<p>Sure but for the latter of those two schools you have to live in Lubbock, which is awful.</p>
<p>Okay I’m going into electrical engineering or computer science. I do want the typical college experience(I love college football and basketball), but I’m okay with letting that go for a great institution. </p>
<p>Oh yeah and I agree boneh3ad. Lubbock is not where I would want to be lol. </p>
<p>I don’t like Greek life, but I understand that most colleges have it. I just don’t want the Greek life to be overblown at a school</p>
<p>Alright, now you’re getting somewhere. What’s your gut tell you about size? Even though your GPA might not get you into Rice, if you’re close, you should visit. It’ll give you an idea of what a smallish school feels like. You should also visit UT. There are almost 10 times as many students at UT vs. Rice. It will be a good start to decide if you could enjoy a giant campus. With giant campuses generally comes giant classes. The intro to computer science class at Cal has over 1000 students! Conversely, some students just feel too conspicuous on small campuses. </p>
<p>Yeah I’ve visited UT Austin and I liked it. I may be able to visit Rice, though it’s a long shot. </p>
<p>The visit to Rice is more about size than whether or not you’ll get in. I’d say with your GPA, Rice is a stretch. If however you visited Rice, or SMU or TCU or Trinity, and hated it because it was too small, you can eliminate lots of schools. It’s a way of figuring out if some place like Santa Clara, Case, Portland, Seattle, etc. (insert any small school here) might be in the running by size alone. If not, your search just became a whole lot narrower.</p>
<p>How did Case and Lehigh get on the list?</p>
<p>It’s possible that size isn’t a factor. My son visited schools ranging from Olin (just under 400) to Utah (just over 30k) because each one he visited had a hook from his narrowed criteria. Size, other than avoiding the super behemoths like Penn State and Michigan, wasn’t a big factor for him.</p>
<p>What about hobbies?</p>
<p>In terms of hobbies I basically do everything. To be honest for me it comes down to quality of the engineering school combined with grad school placement and future job outlook. I visited SMU and TCU last summer in their respective sizes didn’t really play a part in my opinion of them. However the beauty of the campus and prestige of their programs did play a large part. So I would say that whatever school I would like to go to needs to meet the following criteria: good engineering dept, relatively prestigious school, highly rated campus, good grad school placement or good job outlook. Thanks! </p>
<p>Case and Lehigh got on the list due to their good median salaries for grads and good engineering programs. I guess you could add potential salary to the list of my wants. </p>
<p>Based on just those criteria, it’s going to be a LONG list. </p>
<p>You can start by eliminating some of the biggest names where a 3.5 is unlikely to get in. The MITs, Cal Techs and Stanfords of the world are obvious, but all of the well known state schools like UIUC, Purdue, Michigan, and Cal Poly are much harder to gain admission as an engineer. Others on the board here can tell you where a 3.5/2200 will be competitive.</p>
<p>You also need to decide what “prestigious” means to you. Most reputations are based on their doctoral programs. Your undergraduate experience might be bad at a school with a big name. Class size and looking at the curriculum for early lab and hands on classes can tell you a bit about what UG might be like.</p>
<p>Sorry I’m not throwing names at you, but with the nebulous criteria, it could be 50 schools, easily.</p>
<p>Best of luck to you. </p>
<p>I would second visiting TAMU. I’m sure you know it is a huge school but it has a very different feel from UT. My son struggled with deciding between the two but chose TAMU based on his preference to the feel of the school. Really a personal choice. If you are an auto admit, which I expect you are to TAMU based on your SAT, and you apply early you will get into the engineering program. This can relieve some pressure early on. You will however have to be in the program before you know if you will get into your first choice major within engineering. I believe UT still accepts students into their specific major but while there is auto admissions to UT if your rank is high enough there isn’t automatic admissions to engineering so you will have to wait for the decision.</p>
<p>LOL about Lubbock.</p>
<p>What about Stevens?</p>