Georgia Tech Engineering cost vs Vanderbilt

My son will get a very good scholarship at Vanderbilt, but a friend of mine says that he will not get a good job from Vandy and to just pay the money and get the degree at GT. In just 2 years, we will have a $102,000 payment. This seems horrible for an undergraduate degree. Is Vandy really that bad that he cannot get a good job when he gets out? I always revered Vanderbilt, but really need some advice from engineering people. Any one out there that can give us some good advice?

Engineers are in high demand today. Graduate from any ABET accredited engineering school and you will have a good future. I don’t believe that Georgia Tech will give a significant advantage over Vanderbilt. If their financial aid offer allows you to attend with a significantly reduced loan burden when you graduate, my advice is to take it. A $102k debt even before your first engineering job is too much. I am an engineering manager who has hired and worked with engineers from all the big name, and non-big name schools. In my experience there is little or no correlation of where one attended school and their career success. It is the person’s ability that determines success in one’s career, not the school he or she attended.

Thank you for your advice. It is much appreciated.

@matchatea555 : Georgia Tech is amazing for STEM folks, especially engineers, but if it costs too much, let it go. Whoever said that a person graduating with a Vanderbilt engineering degree won’t get a good job is a) being hyperbolic, b) Has insane expectations on what constitutes a good job, and/or c) just flat out lying for who knows what reason. No one graduating from an ABET accredited program should have much of a hard time if they do their due diligence (which I imagine someone going to Vanderbilt would), especially not a program ranked in the 30s or 40s (so many engineering schools that this is actually high ranking).

@Engineer80 : I do believe Tech has much stronger recruiting than most engineering schools/programs (people underestimate how well it actually compares to the private engineering schools folks like to revere as well as places like Berkeley. The only problem with Tech is that it is unaffordable to most OOS students, so lacks the prestige it can get from recruiting student bodies that look exactly like an MIT for example. But in reality, the program is super productive in terms of undergraduate outcomes and success in STEM), and the almost mandatory co-op programs (which means they kind of just funnel the students into them) most majors there have gives them the appearance that the actual academics are giving students a leg-up. However, in reality it may just be the advantage of ensuring everyone has work experience before applying. A person at Vanderbilt should have no problems getting this experience and would definitely know to do it. I would also imagine the academics in terms of workload and thinking would be similar (though BME at Tech is a special, quite innovative animal, at least it was when they went to full PBL). Georgia Tech by nature of being a pre-dominantly STEM institute does just have a very different vibe (that could be good) than more comprehensive schools, but it ain’t worth 102k in debt in my opinion. The advantages it may have, which I think could have a real impact are also generally not worth 102k.

nothing beats a scholarship.

D was a Stamps finalist at GT and I went with her on the scholarship trip. It seems to be that GT is a very tough place to survive GPA and stress vise. They had one keynote speaker who spoke at the parents dinner, who talked about GT graduates don’t ask each other when they graduate, instead they ask when they get out, as from prison.

D picked Vandy among Engineering schools she got admitted to: U Michigan, GT, Duke, MIT, etc, partially because of the chancellor scholarship, but also because she wanted work/life balance. She is CS premed sophomore. She did engineering research program for freshman summer and already committed to an internship at a fortune 50 company for this summer last November. If you hustle, there are a lot of opportunities.

Check out this.

https://engineering.vanderbilt.edu/docs/2018_VUSE_Placement_Highlights.pdf

Even students who don’t go to GT or Vandy get jobs. It is ridiculous to claim Vandy grads don’t get jobs.

On the plus side, Vandy engineering doesn’t appear to be crowded. So you should be able to get your classes.

D was able to get to all her CS classes, due to the luck of draw on registration sequence or her close relationship with her advisor, I am not sure. But apparently there are kids who struggled to get to their CS classes at Vandy, whose parents complained on FB. There are a lot of kids taking CS classes these days. D is one of the 24 TA graders in one CS class.

