I only heard of this college some days ago, and while it will be a few years before I can transfer out of community college, I have some intrigue for this school, mainly because not many schools offer ocean engineering as a major.
Yet despite all its praise, something seems off. From what I understand based off multiple review sources and college websites, it’s a decent engineering school that’s right outside of Manhattan and can afford to have 40%-ish admission rate while grads have an easy time finding an engineering job before or shortly after graduation, yet it’s reputation seems small among non-employers. I understand website rankings aren’t everything, but I see no reason for this college to remain unknown, except that it’s sports are Division III, and 2 family members told me Hoboken is a dump. I find it hard to believe those 2 things alone can keep a college from obtaining the glory of a large reputation, though. (Then again, I don’t care for sports).
Either the college staff and administration have been taking care to create a bunch of fabricated reviews online, or this school takes care to have its students possess a cult-like mentality where they’re brainwashed to see a bad choice of a college through rose-colored lenses. Or there’s something I don’t understand/know/am aware of.
Stevens is a small school, and the majority of their enrollment consists of graduate students. They have only about 3,000 undergraduates, comparable to a large liberal arts college. Why would you expect a small, engineering-focused school to have widespread name recognition outside of the engineering community?
Other small engineering schools, like RPI, WPI, Rose-Hulman, Harvey Mudd, Webb Institute, or Olin College, aren’t exactly household names either. But they are still great choices for technical education and career placement.
By the way, Stevens doesn’t offer ocean engineering as an undergraduate major. It’s available as a master’s program.
Not sure where you live, but Stevens is very well known in the Nj area with a longstanding reputation as a strong engineering school. As for Hoboken being a dump, Eli Manning (a resident) would disagree. I know someone who recently purchased a condo there for $1.3 million. It’s definitely a city, and as with all cities it has its ups and downs, but I wouldn’t classify it as a dump.
Hoboken was a dump in the 80’s, but it’s been (& still is being) entirely renovated. Home prices now are extremely high.
Hoboken is not a dump at all. It is a highly sought after place to live for people working in Manhattan because it’s very easy to get into midtown and downtown from all of Hoboken, and while it’s still very expensive, it is less than living in Manhattan. I’ve known many young professionals who have lived there.
Stevens graduates a lot of good engineers. If this is a career you want to pursue, you can do a lot worse than Stevens. And you’re close to NYC.
Thank you. I’ve only recently considered engineering, so I had yet to realize how isolated (For lack of better wording) is it academically.
With that being said, they offer naval engineering as a concentration for mechanical engineering. It’s listed on their undergrad engineer majors page
https://www.stevens.edu/academics/undergraduate-studies/undergraduate-majors
It’s a good school, but expensive. Smaller or specialized schools (art, engineering, nursing) tend to be better known in the field or in the area than they are to the general public. My daughter goes to a small engineering school that is not well known even in Florida, but engineers around the country have all heard of it and that’s really all that matters when it comes time to get a job.
Hoboken is not a dump. My son just came home from a summer program at Stevens, and he raved about Hoboken. I had a lot of friends who lived there after college, and it was a really fun place to visit.
If you are interested in naval engineering, you should also check out the Webb Institute - it is tiny but tuition is free and the campus is beautiful. I think they have a 100% employment rate at graduation. My daughter did an internship there during high school and loved the place. It was a bit too small and too close to home for her, but she was very impressed with the facilities and the student body. She met one of the trustees, and his current job is designing water slides for one of the big cruise lines. How cool is that!
I’ve looked into Webb Institute. Sadly, they don’t accept college credits via transfer, but if they did then it would probably be my first choice for transfer.
Naval architecture seems to be a rare standalone major these days (as opposed to a subarea of some other major like mechanical engineering, which can be more laborious to search for).
The 8 schools with a standalone ABET accredited naval architecture majors include Webb, three service academies (CG, MM, N), two state maritime schools (ME, NY), Michigan, and New Orleans.
Have you checked the net price calculators on all of schools you are considering to see if they fit into your budget?
If Webb is free, it might make more sense to start over there even if they won’t take your prior course work.
http://www.webb.edu/admissions/financial-aid/ indicates that Webb gives full tuition scholarships to US citizen and permanent resident students. However, the remaining cost of attendance is $20,725 in that case. There is a net price calculator at https://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/Shopping/School/Webb-Institute-NY–197221 .
Ocean Engineering is a little Different from Naval Architecture. Webb is Naval Architecute and Marine Engineering. It is a dual Degree program. As stated above Stevens is a concentration in Naval Architecture. They lost their ABET certification for ABET Naval Architecture but do have the masters program in Ocean engineering. A real head scratcher to me. Search for Ocean engineering you will see more schools come up. Virginia Tech has a program that will allow you to dual major in Areo as well. Might have been stated above but Everyone who goes to Webb starts as a Freshman.
