Good engineering colleges?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Here are the colleges I have currently on my To-Apply list:
Virginia Tech
University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
Purdue University
UIUC
Penn State - University Park
Ohio State University - Columbus</p>

<p>I am currently planning on pursuing either an EE or Materials Science track at one of these schools. These are the rankings I've scrounged up for these schools so far:
Name, EE, MatSci
VTech, 16th, ??
UMich, 5th, 4th
Purdue, 9th,15th
UIUC, ??, 1st
Penn, ??, Tied 7th
OSU, ??, ??</p>

<p>Can anybody make suggestions on these schools for those engineering disciplines, or fill in the remaining rankings? Thanks in advance. ANY comments on these schools welcome! (Food, campus beauty, people, professors, curriculum, ANYTHING is appreciated)</p>

2

<p>Why are you restricting your list to publics? Michigan is best on your list followed by Illinois and Purdue. Would you be in-state for any of these? I would say VTech, Penn State, and OSU only if you can get the in-state tuition. </p>

<p>They are all large universities and therefore would have large classes, perhaps a less personal style, and great resources.</p>

<p>I think Ann Arbor is probably the best location. I think they all have nice campuses. It depends on your taste. The flagship publics usually have beautiful campuses.</p>

3

<p>Just a thought on Purdue. This is a good program at a large school and I don't believe you are admitted to engineering immediately. There is a holding pool and you need to look at the number of kids who actually get into the major, stay in it and graduate. I don't know if you have an awareness of this policy at large state schools. Also.....you have Purdue on your list but not Rose Hulman Institute of Technology which has a great reputation and is much smaller and personal. Geographically it is very close to West Lafayette.</p>

4

<p>Drexel / Carnegie Mellon / Princeton</p>

5

<p>It really depends on your GPA (weighed and unweighed), curriculum, AP scores (if applicable), ECs, SATs, SAT IIs and class rank. I mean, is it worth mentioning MIT and Stanford? Help us out a little. </p>

<p>By the way, in the lastest USNWR undergraduate rankings, Michigan jumped to #3 in Materials.</p>

6

<p>It would help to know more and also you have quite a few Big 10 schools so it seems that perhaps you are attracted to them for reasons other than engineering. Rolling admission is a factor for your Big 10 schools.</p>

7

<p>I took Rose-Hulman off my list because they don't have Materials Science at all. If I KNEW that I wanted to do Electrical, it would still be on my list. I would prefer not to go to MIT, I'm just not an "MIT" kind of guy (I know, really detailed reason there, eh?). Stanford would definitely be a stretch for me as well, but I might consider it. </p>

<p>Carnegie Mellon is very very expensive. Not worth it when compared to some of the schools on my list that are cheaper.</p>

<p>Princeton, I really don't want to go to HYP at all.</p>

<p>Drexel, I considered them a while ago. I couldn't find that they had excellent materials science or electrical engineering programs, and also had a rather ugly looking campus. Can anybody prove me wrong? Also, StudentsReview gives a rather nasty impression: <a href="http://www.studentsreview.com/PA/DRU.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.studentsreview.com/PA/DRU.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>And for those who wanted my stats..</p>

<hr>

<p>GPA: 3.9-4.0 UW, 4.6~ W (I don't know exactly yet, they only release the exact GPAs at the beginning of senior year, I'm just estimating)
SAT Composite: 2090 (710 M, 720 CR, 660 W) - Might retake.
Class Rank: Unreleased, but I guarantee I'm one of the top 2 in my class.</p>

<p>Course load: 2 APs (LitComp,USHis) My school offers barely any APs, the only other ones are Biology, which doesn't interest me much at all, Art, which isn't something I can't take, and Calculus, which unfortunately I can't take because in Middle School we only reached Pre-Algebra instead of completing Algebra 1. Almost all honors classes for everything that provides it (ROTC obviously doesn't have an honors version), I had a few CP classes Freshman year and 1 Sophomore year, but that's it. </p>

<p>ECs:
(10,11,12) Literary Magazine, Page Designer, now Editor-in-Chief
(11,12) NJROTC, Platoon Commander, Ensign (officer) Rank
(11,12) NJROTC Drill Team, New Cadet Commander, I don't know my position for next year.
(11,12) National Honor Society</p>

<p>Awards:
2 Academic Letters (Freshman and Junior year, I was completely cheated out of a single class Sophomore year. =P)</p>

<p>Order of the Daedalians Award for excellence in JROTC Leadership and Academics. Awarded to only one person in the school annually, some years nobody is awarded.</p>

<p>Work Experience:
Summer job in 2004 working for a computer repair and troubleshooting retail shop, about 25 hours a week. I am not working this summer due to my attending a 1-week JROTC Summer Camp and 2-week Leadership Academy.</p>

<p>In addition, I play the guitar (electric and acoustic) and the mandolin.</p>

<hr>

8

<p>MSE departments at schools tend to be quite small even at larger universities. Even though VaTech has like 25,000 students each MSE class is relatively small, so only your gen. ed courses will be big (but they will be big at just about every school). VaTech is building brand new MSE facilities.</p>

<p>Also look at GaTech, they have an amazing MSE department and all their facilities are brand new, some of the nicest I've seen for any engineering dept.</p>

<p>Sorry, but I don't know much about EE</p>

9

<p>Check out the following:</p>

<p>Carnegie Mellon University
Cornell University
Northwestern University
Purdue University-West Lafayette
University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
University of Texas-Austin</p>

10

<p>Sounds like you want to be in the Midwest. For EE, Purdue, Michigan, and Illinois will be no different to prospective employers and grad schools. You can't look straight up at rankings and think that's the way it is. All companies have their own list, where I work now (in California), Purdue is the most hired. But, in my group of about 100 people, UofM is the top school. We also have several UIUC grads, some CalTech guys, MIT, Cornell. They all are given pretty equal footing during the interviews. I went to Purdue for undergrad, and had no problem getting into Berkeley for grad school, ME dept. And, I knew profs at Berkeley who respected Purdue's undergrad education more than Berkeley's, so, at that top level, it's pretty equal as far as undergrad is concerned. </p>

<p>All three are also good in Materials, and I'd throw in Northwestern as well, however, that will be much more expensive. If debt won't be an issue, then they may be the top choice. If you would have to take out huge loans to go there, I would say skip it, it will hurt more than help.</p>