@matchatea555 congrats to your son. My D19 has been admitted to GT (we’re in state, so very affordable) but also applied RD to Vandy and if she is both admitted and the financials work (lotto odds to be sure) would have a similar general comparison question. I’ve heard the comments about Tech being a high pressure environment as well - we need to make a really comprehensive, additional visit and ask lots of questions. @bernie12 can you expand on your BME comment? D19 says she wants BME, I worry it is to specialized. I don’t understand “full PBL.”

Long post alert:
@momof2atl: You are on to something. I have a friend who went to Tech for BME, amazing program, but my understanding is that it is getting more difficult to find certain type of jobs post-grad. Even at Tech, it has become a haven for high caliber pre-medical students (like this friend who did an NIH post-bacc afterwards and is now at Emory Medicine as an MD I think, but it may be MDPhD. Not sure). What I was mainly alluding to was how Georgia Tech switched to mostly Problem Based Learning curriculum in their biomedical engineering program. One would think such a style of course delivery is common throughout engineering because of the number of project based courses especially at the upper divisions (and some intermediates), but in reality they are still mostly taught like a lecture and with in a purely content focused way. PBL will have an instructor partially lecture, to give students the content background, but as you go along the course, you will essentially solve problems in class that are in context and likely require students to do outside research to solve them because they are open ended. The interesting thing is that from what I saw my Tech friends doing, they got exposure to this style of thinking and learning (dealing with very open ended problems and less lecturing) as freshmen or in the earliest of their BME courses and then this streamlined them into much more intensive project based learning courses earlier than what you would see at most other programs who did not adopt it as the dominant method of delivering BME courses. It will likely make most “green” engineering students uncomfortable, because they expect standard lecture, basic style problem sets, etc, but in the end it helps them learn better and immediately apply the material to real situations.

Tech actually released a publication demonstrating how it would work in one of their courses here:

http://www.physics.emory.edu/faculty/weeks//journal/newstetter-abe06.pdf
Paper is old but illustrative. They implemented in 01’ so this was still “early stages”
and on the BME website:
https://bme.gatech.edu/bme/problem-based-learning

While this is nice, with BME, you should likely prepare your daughter should prepare to get an internship and do research in bio-engineering or otherwise as an undergraduate no matter where she goes. And she may want to keep an open mind towards graduate school. I imagine, if she is less standard, she could tap into some personal projects or BME related entrepreneurial activities (Tech is admittedly better than most places for this with the “creating the next” and “inventure prize” competitions among other things in their infrastructure that are commonly used), or maybe even some competitions like iGEM to demonstrate a range of abilities and interests, and it may make her or anyone more competitive for certain job types that traditionally may not be available to students with only a B.S.E.

I decided to do a superficial investigation of Tech’s intensity: The two may be kind of similar, but Tech may be a little more brutal in some of the key engineering service courses like the beginning math sequences and physics. The issue is that some of the instructors demand students use a high level of cognitive complexity (namely, courses like physics almost require as good of a conceptual understanding as they do an ability to “plug-and-chug”. Evidence suggests that conceptual understanding in things like chemistry and physics is a challenge for most students, even those with great math prep/APs from HS. So the conceptual aspects of MC and FR questions on Tech physics exams used to really kill people), give lots of homework (all which may happen at VU) with tight due dates. I also notice that Tech has more well-managed introductory labs than a lot of the elite private schools, so almost any lab for STEM major will require full-lab reports whereas this is not necessarily the case at medium/smaller privates which may have less graduate TA support to dole out to said classes (it is really laborious to grade lab reports).

