<p>First, to be clear, my S is more like a guppy in a puddle than even a big fish in a little pond! I don’t know if he would fit the gifted classification the poster following me used for him-I know for sure that on CC he is probably below average. Seriously, I am in awe of some of the kids who post here-very impressive indeed. I also meant to say the KIND of student-not the KID of student-sorry about that typo!</p>
<p>To answer notrich-one of the reasons UMass has attracted our interest is because my son is interested in many different areas and isn’t sure what direction to go in-which stresses him out to no end but I view as pretty cool-how much would I have loved to be good at Math and love to write? Anyway, UMass seems like the kind of place where he could get the exposure to many areas and find his way.</p>
Yes, this is one of the advantages of large universities - they have many majors.</p>
<p>For most majors I think you can be undeclared for at least one year, and maybe two years. There are a few majors which would be difficult to transfer into, either because they are very competitive with limited slots (sports management, nursing) or they have a rigid set of course requirements (engineering), there might be a few others.</p>
<p>He is leaning towards chemical engineering-or economics. He loves math and chemistry but also loves to write so I think he would be better off going undecided but it’s his decision of course.</p>
<p>My understanding though is if you don’t start as an engineering major it would be hard to transfer into because of all the required classes.</p>
<p>Quote: “FWIW, every person I’ve met that went to UMass (and this is certainly in the dozens by now, since I live in MA), pretty much universally the first thing they say is “I loved it there”.”</p>
<p>Me too. I have several friends with kids there and all report positive experiences. I guess I was just trying to head off the cynics.</p>
<p>Quote: “My understanding though is if you don’t start as an engineering major it would be hard to transfer into because of all the required classes.”</p>
<p>True, although he could go in as undeclared engineering and take a couple of econ courses also, then see after a year which he wants to do.</p>
<p>All first year students accepted into the engineering school are general engineering admits. After the first year, they are accepted into their specific engineering program.</p>
<p>A first year could take an economics class in lieu of one of the gen ed classes, and if they have AP credit, they would be ahead of the game and have more leeway in exploring their options.</p>
<p>My son is a freshman ECE major at UMass. So far he (and I) are happy. His instructors seem to genuinely want the students to succeed and have been very helpful when asked, and quickly responsive to email. One of the nice surprises has been the extra opportunities the ECE dept. has offered for the students to get hands-on experience in the M5 lab; for example, my son signed up for a 1 credit lab course that meets for 3 hours once a week, in which he hacks digital cameras under the supervision of a professor. No pressure, it’s fun, and he begins to get an understanding of what engineering is about… (dad, what’s an oscilloscope?) He made a digital circuit in the first week of his ENGIN 112 lab; I like this idea of getting the students right into building things (I’m an EE myself).</p>
<p>I did quite a bit of research before we decided on UMass… most of what I learned has held up. Yes, it’s a big school with bureaucracy, but so far the school has responded quickly and effectively to my problems/questions. There is certainly a party scene, but it can easily be avoided (i.e. stay out of the Southwest residential area). My son’s Engineering RAP in the Northeast area is mostly quiet and serious about school. I went through the RateMyProfessor ratings for every prof in the engineering and physics departments, and compared them with other schools; UMass comes out pretty well in this comparison, and so far the RMP ratings have mirrored my son’s first-hand opinions to a surprising degree.</p>
<p>It’s still early in his college career, but so far I’m very satisfied with what’s happening at UMass.</p>
I would second this - I have emailed the Dean of the Honors College and the Bursar and received personal responses within several hours, which I think is pretty darned good.</p>
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Keep in mind that Southwest has more than half of the on-campus housing, so it isn’t necessarily that easy to avoid. The key I’m told is to go to the earliest orientation you can, because that is where you sign up for housing. The later the orientation, the less likely you are to get your first choice(s).</p>
<p>And it’s not like it is a 24x7 block party, you can get your work done from what I’m told. It is higher energy than some of the other dorm clusters, but some kids like that. Southwest has by far the best dining hall, too.</p>
<p>Or (for freshman) if you are in a RAP, your housing is automatic. Anyone in the Engineering RAP is automatically in Northeast.</p>
<p>One of my son’s HS friends is a freshman in Southwest, a biology major and a good student (I coached him in soccer for many years). He says it is noisy every night, but he sleeps through it, and he likes living there. So it is certainly an individual preference… my son says Northeast gets a little noisy on Friday and Saturday nights but is quiet otherwise.</p>
