This is my third time through this process, but I’m struggling to zero in on schools that may be a good fit for my son. He is not sure what he wants to do, but is leaning towards either engineering or medicine. He is a strong student with a current 4.0 unweighted GPA, and will have 10 APs which is on the high end for his school. Should be in the top 10% of his class. He has a 34 ACT but a 32 in science which is pulling it down a bit. May retake. We live in Georgia. Budget is not a concern for the right fit.
As far as extracurriculars go, he plays two sports and plays an instrument (neither at the college level), a sprinkling of academic awards at school, some volunteer hours, Mock Trial and Model UN awards (regional level). Nothing head turning.
He will apply both to UGA and Ga Tech. So far he believes he does not want to go to school in a big city, but Georgia Tech is close and hard to turn down in-state for engineering. He has shown some interest in smaller private schools, but is turned off by the liberal arts college label. His comment was he doesn’t want to take a lot of English classes😂. I don’t think either of us really have a good grip on what a liberal arts education looks like.
His preference is to stay in the southeast. Not sure what size he’s really comfortable with. We are looking at UVA and W and L in a couple of weeks, and going to look at Emory as well. He liked both Clemson and Wofford when he toured them with his school. He’s kind of all over the place!
U Miami or Wake Forest came to mind immediately. Wofford is nice. If he likes bigger then FSU, South Carolina or NC State. Probably would get the OOS tuition waiver at FSU. S21 is at FSU and he loves it. Fun place. Seems like a good place for the average exceptional student with other interests.
GT engineering is tough to keep high GPA required for med school.
Agree about Georgia Tech and pre med. From what I understand, medical schools primarily focus on MCAT and GPA. That would be a hesitation for me about Georgia Tech unless he becomes certain he wants to be an engineer.
And no Zell cannot be used out of state I don’t think. It can be used at Emory or other in-state privates but only $4000 or so. We are full pay so that doesn’t make much of a dent.
I decided to use ABET accreditation as the first major restrictor, as if your son does go into engineering, it is highly recommended that the program be ABET-accredited. There aren’t a ton of those engineering programs at smaller colleges in the southeast, but there are some. Most of them, however, are in cities. This list has several engineering majors that are accredited, as your son may not know in which area of engineering he would like to specialize, should he decide to go that route.
Some, like Duke & Vandy, are reaches for nearly everyone, though I think your son would have a good shot. Duke has great medical educational facilities, so that’s a definite plus for them. Alabama-Huntsville is particularly renowned for aerospace engineering and a lot of the nation’s major companies in that field are located in the Huntsville area. Harding & Louisiana Tech are probably the smallest towns of the bunch…definitely would not be getting a big urban feel from those.
I think this list contains both reaches and safeties and likelies. Always a good idea to have safeties that are well-liked, and sometimes people have the hardest time developing that side of their list. I think there’s definitely merit in building a list from the safeties on up. And I think your son would be highly likely to receive significant merit aid at a number of these as well.
Thanks for the suggestions, most of those we hadn’t really thought of. I think we have large state schools covered, as he will apply to Georgia, Georgia Tech, Alabama Tuscaloosa (dads alma mater), UVA (mine) and Clemson for sure. I have a good feel for how all of those will shake out as my other boys applied to these. Might include UNC but such a tough admit I don’t know.
Even though Auburn is stronger in engineering than Alabama, I don’t think I can get him to apply there! Honestly Alabama may drop off the list because I feel like his chances are strong at UGA and UGA has a higher ranked engineering program.
Agree ideal situation would be school with both good engineering and pre med.
The smaller privates are where we have a lot of holes so appreciate the direction!
Duke, Rice, Vanderbilt - all would be reaches, especially for regular decision
College of William & Mary, Wake Forest - although not sure if they have ABET engineering yet
I have two engineering students, one who hates English classes and one who loves them. The reality is that if they pursue engineering, they will have little time for English classes and the “other” requirements across most engineering programs are pretty similar. The real difference is if your student pursues a science major, then the school they attend could vary greatly in the amount of “other” classes required. Typically liberal arts colleges have more requirements than, say, a state university. But that’s a generality - for example, Amherst College has very few core requirements, but University of Chicago has many. I am not very knowledgeable about colleges in the Southeast, but it will probably take some research to really get a sense of what the required/likely curriculum would be at various schools, especially between an A&S major and an Engineering major.
You can major in ANYTHING and have a pre-med intention. All you need to do is take the prerequisite courses for medical school applicants. These can be done with just about any major….and that includes engineering.