In terms of grading, key Tech classes (and the school) are experiencing an inflationary trend (no school likes to admit to this and every student at selective schools loves to claim “my STEM grades are deflated”):

https://critique.gatech.edu/prof.php?id=JARRIOMARTINM#PHYS2212

*Jarrio is known as one of Tech’s legendary “4 horsemen” between math and physics

I am unclear to whether or not this has resulted from them switching to common application and focusing on the incoming stats (okay maybe not, the types of exams given don’t really reward those great at SAT/ACT style exams. At least not in physics and math. My guess is that they recruit more from better Ga. schools and beyond, as well as many even more who have AP/IB calc. and physics credits/experience along with deeper experiences such as research and stuff. It becomes harder to challenge such crowds) or if it is more “artificial” (as in the departments’ decisions to to say: “okay if the school wants to draw more students and keep them from fearing grading and rigor at Tech, let us grade more like our private peers/competitors” and curve between B/-B or C+/B-, or B). I honestly suspect that it is a mixture of both (exam averages floating upward because of increased prep and talent still electing to take intros even w/AP credit, as well as softer curves/more cushioning of the grade from low test means), because I recognize certain instructors that are still there (like Jarrio), saw the materials and they have not changed in intensity.

“Renorming” (setting the curves to a higher center as the school becomes more selective or wants to compete better with peers) at these selective schools is not too unusual I don’t think. Duke for example, used to be more like Emory, Vanderbilt, Hopkins, Cornell, Penn and WUSTL with STEM grading (namely in core courses and at those intro. weeders) and would state an aim for a B-, but then followed in the footsteps of many of its upper tier Ivy friends at set those curves more at B or B+ (once upon a time you could go on older and newer course websites that had materials on it and also explained grading, gave exam averages and such, and trust me, it needed certain courses to be curved even as selectivity increased, which means that any changes in where the final course GPA was basically artificial. For example, physics 2211 at Tech with Jarrio used to yield like low 60- high 60 averages even after EC opps and other stuff, and now they may be between high 60s-mid 70s. What appears to have happened is that instead of doing a curve, because apparently 2211/2212 never really did that, they let the HW scores serve as a more generous cushion than they used to: http://introphys.gatech.edu/2017/Spring/2212/index.html )

I give all this detail to kind of explain away what I see as the rigor of GT and where it may be going today (because they have data on it). GT should be considered “doable”. They want to give students rigor, but they ain’t really willing to kill them anymore. In many areas, the grading schemes will be ultra similar to Vanderbilt. What I do suspect is that Tech may be known for heavier course loads than many other programs (maybe they require more credits as well as more truly experiential opportunities such as the co-op. I haven’t checked on the former). And it may also just “feel” more stressful because the majority of students are STEM majors. It becomes hard to escape a feeling of competition when most folks are doing something kind of similar to you, and are more excited than average for STEM. So even if many of the courses at VU and GT are similar caliber, GT will likely feel more stressful much in the way MIT may feel more stressful to its STEM students than Harvard will to its own. Being on such focused campuses has perks, but also some drawbacks such as that.

Also, I think someone went to Georgia Tech’s Institutional Research site and pulled the grade distribution data which used to be public less than a year ago. They compiled it somehow. For BME, you get the following:
https://tableau.gatech.edu/t/EDM/views/LITEGradeDistributionReport/GradeDistribution?:embed=y&:showAppBanner=false&:display_count=no&:showVizHome=no&:render=false&:embed=y&:showVizHome=n&:tabs=n&:toolbar=n&:apiID=host0

If you want to hone in on it, you can check per course. But generally, the grading has been reasonable for quite a while in that particular department (3.0-3.3 average grade given is typical for STEM depts everywhere, including selective privates known for low and mid-levels of grade inflation. Do not conflate “average grade given” with “average grade of a graduate in this major”. They are not remotely the same as in the former calculation, larger lower division courses which typically have lower grades will be weighted far more heavily. These numbers cannot really give a picture of how an individual will perform, which I would suspect is higher on average). Admittedly, a pre-med effect could contribute, but generally, the natural and physical sciences grade the lowest at any school and Tech is no exception. Engineering courses are usually harder and more intellectually demanding, but if you were to compare syllabi, one would notice that most/many engineering courses do not attribute all or even most of the final grade to high stakes exams and quizzes. HW and projects will contribute a lot more, so this probably results in higher grades.