<p>That’s another thing about UMass, the dining halls are really outstanding. Southwest has the best dining hall, but the others are excellent as well…</p>
<p>My S went to one of the last orientations, he was assigned to Southwest even though he did not even list it as a choice. The RAPs were all full by that point, he could not get in one. He was fortunately able to switch to Northeast before school started, but that was a pretty lucky break - when his “slot” to look for a switch came up there was exactly one opening in NE.</p>
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The difference in the food the kids get these days compared to the pig swill I got fed in school 30 years ago is just astonishing. I would happily never cook again and eat at any one of the dining halls for the rest of my life.</p>
<p>I’m glad it worked out for you! Actually, we went to one of the earlier orientations because we heard things filled up… I didn’t realize the RAPS got filled up as well.</p>
<p>I’m with you on the food. Far superior to anything I saw 30 years ago. Same with the recreational facilities. For my money, I’d prefer they downgrade the food, throw out the stationary bikes, and then cut the fees… UMass is a bargain (relatively), but it’s still $20K</p>
<p>Thanks for pointing out how quickly “non-Southwest” housing gets filled up. I’ll be sure to attend the earliest orientation possible if I’m accepted.</p>
<p>This seems to be true from my limited experiences as well! The thing about large univerisities like UMass that is great is that they are so lively. There also seems to be great school spirit and everybody can find a set of like-minded friends. And given its large size, almost everybody, from valedictorians to those who barely got in, can also find a set of intellectual peers. Sometimes, I wish I had chosen to attend for this reason in addition to the $5k honors engineering scholarship. </p>
<p>Another great thing is the fact that it is a highly ranked research university, meaning that for students who may be bored by undergraduate coursework (which can often be quite tough), there are challenging graduate classes full of motivated students. Research opportunites are also readily available for top students, especially in computer science and engineering. For the humanities or social sciences, I would say a SSLAC would be better from a quality perspective than UMass for obvious reasons (including great FA).</p>
<p>And among state flagships, UMass is good, especially for science and engineering. It is no Berkeley, Texas or Illinois but it is ranked highly among area schools (including more expensive privates) and graduates place well in regional companies with the best students placing well in the top graduate programs (including Berkeley, Texas, Illinois).</p>
<p>Another great thing is the cost. Without scholarships, UMass is the secnd best VALUE in New England for Engineering after MIT.</p>
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<p>Not quite. I am an ECE student at WPI which is a good school but has extremely high tuition. However, I am paying ~$28k with scholarships and many other students I know who go here get similarly large scholarships. Ditto with Northeastern. If you have 1400+ SAT and top 10% at a competitive high school or top 5% at a less competitve school then merit aid is a possibility.</p>
<p>Also, part of the issue with UMass is that it tries to compete with Ivies and MIT. For starters, these schools have a lot more financial resources and name prestige. But this is not the problem. There is an entirely different reason UMass cannot and should notbecome like an Ivy.</p>
<p>As Jack Wilson stated, the Ivies (and UVA) also don’t have the same focus and vision that a public university should have. Their goal is to concentrate their wealth and resources on very few undergraduates, graduate students and faculty. </p>
<p>Public universities have a responsibility to the state and to the taxpayers and focus on educating well a large number of state residents and allocating some research energies to local problems. UMass does this well. UMass should strive to become like UC-Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan and Wisconsin. And considering the number of quality private colleges in the area along with the number of politicians who graduated from these schools, this will be tough to accomplish. And the decisions made seem poor. The law school acquisition in my opinion seems to have been a huge waste.</p>
<p>But UMass is fine compared to many other public higher education systems. Think of Rhode Island, Nevada, Maine, Hawaii, Idaho, Oklahoma, and many others.</p>
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<p>Beyond a certain point, the demand for an MIT (or whatever expensive university) will decrease, especially if tuition rises so much and financial aid does not cover the need. Financial aid for the middle class is already poor at many private universites. If thise results in reducing the pull to the strongest students, MIT can easily reduce the tuition and cut back on some frills (most of their income doesn’t come from undergraduate tuition anyways)! </p>
