<p>Everyone seems to bad mouth this school. They say professors are too busy with their research to teach, don't care about students and TA's can't speak english. Academics are very hard and there is little help availble. The dorms suck, and so does the food. People are drones and lack social skills, male/female ratio is bad and only thing to do is to join a fraternity if you want to be socially active. Also the campus always has construction work going on and is in a rough part of Atlanta. </p>
<p>So my question is that if I am interested in engineering, should I even apply here? It is top 5 in the nation for engineering. Can I survive the atmosphere and the academics and is it worth it? I heard that it's degree is only recognized in the south and it does not have a college experience. What's your honest opinion of this school?</p>
<p>GaTech is a respected school nationally...not just in the south. But you do need to see if the "quality of life" there is a match for you personally. You should visit.</p>
<p>Gtech is recognized nationally and has a very high employment rate for graduates who seek employment upon graduation and a very high rate of sending grads on to other major graduate schools. It is also big on coop programs (where you go to work for a semester for a company) which hook up students with potential future employers. Participation in such programs and the fact that the number of credit hours needed for graduation is high means that it has a significant percentage that do not graduate in 4 years but also means you should not consider that a bad factor (and that is generally normal for engineering programs everywhere). Gtech is a place students either love or hate (and many puposefully generate comments like the ones you have seen simply to proudly maintain the Gtech image as a place of doom). Its campus is actually quite nice. There does always seem to be some construction going on but that seems true at almost any large college. The campus is located just north of downtown Atlanta. The neighborhood is somewhat iffy but not disastrous by any standards (Georgia State is close by). By all accounts academics are difficult -- it tends to admit a high percentage and then overwhelms students in the first two years to see who survives (and goes on to to be a top notch engineer). The freshman dorms are mediocre but no worse than those at a huge number of public universities and the rooms are actually somewhat larger than what you find at many public universities). It actually has a number of very nice upper classmen apartment-type dorms which are the housing units that were built for athletes during the Olympics when it was in Atlanta. Its male to female ratio is the pits (at least from the male viewpoint)-- about 4 to 1 -- and it undoubtedly has a lot of students who are iffy on being popular or masters of social skills. You will find about the same at any tech college. Professors range from those who would rather be doing research, and consider teaching you as a necessary evil to allow them to do that, to those who are top notch teachers. There can also be issues of the English clarity of some TA's AND professors -- which you will also find at most tech schools -- and, in fact, you sometimes will be searching to get the section of a class that has the excellent TA rather than the nationally-recognized professor whose teaching skills are the pits (again that issue exists at many highly recognized tech schools; in fact many believe that the degree of fame and number of publications many professors in science or engineering have is inversely proportional to their ability to actually teach).</p>
<p>I know some friends who are applying to Tech (HOPE scholarship= free education for GA students). I am always in shock when they say that, because it has a bad rep. and for a reason. I know so many people who have transferred. The social life there is just kind of lacking, and Atlanta, as a city, is not the best. If you like studying a lot, then it would be great. Just don't be too disappointed with the student life there.</p>