No, and stop listening to uninformed and likely jealous friends.

GT is a powerhouse, no doubt, but I do know a couple of kids there and their first year has been very stressful and fairly miserable. When DD was looking at engineering schools last year, one stood out as a happy place, and one in particular had a panel of Women in Engineering who were wistful, quavering, sometimes sniffing back tears, as they gave advice on what to do when “your daughter calls at midnight to say she got a 35 on a test and still has more work to do”. Some of the advice was “Tell her to wash her face and go to bed”. Or talking about how hard it was to realize that you were at the bottom of your class, “but at least half my peers are down here with me”…or the one who said “I gave up on a 3.0 a long time ago…I just focus in my other stuff”…
I saw Vandy with DS, albeit for Math, not engineering. It seemed such a great place. And not miserable. And great barbecue. And it’s Vanderbilt! Engineering grads from all kinds of places end up working side by side, and no one is paying your kid more because he went to GT instead of Vandy. He will thank you later, because $100K+debt really means he will have less real earnings after loan payments, for years, and isn’t the appeal of STEM in part the earning potential? In other words, how would he feel sitting next to another recent grad with no debt, and effectively making thousands of dollars a year less?
There are LOTS of schools. Vandy is a great one.

@Gudmom : I kind of don’t think it is fair to talk about the “misery” of Georgia Tech and referring to people’s academic struggles and then talking about how Vandy “seemed” not miserable (especially considering how many threads you can see on here about folks complaining or highlighting how “hard” certain freshmen courses are to them. Whether they are particularly challenging versus other high caliber schools is another question, BUT all that matters is that students report feeling challenged and stressed by them for whatever reasons).

People need to know they are getting into that when they do engineering at a top school. To pretend that it, (or really any engineering program and school that houses it) is all roses and present a panel that conveys that is fundamentally dishonest. In addition, again, GT is pre-dominantly STEM. The strange thing is that I don’t see many folks constantly use the same logic against MIT when the student has a choice to go there versus another school. Most (as indicated by yield) accept that MIT will be very challenging and sometimes “miserable” in STEM and accept the bid and may even push others to do so, but I guess Tech isn’t yet “prestigious” enough to avoid additional scrutiny and low key bashing. The only reason not to seriously consider Tech’s bid here is simply because the cost is ridiculous. That would ensure it would have additional stresses that VU or any other high caliber program offering good aid/scholarships won’t. Let us please not pretend that engineering at one versus the other is just “more pleasant”.

And I don’t think math, unless applied math, can be compared because engineering courses are generally much more interdisciplinary and that is part of the battle. Students, no matter how well they tested in HS or on standardized tests are not used to really thinking about interdisciplinary STEM problems/subjects (if you are BME, for example, you have to switch from memorizing biology, to heavily integrating math, physics, and tougher chem concepts into your understanding of it. If you have weaknesses in some of those and don’t repair them, you may have a rough ride), and certainly not at the levels demanded by a VU or Georgia Tech. Many math majors can pretty much stick to math courses unless they are pre-health or applied math and even then, the pre-health cores are not particularly interdisciplinary in their approach and the requirements associated with applied math are basically raw math (like pchem, econometrics) under the guise of interdisciplinary learning) with exception of analytical chemistry (which is basically gen. chem with statistics).

I know we love cheer-leading our schools at the expense of what are perceived negative qualities of others, but let us be honest and not have a person going to VU for a physical science or engineering degree thinking that they’ll be so much “happier” and less stressed than they would at Tech because of some perceived academic stress at Georgia Tech that doesn’t exist elsewhere. The person will be happier because they won’t be broke and in debt in this situation and that is all to it and that should be enough to convince them. Vanderbilt will likely challenge them in similar ways, but they get to pay basically nothing. The same GT anecdotes may happen to OP at VU, but at least it isn’t a financial risk to struggle sometimes.