Stevens has one of the oldest and most established ocean engineering, naval architecture, and naval/marine engineering programs in the world. The Stevens OE/CE/EnvE department, housing the Davidson Laboratory, which is the most well known non-military university-based hydrodynamics/towing tank lab in the world, is one of the preeminent academic institutions in this field. Traditionally, Stevens did not offer OE as an undergraduate major, in past years it was offered only at the master’s and doctoral levels. The OE department and the Davidson Lab have an international reputation in ship design, hydrodynamics, ship control/seakeeping, coastal engineering/flood prevention and protection, and many more. Many of the America’s Cup yachts were designed and/or tested at Davidson, along with many military and commercial ships, submarines, and also the flotation devices used by NASA on spacecraft that were landed in the ocean, on all of the space programs prior to the Shuttle.
Stevens introduced an undergraduate naval engineering program as a concentration within the broad-based engineering curriculum about a decade ago. While the title of the program is naval engineering, it includes all of the fundamental and advanced coursework in naval architecture and ocean engineering.
You should check out the departmental and Davidson Lab website:
https://www.stevens.edu/research-entrepreneurship/research-centers-labs/davidson-laboratory
By the way, a third of Webb Institute’s faculty are Stevens master’s and doctoral alumni, so that should tell you something.
In naval architecture and engineering you simply cannot do better than Stevens.
Full disclosure, Stevens alumnus (BE, electrical engineering, MSEE, PhD), MIT (MS), Rutgers (MS Math).
@offline - The naval engineering program at Stevens is ABET accredited as are all of its engineering curricula.
From the NE website:
The bachelor of engineering program with a concentration in naval engineering is accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission (EAC) of ABET.
ABET, Inc.
Engineering Accreditation Commission
415 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
@offline - The naval engineering program at Stevens is ABET accredited as are all of its engineering curricula.
From the NE website:
The bachelor of engineering program with a concentration in naval engineering is accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission (EAC) of ABET.
ABABET Engineering Accreditation Commission
415 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
@offline - The naval engineering program at Stevens is ABET accredited as are all of its engineering curricula.
From the NE website:
The bachelor of engineering program with a concentration in naval engineering is accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission (EAC) of ABET.
ABABET Engineering Accreditation Commission
415 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
I think the point is that Stevens does not have ABET accreditation for naval engineering specifically. It looks like the naval program is indeed ABET-accredited – but as a generic “general engineering” program, and not as a “naval engineering” program specifically. That’s probably why Stevens calls it a “bachelor of engineering program with a concentration in naval engineering”.
According to the ABET website, Stevens currently holds ABET specialty accreditations in many engineering disciplines, including biomedical, chemical, civil, computer, electrical, environmental, and mechanical engineering. However, Stevens does not hold the naval engineering specialty accreditation, which ABET also offers.
My guess is that the naval engineering program at Stevens is relatively small. When a school has small engineering programs, it is often more practical and cost-effective to accredit them under ABET’s generic “general engineering” umbrella, rather than to pursue separate specialty accreditation for each one.
Stevens believes that a broad-based engineering curriculum with great breadth and depth produces superior problem solvers than highly specialized engineering programs. Regardless of the particular engineering specialty (eg., ME, EE, OE, etc.) Stevens engineering students take in depth courses in all the other engineering areas in addition to those of their specific major. Having a knowledge of engineering outside one’s own is extremely valuable, as many if not most engineering projects and problems today involve attributes of several, or many, disciplines.
Stevens graduates are highly sought after by industry due to their broad-based, in addition to their specialty training. As a result of the depth courses as well as the specialty courses, Stevens students take 145-154 credits typically in their four years. The undergraduate degree is therefore a Bachelor of Engineering instead of BSEE/OE/ME, etc. In the 147 years of Stevens’ history, the broad based curriculum has proven its value.
For many years (Stevens was one of the first engineering schools to be accredited by ABET’s predecessor, ECPD, in 1936 when that organization was founded) all of Stevens programs were accredited in the general engineering category. When ECPD/ABET began specialized program accreditation Stevens chose to retain the general accreditation as it felt that specialized accreditation was redundant and costly- since the broad-based program and specialized concentration curriculum far exceeded ABET’s specialized criteria, and that specialized accreditation was thought to be contrary to Stevens’ broad based philosophy. As a result, Stevens did not offer traditional “majors” but the BE with concentration in EE, ME, CE, etc.
Some two decades ago ABET introduced changes to their accreditation criteria that made it difficult for schools with discipline-specific curricula and departments to retain general engineering accreditation, and Stevens changed to discipline specific accreditation but still retained the general accreditation. As mentioned earlier, the Naval Engineering undergraduate program is new in the last decade, drawing on the Stevens OE department’s great strength in the master’s and doctoral programs, which date back to the founding of the Institute. You are likely correct in that the undergrad program is small in terms of number of students and it is likely less overhead to classify it in the general engineering mantle of ABET.
That said, as I said earlier Stevens is one of the oldest and preeminent OE/NA/NE schools in the world and has noted faculty and high level research in all these areas.