<p>The entire US system of higher education (high tuitions and universites for each state) is quite perplexing! Most countries have a few national universities that is highly subsidized and consequently have low tuition.</p>
Sure, my S got offered some decent merit aid from WPI as well. If you are full-pay it is $52K per year. I think the schools at that level (WPI, RPI, RIT, etc) give pretty good discounts if you are a top student.</p>
<p>But the top school he got into (which is a level or two up from WPI, and almost at MIT’s level) doesn’t really give merit aid (they do something like 2 merit engineering scholarships per year). The rest is all need based, and if they judge you to have no need…</p>
<p>MIT doesn’t give merit aid, but they have two other factors going for them: they have a large endowment which they can tap, and because of their status there will always be enough people who are willing to pay full-price at MIT that they don’t need to worry.</p>
<p>The next tiers down are going to start to have to discount more heavily to attract good students, the question is, can they afford it?</p>
<p>I’m a sophomore at UMass, and just wanted to throw in one very good thing about the school (at least for science majors): It’s pretty easy to get involved in undergrad research. I’m currently working with the very first professor I emailed when I decided I wanted to do research. I know its not a fluke, either, because I know that 6-7 others in my physics class are doing research (and we’re all sophomores, most people don’t start doing research until they need to do their ComCol capstone project junior year). I also have friends not in my department who are similarly involved in research.</p>
<p>Yes. This is actually the big positive about UMass I saw when selecting a college. They have an enormous budget for research. At my school, which is also a good college, there is a smaller research budget so it is harder to get a research gig (whether paid or unpaid). I interviewed with a prof earlier this year and nobody else seriously me despite my 3.6 GPA. I have only tried 5 or 6 professors. Should I extend my search? Lavieboheme, do you have any advice?</p>
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<p>Need-based aid is not very good for middle/upper-middle class families at private universites. It serves the poor quite well, often beating the aid provided by public uiniversities, and the very wealthy, to whom cost is not an issue. I was admitted to CMU (though not to SCS or ECE, which were my top choices) and it was not affordable at all; that’s why I didn’t attend.</p>
<p>Only a handful of very highly ranked institutions, such as Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Amherst can meet the true financial need of middle class families. My brother is a first-year student at University of Chicago (maybe this is at the level of the school your son got into) and they provide quite mediocre financial aid.</p>
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<p>Yes, this is completely true. I have never heard of anybody choosing a state university (though I am sure there are cases), whether it is a full ride to UMass Amherst or even admissions to the prestigious University of Michigan and UC-Berkeley in-state (which are cheaper) choose these schools over MIT. The only schools that can compete well with MIT for students are Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and Caltech (all of which are just as wealthy as MIT if not wealthier). In fact, I have heard very few cases of students choosing other top-20 privates over MIT unless there was a full scholarship.</p>
<p>But for MIT, the current tuition is not really that much of an issue. The only issue is that its neighbor, Harvard, provides better financial aid for middle class students. But if I am not mistaken, MIT has the highest return on investment of any U.S. college and has some of the highest undergraduate research participation rates in the country (over 80%). But this may just have a lot to do with their extreme selectivity. Good material in = good material out!</p>
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<p>At least for now, the answer is that they can. A better question is whether the students who don’t recieve any merit based aid can afford it. The sad state of things is that schools like WPI and RIT are leaders in student debt. Around 20% of WPI’s financial aid budget is allocated for non-need-based aid and surprisingly, they don’t price discount for the majority of students and yet still get a reasonably strong class (SAT midpoint: 1300). This is the same situation for many other schools of the same tier (one tier down from MIT-level privates).</p>
<p>My S wanted to apply to WPI & RPI; I told him not to bother since I didn’t think he’d get enough aid to make it affordable for our family. We would be nearly fully pay and S’s high school GPA would not get him a large merit award. </p>
<p>S was admitted to a couple of similarly ranked schools, and the finances did not work. I could not see what paying close to double for S’s education would gain him. UMass Amherst has an excellent engineering program. The additional cost would have left our family in huge debt and S with a mortgage sized student loan payment for many years.</p>
Seriously, I am in awe of some of the kids who post here-very impressive indeed. I also meant to say the KIND of student-not the KID of student-sorry about that typo!</p>