Well, I agree that the financial consideration is big, and I wouldn’t worry about Vandy not be a “good” school. I wouldn’t worry about the student not getting a job. So just for those reasons, I would say go to Vandy, graduate without debt (or with money for grad school). And true, I didn’t talk to anyone in the engineering program at Vandy. But.
I HAVE talked to people in many engineering programs when DD was looking, and there absolutely is a difference that is perceptible in stress levels in various programs. For DD, besides the financial difference(huge), the stress and unhappiness of the panel of female engineering students at her “top” school would have made me try to persuade her away from it if we HAD been able to afford it. In her STEM HS, she had a few days where she was just so stressed that she got stuck and couldn’t even talk, literally became mute (she had selective mutism as a preschooler; it is related to anxiety) so I was …concerned.
Her second-favorite, also a very strong engineering program, was a completely completely different thing. I got no stress vibes at all. The students, both arranged tours and just wandering around the campus, were happy to offer their experiences, encouraging, and in general…happy. Relaxed. No one mentioned being “stressed out” or “miserable” or having to “deal” with “failing for the first time”. They DID talk about needing to “recalibrate” their study habits, or “adjust”, but they also said they managed to stay on top of things and that all-nighters were a pretty rare thing.

Some schools seem to have a “look to your left, look to your right, only one of you will still be in this program in four years” kind of attitude. It’s common for pre-med, but not at ALL schools. And the same for engineering. I just feel like there are some programs where the students accept that they are going to be miserable, and when you are surrounded by miserable people, it feeds on itself. The programs have “weed out” courses.
But some programs are more supportive, and more cooperative or collaborative. At the most-miserable engineering school we visited, the “official” tour girls mentioned how “collaborative “ it was so many times that I’m pretty sure they were told to say that. But the misery came through in the Q&A sessions. There was sniffling, and tears. And laughing about “giving up on getting a 3.0”.
There is definitely a vibe. And some kids THRIVE in a competitive atmosphere. I’m not saying GT is a terrible place, and MIT is obviously a great school- but for me, I wouldn’t put the additional stress of finances in top of the stress of those programs. For us it was, if you go to school A, you may very well get into debt AND end up dropping out of engineering. If you go to school B, you will not have those financial worries, and maybe you’ll have a better chance of actually graduating with a degree in engineering.

@Gudmom : I think that what I am simply saying is that the data doesn’t support Georgia Tech being significantly tougher for engineering than other very selective schools with engineering programs (I think some schools really have a reputation that is kept long past when it is deserved because students like to complain about the challenges they face more so than students facing similar challenges at other schools. You then look at any grading data available and find that the grading is no different between the schools, or that the difference is actually opposite of what is expected. You take a look at the course work and it further validates that the differences are negligible. In fact it seems as if the “feelings” of stress and a tendency to be hyperbolic may actually come from whether or not one school has more STEM majors/folks clustered in “difficult” majors than the next) the data points in the direction of: “Grading and grading distributions are now at parity with other programs”, it is no longer the 1970s and 1980s at Georgia Tech or really any of the top STEM institutes.

Support: I think the stereotypes about it need to be put to rest. One can compare the STEM academic support systems (just go to the websites. Tech even has programs that bring in students early to pre-expose them to the academics before classes start) at VU versus Tech and you can just tell one has been doing it for much longer and this is especially the case for those critical “weedout” courses that essentially determine whether folks continue their majors or not. Tech just ain’t a slouch there, no matter how "stressful’ it looks to an outsider. The only thing I will say is that Georgia Tech is pretty big and that can make already challenging courses even more challenging (easier to get lost) but section sizes at VU can get large as well.

Also, note that on average, engineering is more collaborative than pre-health if only because the engineering courses themselves tend to be less exam based and integrate collaborative projects and group work into it. They also typically have higher course GPAs than natural and physical science courses. I think engineering education almost everywhere has undergone far more modernization than most other STEM curricula, so most focused and well-prepped admits to whatever school can likely do well and don’t have to worry about competition. Pre-med is always where I advise the most caution for people considering very selective universities, but for engineering, if a great place is affordable and you know what you are getting into, choosing very rigorous pathways is no where near as “harmful” and taxing as it would be for a pre-health.

