Hoping for some feedback! Thank you!
My son was accepted to all three schools for mechanical engineering. We live in New Jersey and he received $12,500 scholarship annually to Clemson University and $5000 scholarship to Virginia Tech. Still waiting on Georgia Techs financial package. Please help us with any information regarding personal experience, I think our biggest concern is the rigor of curriculum between the three. My son is looking for a well-balanced and fun challenging college experience with a good opportunity for job placement and internships. Once again thank you for helping to share pros and cons!
You should have asked this under “College Selection”.
"My son was accepted to all three schools for mechanical engineering. "
GT is ranked 2nd for ME in the US, and 10th in the world.
“Still waiting on Georgia Techs financial package.”
GT will not give your son a scholarship.
“My son is looking for a well-balanced and fun challenging college experience”
GT is an engineering college and known to be difficult. If your son is looking for a party school, Tech isn’t that.
If your son is in the lower quartile for Tech, he would probably be better off at VPI/Clemson.
Academically, VPI and Clemson are similar schools.
“with a good opportunity for job placement and internships”
GT is the #1 school for engineering recruits ranked by corporate recruiters (WSJ). Tech’s career fairs are multiple days long and additionally have individual career fairs for each major. I’m sure Clemson and VPI have good engineering career fairs too.
All three are solid schools for engineering and if your son’s goal is to work as an engineer in industry, I would say the cheaper options accomplish that goal well, as long as they are an otherwise good fit. Engineering graduates from any of these schools are not going have much trouble finding solid employment. Both Clemson and Georgia Tech have outstanding and well established co-op programs. VT’s program is not quite as established, but as the main engineering school in Virginia, there’s going to be a lot of on-campus recruitment there as well.
Note that Clemson OOS tuition and estimated total cost of attendance is about $5k/year higher than Tech, so that partially offsets the scholarship they awarded him. Clemson and VT are probably both around $30k cheaper over 4 years. Coming to Tech may or may not be worth that $30k depending on what you and your son value.
All you have mentioned is rigor, and if the only reason you are hesitant on Tech is because you think it won’t allow time for social and other development outside of the classroom, that really shouldn’t be a concern. Tech students have lives, party, and get involved, while still doing well in school. It’s not a party school and Tech will be rigorous and have better prepared students, but the coursework itself is not going to be all that different. Your son is not going to be competing for a limited number of As and Bs. Tech professors are generally willing to hand out as many As and Bs as the students earn rather than saying that only x% can fall into each grade bucket.
That said, unless your son plans to get involved with research, which is really where Tech shines, I not sure Tech offers $30k more value for undergraduate engineering than Clemson and VT. However, if your son is interested in research, or strongly values what Georgia Tech’s student body and culture have to offer, or has aspirations to pursue a career investment banking or management consulting, then the cost premium for Georgia Tech may be worth it. $30k isn’t tiny, but it is small enough that I could see this going either way depending on what you both value. Would your son be willing (or have to) pay for the difference in cost? That may be a good metric to decide if it’s worth it to him.
We are from NJ; DD was accepted to Clemson and VT, I discouraged her from applying to GT because 1) housing isn’t guaranteed and I didn’t like the area around the school and 2) for her, the atmosphere would probably have been more stressful.
All three schools will land you a good engineering job. All three schools are known for their strong programs, although GT is the highest ranked and the point about I-bank and consulting jobs mentioned above is valid.
DD is at VT and doing really well. Hokies really love their school. The weather is crazy, but in general tolerable when bad (winter at the beach) and beautiful when good. Lots of dogs. People hanging hammocks in trees. The engineering LLC is very helpful for maintaining freshman GPA, which needs to be above 3.0 to guarantee that Mechanical engineering major. She has not had any stressed-out meltdowns, which I know would have been the case at certain schools. The food is very good - lobster, london broil…tied with Cornell for best food.
One consideration - GT is definitely much easier to reach from NJ than the other two. We are near Red Bank and have tried train, ride share, flying into Philly, and finally settled on the bus to Allentown PA (also makes stopsmin Mtn Lakes and Vince Lombardi rest area)…next year she will have a roommate who lives in NJ, so it’ll be easier, and probably a car jr and st year…
But if you and son are not dead set on GT, I’d visit all three of possible, and if there is still no clear winner, definitely take the cheaper option.
When your ME program (GT) is ranked higher than Stanford it’s kinda hard to not pick GT
We received the financial package from tech…My son was awarded provost, but it’s still out of our price range…he’s applied to every scholarship possible, but nothing magical has happened
I think each family has to sit down and weigh out all the options. We each have different things that impact our decisions. It’s hard to ask a forum especially in a one school forum.
Provost scholarship will give tuition waiver to OOS students. There’re only 40 available for freshmen. Consider yourself lucky. A lot of other families would love to be in your shoes.
@V5899 Congrats on GaTEch. Georgia Tech is a high spirited school, with a lot of students watching football games, a fantastic marching band, with lots of great clubs, and one of the best Recreation programs for mountain biking, kayaking and rock climbing , if those are of interest to your son. Academics are very strong in mechanical engineering. And the area is beautiful and easy to fly from NJ to the International Airport and get a MARTA train right to campus. Students can live in Atlanta without a car and still have fun!
with Virginia Tech he will fly to Roanoke and bus over, unless he plans to bring a car, which he will
need in that part of Virginia. Are there direct flights to Roanoke from New Jersey?
