<p>Fairly small, nice suburban campus, good school for science, engineering, aviation. Large but mostly stark dorm rooms -- kind of just brick walls and everything is white and gray inside. Has large contingent of international students (about 25-30% of all students). That is due partly to its giving merit awards to many domestic and foreign students (up to 1/2 tuition) and offers need based financial aid to internationals. Has some issues with some profs that struggle with the English language (that exists at all engineering schools but somewhat more so at FIT). Has somewhat of an "in" with NASA Space Center, which is nearby, but then so do many colleges. Melboune is like many of the coastal "cities" in Florida -- someone decided to put up a big suburb but forgot to construct the city. The beach/ocean is about 2 to 3 miles east of campus. Has an ocean engineering program where one of the "requirements" is to spend a summer on a yacht owned by the school going up and down waterways near the coast and doing testing. </p>
<p>If you are just starting to look at colleges and particularly for engineering, there is a lot to look into and some things to know:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Most states have very good engineering programs at one or more of their public universities and thus one place to always look is at your own state's public universities, particularly if cost is a factor. U Florida and U Central Florida both fit that bill in Florida and a place like U Colorado surprises many to learn that 15 astronauts have been educated there. </p></li>
<li><p>Like admission to colleges in general, grades and test scores needed to get in vary from very high to average depending to a degree on the conceptual ranking of the college nationwide, except that you very often need higher grades and test scores to get into a university's engineering program than any other programs, so 50% ranges for rank/test scores for admission that you may find on-line for many universities as a whole are misleading to evaluate chances of admission if you are choosing engineering (and often science); their web-sites often publish separately the 50% range for engineering. Example: Illinois' 50% range in general is usually about top 18% to to top 8% class rank and 26 to 30 ACT, whereas its engineering 50% range is often top 12% to 4% and 29 to 33 ACT.</p></li>
<li><p>Those considered to be your highly ranked engineering colleges are not the same as those considered to be your highly ranked colleges in general. Those considered to be among the top in engineering include MIT, Caltech, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Illinois, Michigan, Georgia Tech, Carnegie Mellon, Purdue, Rose-Hulman, Cornell, Texas, Wisconsin, Virginia Tech, Harvey Mudd, Cooper Union, and all your military academies. Ivies, other than Cornell, do not crack the top ten. (Note, the above listing is meant as example and not to rule out any colleges)</p></li>
<li><p>If you go into engineering, you will find that course material you will be taught in science, math and engineering is the same from one college to another. That is partly due to the fact that most college engineering programs are subject to accreditation by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) which has unifom standards. Where colleges differ is in research facilities available, size of classes, and then many hard to measure factors such as style and quality of teaching, the extent to which they consider the first two years of courses (most of which are the same for all engineering students) to be "weed-out" courses, access to professors. research oppurtunities for undergrads, number of profs who cannot speak fluent English, and number of profs who consider teaching to be some necessary evil they tolerate, and do badly, to allow them to do what they really want to do -- research.</p></li>
<li><p>You mention "space technology and engineering." Many universities have very good aeronautical/aerospace engineering programs but those involved in "space technology" are very often mechanical, materials, electrical, and computer engineers, so do not limit your search process to a single field. </p></li>
<li><p>Engineering is very often the most difficult program at any university to get through. You usually need more total credit hours to graduate than other majors, thus requiring a larger per semester load, and it is common for many to go 4 1/2 or 5 years for an engineering degree. Also, on top of that extra load you face extra hours in class in comparison to a liberal arts major because you get many 1 credit hour labs where the lab time is actually 2 to 3 hours per week. In other words, a typical sophomore engineering student will find herself going to class 20 to 22 hours a week to get 16 to 17 credit hours while your usual LAS student is going to class 15 hours a week for 15 credit hours. You will also find that the out-of-class study time needed is much higher (often double or more) for that sophomore engineering student than a sophomore LAS student. Your median GPA of engineering graduates from a university's college of engineering is almost always less than your median for the same university's liberal arts and sciences college. Engineering also has a fairly high drop out rate (meaning mainly switching to other majors and not necessarily out of college) in comparison to other programs. Most such drop-outs occur the first or second year, and be aware that the rate of drop-out is generally higher among females than males (just a fact, not a reflection of ability; also, I am not trying to discourage the choice because I am big promoter of getting more women interested in majoring in engineering but you should know the challenges).</p></li>
</ol>