Can anyone comment on the FSU engineering school’s location. Looks like its 3 miles away from the main campus. Is this true? How could an engineering student possible have a true FSU experience when most of their classes are in a completely different part of the city - away from the beautiful main campus that we’ve read so much about? I’m sure there are plenty of shuttle buses running back and forth, but this sounds like a deal breaker for my son.
Would love to hear about someone’s personal experience.
Thanks @TomSrOfBoston. We saw that in our research. The irony seems that since it’s a joint school located in a separate area, it’s truly not a part of either campus.
Son won’t be interested if all his engineering classes are 3 miles away in a satellite location. Unfortunately, off the list.
Simple- your classes are only a small portion of your “FSU Experience”. And most of the lower-level engineering classes are actually held on the main campus.
Yes, the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering is located off of the main FSU campus. There are dedicated bus routes that run to the Engineering campus frequently. However, those don’t run 24/7, so your kid will probably want a car sooner than later.
I read an old article (2014) that said something about FSU building its own engineering school on the main campus and separating from FAMU. Do you know anything about this?
We love everything about FSU except that the engineering school is 3 miles away from main campus. Just won’t work for my son.
My daughter just finished her freshman year, and she is not an engineering student. But if you will be anywhere near FSU, you might want to visit and experience the location for yourself. The campus is so huge anyway that one dorm could be much closer to the engineering location than another. For example, my daughter lived on the Green, in Landis, and she said the stadium was a fifteen minute walk. So “on campus” buildings arent always close. Many students move off campus for Sophmore year, and it is likely engineering students consider moving to the apartment complexes nearer to their classes. When i visited, with the miles of student apartment complexes and retail stores, it felt like the whole area was fsu territory, there isnt a bright line between on campus and off campus, from what i experienced. School spirit seemed to be everywhere. The engineering people could prob tell you whether a typical freshman schedule is mostly on campus or off campus.
The plans for a separate FSU engineering school were scapped. The cost of doing so was far too high (estimates were well over $100 million) for the state legislature to approve such a move, so the idea was completely scrapped. It wasn’t a popular idea in Tallahassee, and because of the move being pretty political and being aimed at separating FSU and FAMU, the term “racist” got tossed around a bit. It ended the way a lot of people like me expected: once those talking heads saw the cost of the idea, they balked.
@playacar The engineering school is a couple miles driving distance from campus. There isn’t really a dorm that is “closer” than the others since you really can’t wait to the engineering campus (you could, I suppose, but you shouldn’t for a number of reasons).
I won’t try to talk anyone into attending FSU if they’re dead set against it. If your kid isn’t going to have a car, engineering at FSU is probably not a good fit, especially after their freshman year. While I do recommend touring FSU if that’s the only draw back, I don’t think you should waste too much time and energy looking at FSU.
@Pasbal Thank you. This info is both helpful and disappointing.
Son was very excited reading about FSU and the amazing campus and the UF rivalry, and the price! Then we looked at the map and our reaction was…huh? Is this possible?
I wouldn’t let the location take away from what FSU offers. I can’t imagine making a college decision off of 2 miles. While yes the College of Engineering is off our main campus, we have busses that run out there starting at 7:30 am. You will never have to go to the other campus, come back to main, and then go to the other in a day (so all engineering courses are grouped together). However that really won’t matter your first year or so because mostly only liberal arts classes are being completed.
One of my best friends lived on campus with no car and had an 8am at the Engineering campus MWF. He had no problems. In fact he made friends because people would car pool when he didn’t want to ride the bus. This next year he’s actually staying off campus, but not near the engineering campus because he knows the bus route to get him there. This past year he had no problem being involved in Hall Council, the gymnastics team, the honors fraternity, research, and he maintained a really good GPA.
Honestly a three mile bus ride is maybe 15 minutes (with stops). Going off the main campus is no different than taking a bus to the other side of campus (or as mentioned above to the stadium, which I did every day second semester). If your son was excited about FSU, come tour! You can even get an appointment with the college of engineering to talk with them about any concerns you have.
The University of Michigan Engineering school is located on the north campus and that doesn’t seem to impact the decision of the 10K engineering undergraduate and graduate students from selecting UofM as their school of choice. Many engineering students live on central campus and take the shuttle buses (or drive) to classes daily. Although central campus is still the hub of activities (Michigan Athletic Complex, Hill Auditorium, Michigan Union, State Street, etc.) at Michigan, many incoming freshman do live in north campus dorms.
@STEM2017 : Are you out of state? FSU is definitely more generous with their out of state tuition waivers than UF. I believe a score of 29 or higher on the ACT gets you the full out-of-state tuition waiver at FSU, and the in state cost is so much less than our what our home state’s flagship campus costs!!
It’s technically called FSU’s southwest campus. It takes like 5 minutes to there. The FSU golf course, pool, Mag Lab, WFSU, and some FSU other buildings are there as well.
The state investigated splitting the engineering school a couple years ago, but they decided it was too expensive to split. This is a whole other topic, but they should merge the 2 universities if they want to save money. There are many duplicate programs (chemistry, comp sci, psychology, etc.) at FSU and FAMU.
If you go for a visit, I’d recommend having lunch at the golf course. The area is quite nice.
FSU has great merit aid. You may even find that your package leaves with you with room in the budget for a car. AS out of staters, my family has found it to be a warm, welcoming and generous place.
@FloridaBound16 Yes we are OOS living in NY. In addition to the SUNYs, we are looking at OOS schools with solid engineering programs that offer generous merit-aid to kids with “better than ok” stats. We have a long list of great programs. We will need to start paring down the list this summer.
@STEM2017 - totally understand. I’d still apply to UF though, and see what happens. I’ve heard through the grapevine that they’re trying to draw more OOS students.
Never thought my son would get into UF (long story) so you never know! He’s living in the engineering LLC next year.
I will say that we have had friends with kids at FSU and they have all seemed to love their time there, though I don’t remember any of them being in engineering.
FSU wants to start their own College of Engineering closer to their campus, and have even offered to walk away from the existing engineering facility and let FAMU keep it.
But FAMU supporters oppose FSU starting their own separate engineering school due to racial politics and a fear that FAMU will not be able to sustain it on their own. The overwhelming majority of the students at the College of Engineering are FSU students. If FSU left, FAMU would have trouble enrolling enough of their own students.