I think I understand how and why stereotypes about certain schools persist, but we have to be really careful. When it comes to the grading anecdotes, I still remember how pre-med students in one organic chemistry section would like to report extremely low (and false-they were definitely lower than a more standard STEM course, but I mean like 60s and the rare high 50s, which is not the 40s that they would report) averages to friends in other sections to gain sympathy from others for choosing “the more challenging path”. With competitive tracks like pre-med, what appears to be insane difficulties can sometimes be oppression olympics based upon half-true narratives (there is also the famous trope that pre-meds take pride in, for example, carrying around their ochem books or telling other non-STEM majors that they have an ochem test soon…all types of weird “we’re in a struggle and you’re not” type of socialization that can be misread from outsiders).

Totally agree that your mental health is best served by taking a great financial aid offer if engineering is a true vocation. It should be emphasized that stresses in engineering school related to the high demands therein for applied learning above and beyond expected rote learning…are there to prepare students to be able to step into the workplace.

After the recession of 2009, families were made painfully aware of how difficult it can be to get a foothold in the workplace. Engineering schools have strong internship placement programs and strong job placement services. My father has a graduate degree from Ga Tech (he suffered for it! had a mighty hard time maintaining the average required to keep his scholarship! but it gave him skill sets that led to wonderful job assignments). Even so, the Air Force paid for his degree, and unless you have a lot of $ in reserve, I would strongly advise avoiding debt in undergrad school at all costs and instead trust your wonderful student to simply do their best where they enroll.

The only concession I will make to borrowing for an engineering degree is that engineering grads have less expensive pathways to further their credentials than professions (top MBA programs, all law programs, all med programs) that will totally buckle your budget, make it difficult to afford to live comfortably on starter salaries, demand and factor in info on parental income till a student is 28!!, and leave the graduate with a decade of loan payments.

@bernie12 Maybe we have to agree to disagree. Maybe I won’t call out GT specifically, since you appear to have a strong opinion on that one, and mine is second hand.But having a freshman engineering student who is happy, on the deans list, a week ahead of her coursework at any given time, at Virginia Tech, I am going to stick to my first hand observations that kids in some engineering programs we looked at seem to be much more stressed out and unhappy than in other (very good) programs. How many kids jumped off roofs at MIT last year, 9? Walking past the suicide nets at Cornell must be a daily reminder that throwing yourself off of something is always an option. You can look at your grading data, I’ll look at the faces of the students I pass on campus, and the ones chosen to speak to me, listen to what they are saying, and make my call based on that. Perceived misery, unfounded misery, exaggerated suffering…I’d just as soon avoid it all, real or not, if there is a happier place where the campus on any sunny day is full of people walking dogs and no one is too busy to stop and chat. Incidental happiness, friendliness, an upbeat environment…even if the curricula and the grading schemes really are not statistically different, campuses can have a very different feel. No one denies that some schools are a better fit for some students than for others, and by extension that would include some programs. There is a feeling, a culture, in different programs and at different schools. But whatever, he really asked if he could get a job if he went to Vandy, and the answer to that is yes.

re #18: the nets were installed with the intent of reducing such tragic events overall, so whatever “reminder” value they may have is hopefully outweighed by their function as deterrent to an impulsive action.

They are installed along bridges that overlook spectacular views. Mostly when one looks out in those directions one is inspired by the natural beauty of the gorges. I know I was, and still am when I go up there.

Despite the publicity, the proportion of such tragic events there is not above average.

Which is not to suggest that the engineering curriculum is not without stress there.

Most engineering programs have similar content, and have curved courses.
IMO, the difficulty level will likely track closely the capabilities of the class.
A school that has less academically apt students will likely be easier.
As was suggested, “you can look at the grading data”. By which I mean the stats of incoming students.
IMO.