASU also has a high attrition rate for freshmen. Since the US News Report weighs both selectivity of the university and freshmen retention rates in their rankings, it is natural that ASU would not place highly on that list. </p>
<p>However, admission to ASU does not translate into admission in the various colleges within the university; just because you were admitted to ASU does not mean that you will automatically be accepted into the engineering program. Once admitted to a college, in this case, Ira Fulton, you are expected to meet the academic and professional requirements of the school in order to maintain that enrollment. So if your GPA falls below the threshold required by that college, for example, you will be asked to leave the program. Ira Fulton is a notoriously rigorous program, offering high quality professors and classes that range the full scope of the engineering fields. ASU is a Tier 1 Research University, and undergraduates are encouraged to work in research labs with professors for pay. Many students write undergraduate thesis, do cross-disciplinary work with the biological institutes on campus, take graduate courses as undergraduates, and gain admission to the best graduate schools in the country. The standards for Ira Fulton are high, the expectations are high, and out of each freshman class of engineering majors, more students will transfer to other colleges within ASU than will end up graduating from Ira. But I know a number of engineers trained in ASU’s program, and they are top notch. </p>
<p>ASU is a really great school, but your experience will be what you make up. You have the option to challenge yourself here, but only if you are willing to work hard and push yourself. Ira Fulton is a great way to do that.</p>
<p>I agree with the above poster that engineering is one of the strongest programs at ASU, and that the explanation of the acceptance rate is correct. (Though I have heard more cynical voices say they accept people they know will drop out to help pay for the people who stay.) However, I feel like it costs a lot of money to go to ASU OOS. If you do not expect merit money, I wouldn’t count on financial aid unless you a really, really low income, and even then you will still be paying quite a bit. ASU is a public school in a state that doesn’t care about education; they can’t afford to give the necessary financial aid to in state students, much less OOS. If your family has enough money to afford ASU tuition than go for it; but if money is an issue is there an alternative? ASU is a lovely school, but it’s not worth going into debt for. (I would argue few, and possibly no, schools are.)</p>
<p>Thank you very much for all of that information. It really does help a lot when trying to think this through. It helps the most to understand about the acceptance rate vs. the rank in the engineering department. I just couldn’t understand that. I didn’t know of the school’s philosophy.</p>
<p>To the OP, if you are interested in learning more about that philosophy, or your parents would like some more information, search for Michael Crow and the New American University on google. That is what he calls his vision for the college and you should be able to get a better grasp than my little summary.</p>
<p>Also, I completely agree with emerlus. Do not go into significant debt for ASU. The state is withdrawing a huge amount of public funding–they’ve reneged on 50% of promised funding so far–and this is going to have an effect on students and costs over the next four years. If you get a scholarship, that money is secure, but look closely at how that money is tied to increased costs. Some scholarships are called “tuition waivers”, and those increase as tuition increases. Tuition wavers do not cover any fees, books, or room and board, and the latest tactic to raise money is to tack on “Economic Recovery Fees” in order to force tuition waver students to contribute to the cost increases. Other scholarships are for a set amount of money each year and do not increase as costs increase. The burden of cost on the students are going to increase over the next few years, so that is something to carefully consider when evaluating any offers from ASU.</p>