@Gudmom GaTech is one of the few public schools in the nation, that offers plenty of on campus housing for all undergraduates, if they want it. Many undergraduates move to fraternity houses or off campus rentals so any undergraduate at GaTech who wants to stay on campus can do so. . The area is just fine, too, few crime issues around Tech Square. A little crime in the Home Park neighborhood north of campus, but my son goes to eat pizza in Home Park, and I went with him, and its nicer than Cambridge Massachusetts, Central Square, where I lived for college.
My son is a junior at GaTech and has lived on campus for three years, has guaranteed on campus housing this summer for his summer research program , and has guaranteed on campus housing next year. I am pretty sure Clemson does not offer four years of on campus housing. VT is very rural so may be a don’t care.
GaTech off campus housing is located near Tech Square, which is safe and has a Publix for food shopping, and other areas north of campus , and GaTech police are very proactive in the areas where students live. GaTech is safer than Case Western Reserve, in Cleveland Ohio, where I sent another child to school.
GaTech has an excellent alumni association. Its got a presence in California, Colorado and many other states with lots of high tech jobs. Here is a graduation party and the website for the GaTech Alumni group.
GaTech certainly has a big social life for anyone who wants that. Fraternities house about 25% of students,
and they save money over on campus apartments, and also often have group dinners.
I don’t believe GaTech is that much harder if at all compared to Clemson. Virginia Tech may be a somewhat easier program.
Being in Atlanta, GT is considered above Clemson. Clemson is more laid back than GT from my impressions. If you want to live on campus it really does not appear to be a problem. Lots of students live in tech square, homepark, by Ikea and over in collier hills. A Whole Foods on 14th just opened. They just built Northside hospital a few blocks away from Emory Midtown. The area is constantly changing. Over by Howell Mill Rd its trendy with restaurants and stores such as Anthropology. GT’s campus is very safe. And there are some incidents in the surrounding area but that is true for all cities. Over by Homepark you have Antico’s which is fabulous. There is a cafe behind the CRC on Marietta with sandwiches and french pastries. They just torn down a city block there for new apt buildings. I visit there often and I am always in shock to how fast the area is changing.
One thing GT likes to toot is their instate price for travel abroad. Also, because its in a city, jobs are plentiful. If you are in a frat you change your meal plan to the Greek meal plan freshman year. Greek life I found to be quite reasonable price wise. If you are an RA you get free housing. If you don’t live in a freshman experience dorms you dont have to get the freshman meal plan. Co-oping means you don’t pay tuition for those semesters but you can live on campus or off.
The flights to Roanoke from Newark, are very expensive. Flights from Philly are much more reasonable, but a drive for most…Atlanta is much easier to get to.
Then he needs a different major 
I hope you/hhe realizes what undegrad engineering is like. I won’t say everyone hates it, but few would describe it as enjoyable in the same way kids in other majors might. She can expect 25-40 hours a week of homework and studying, constant academic challenge, and pretty much 4 years of calculus. You can pick your times to blow off school, you can have fun at times, but don’t mistake it for a good time. If he hasn’t done so already she should talk with kids that are in college engineering programs to understand their experience, preferably from these schools. You can find info online too such as https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/education/edlife/why-science-majors-change-their-mind-its-just-so-darn-hard.html I don’t say this to frighten him or discourage him from doing engineering, but talk about enjoying college doesn’t seem to jibe with an expectation of what is ahead.
Math preparation is the single most important factor in getting an engineering degree. If the student has really masters AB Calculus, or better, all of BC calculus, then Calculus 2 and 3 will go easier. If in doubt, repeat the math!
I don’t agree that mechanical engineering is quite the same as four years of calculus, although many classes will use some calculus, algebra is also used in many mechanical engineering classes. Design principals classes will teach design for manufacturing for instance. Fluid flow and fluid dynamics classes are math heavy and thermodynamics contains partial differential equations but also has some easier math equations where solutions can be memorized so I think much easier than partial differential equations.
Engineering curriculums today include quite a bit of lab work and computer programming. So a student who already took JAVA or Pascal will be well prepared for GaTech or Clemson. It will be a lot of work to get an engineering degree at any of these schools.
DD at VT is having a good year. She isn’t really a party person, but she is maintaining a 3.7ish GPA and goes to Sunday brunch, Wednesday night dinners, Friday are a game night or hanging out, she has found a few weekends to go climbing with Venture Out or the climbing club, and she has recently found a friend with a car to go to the climbing gym in C-burg…there was an intense scavenger hunt this month that they completed, she does community service thru her LLC, and she has never, not once, called me in a panic or having a meltdown over the workload or a bad grade. HS was worse than this!
I think VT engineering (so far) seems very manageable and sane. Teachers are supportive, and there don’t seem to be “weed out” classes. One caveat, she started out in Calc 3, having been warned multiple times that it was NOT easier the second time, and probably the most time-consuming class in the entire engineering curriculum.
So I don’t think most engineers can party their way through 4 years like you might be able to get away with in other majors, but it definitely doesn’t have to be a misery.
GT in our case was far more difficult and time consuming than a full load of the most rigorous AP classes in high school.