<p>Hi, I'm a junior currently and I'm trying to figure out some colleges to look at. I'm really interested in engineering, but I love English and history and social studies and everything else and I'd really like to get a full education at college. A lot of really great engineering schools have great engineering departments but are severely lacking in humanities (I'm thinking mostly schools like WPI, which I live near and am constantly recommended by people when I mention I'm interesting in engineering). The problem is that the kind of school I'm really looking for is more of a liberal arts school, but of course the majority of them do not offer majors in engineering. I'm open to switching to a math or physics major if engineering doesn't work out for me but I would really like to enter my freshman year as an engineering major. The current list of schools I'm thinking of are:
Wash U
Northwestern (maybe a bit too engineering focused but still a lot of freedom)
Swarthmore (they surprisingly have engineering)
Brown
Harvey Mudd (both for their own humanities and at the Claremont colleges)
Tufts</p>
<p>And other than that I don't have a lot of ideas. You notice that these are all really good schools and hard to get into, and I don't expect that I would be able to get into all of them. I would prefer a school with a great reputation like these schools but I do need to broaden my search a little bit and look at some safeties too.
If you guys could suggest some schools that have good engineering programs (at least ABET accredited) and good humanities I would really appreciate it.</p>
<p>Some good LACs that offer engineering include: Lafayette, Bucknell, Trinity, and Union (and Swarthmore which you noted in your post). Other well-rounded schools with engineering include Villanova, GW, Cornell, USC, URochester, Notre Dame, Lehigh to name just a few. I’d get the USNWR list of top undergraduate engineering programs – I don’t put a lot of stock in the rankings, but it is a good list of engineering schools and you can then pick out the ones you feel are strong in the humanities to research further. In general, if you don’t go to a really technically oriented school (ex. WPI, RPI), you will probably be fine.</p>
<p>What is your state of residency? Some state flagships have good engineering and good humanities, so if your home state flagship is such a school, it may be a relative bargain, depending on your financial aid and scholarship situation.</p>
<p>Of course, you should check cost and financial aid at every prospective school with its net price calculator before applying.</p>
<p>Carnegie Mellon is another school strong in a variety of humanities and in engineering. The list is really quite large. Which of them can your family afford? which of the latter can you get into?</p>
<p>The challenge that you will run into anywhere is that engineering tends to have very strict scheduling because of requirements for accreditation. This doesn’t always leave a ton of time for humanities. But if you definitely want the liberal arts side of things as well, I agree that it would be good to look at LACs with engineering programs.</p>
<p>Nanotechnology is absolutely correct; the sequence of engineering coursework can make scheduling extra humanities classes difficult. Not impossible, but not easy. That being said, most large universities will have multiple sections of many classes during each academic term, so an engineering major at State U should be able to enjoy a good selection of Humanities courses in addition to the university core requirements. As a practical matter, LACs and smaller universities just cannot offer the same (usually).</p>
<p>And it’s not only flagship campuses that could satisfy your interests. But you should be aware that financial aid/scholarships for non-residents can be hard to come by at public universities. Some fine exceptions with engineering schools are U of Alabama-Tuscaloosa, Ohio U, U of South Carolina-Columbia. Some interesting privates with engineering departments, good arts/humanities, and a reputation for decent financial aid are U of Portland, U of San Diego (5-year B.S.) and U of Tulsa.</p>
<p>It’s a very reachy school, but MIT not only has strong humanities (Not as strong as some of its neighbors, of course…) but -required- humanities distribution requirements for students. </p>
<p>All ABET-accredited engineering degree programs have humanities and social studies breadth requirements (even Brown), although the nature and extent of such requirements varies (the breadth requirements at MIT and Harvey Mudd are relatively heavy compared to those at most schools).</p>
<p>Differences in how such breadth requirements are organized include:
Number of courses or credits.
Specifically required courses.
Whether a distribution across different departments or categories of humanities and social studies is required.
Whether a depth or concentration requirement is included.
<p>MIT requires 8 total humanities, arts, and social studies courses, including two communication intensive courses, at least one each in humanities, arts, and social studies, and a three or four course concentration: <a href=“Welcome! < MIT”>Welcome! < MIT;
<p>Brown requires 4 total humanities and social studies courses for the ABET-accredited Sc.B engineering degree options (but not the non-ABET-accredited BA engineering degree options): <a href=“Engineering | Brown University”>Engineering | Brown University; (page 6)</p>
<p>Of course, beyond the humanities and social studies requirements, a prospective student would want to check whether the humanities and social studies offerings are of interest.</p>
<p>Yes, the ABET has “general education” and outcome criteria that lead to breadth and depth requirements in the humanities and social sciences. The accommodation of those requirements by the schools can differ widely in terms of the number of courses or unit to fulfill the reqs, which courses in which departments qualify, etc. Some schools work harder to work the h/ss courses into a coherent program, while it’s more of an afterthought at other schools.</p>
<p>Olin College is adjacent to Babson College and participates in cross-registration with Babson College, Brandeis University and Wellesley College. It’s fairly easy to take a class at Babson, each semester. I’m sure Olin, itself, isn’t particularly strong in humanities (too small and too focused on engineering).</p>
<p>As the others have said, large public universities tend to be strong in both Engineering and Humanities.</p>