Most colleges have good pre-med options (advising, prereqs, etc), and students can major in anything so long as they take the necessary classes for med school. Thus, this isn’t much of a limitation, though the possibility of being near a med school or major hospitals is a definite boon for someone who’s interested in pre-med.
The engineering part of your son’s interests, however, are much more restrictive in terms of which colleges are possibilities. I’d recommend using the ABET search function to see if institutions you’re interested in offer accredited programs. There are great universities like Emory and Wake Forest, but they don’t have ABET accreditation. And as has been discussed recently in another thread, most engineering employers only consider candidates from ABET-accredited schools. Has your son done any engineering camps? Doing one this summer might be beneficial to see how likely his interest really is in engineering, which can definitely end up affecting how his list of college applications turns out.
Some other smaller programs that might be worth considering are these:
University of Miami (11k students) is slightly larger than my arbitrary 10k student cutoff with the previous list, but is still considerably smaller than most of the big state universities, and has many different areas of engineering that are accredited.
Tulane (8k students) only has ABET-accreditation for Biomedical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, and Engineering Physics, but if your son thinks those would be his areas of interest, then it’s another smaller institution that I’d throw on the list.
If you’re willing to extend slightly further west, Rice University (4k students) in Houston is a possibility. It has strong engineering programs and also is right next to the main hospital district in Houston, so there are a lot of medical opportunities there, too.
Also worth some additional research is Mercer University (3-4k students) in GA. ABET’s website indicates that its general engineering B.S. is accredited, and when I went to its website to see if it was a 3/2 program, there was no general engineering degree listed, but Bachelor’s in biomedical, civil, computer, electrical, industrial, and mechanical engineering instead. It could be that those are concentrations, or perhaps they’re undergoing accreditation now, or the ABET site isn’t fully updated, but I’d definitely inquire.
Both Rice & Tulane are reaches for everyone, but again, I think your son would have a decent shot. I suspect University of Miami would be a target and Mercer a likely.
Yes! My sister is a doctor and her criteria was she wanted easiest major, which ended up being psychology at her school. My husband is also a doctor and he majored in microbiology just because he enjoyed it. Certainly more flexible than an engineering major. At our state schools he will have to complete a basic level of English, history, math and at UGA foreign language/culture so not sure it is too different than some liberal arts colleges.
And thanks for your additional thoughts. I feel decent about his chance at Tulane based on students we know that are there or going. My valedictorian son was waitlisted at Rice 3 years ago and I think like everywhere apps are way up. My recollection is he applied there regular decision so that could’ve made a difference.
Engineering camp is a great idea. My oldest son did one at Michigan and another at NC State which helped him zero in on civil engineering, and may have helped him get into Michigan.
It sure would be helpful to know if that is what he wants to pursue!
While true, many engineering majors are voluminous enough that the non-overlapping pre-med courses may be hard to fit into an eight semester schedule*. Biomedical and chemical engineering may have somewhat greater overlap with pre-med courses than other engineering majors.
*For pre-med purposes, note also that exemptions from introductory courses in English, general chemistry, biology, etc. through AP credit typically need to be supplemented by additional upper level courses in the same subject area. So AP credit that results in such exemptions may not be as useful in reducing the schedule crowding for pre-med courses, except in math where engineering majors take higher level math than needed for pre-med purposes anyway.
According to Tulane’s Common Data Set, 9.6% of applicants were accepted. Your son’s 34 ACT is above Tulane’s 25th percentile, but that doesn’t mean that odds are at least 50% of acceptance. Tulane is very fond of lots of demonstrated interest and as has been mentioned elsewhere, including the yield protection thread, does have a tendency to yield protect (i.e. reject applicants whose stats are higher than their typical if they think the student is unlikely to attend). So if Tulane is going to be of serious consideration for your son, he’s going to want to show them lots of love.
At Rice, they’ve only posted their common data set from 20-21, so this information is for fall 2020, but its acceptance rate was 10.9%.
Many feel that colleges that accept less than 20% of applicants should all be considered reaches. Most students don’t apply unless they think that they have a decent shot of being accepted. These colleges have lots of very qualified applicants, enough to fill their classes multiple times over. Who ends up being picked often feels like luck to students, but it depends on what the university needs to round out its class and what they’re looking for that particular year. So although I think your son would be qualified to be admitted to any of the reach universities and would do well at any of them, due to the overwhelming odds of rejection for most qualified applicants, I still would qualify these as reaches.
