<p>I was accepted into gatech and I'm undecided between gatech and a state university (University of Washington). Would any gatech students or alumni please give me some idea of how life is at gatech? (Academics, professors, extracurricular opportunities, co-op opportunities, social life, etc.) Any insight would be greatly appreciated. ;-)</p>
<p>I'm from neighboring state AL. GA has great co-op opportunities. Almost everyone there co-ops. academics are great so I've heard. However, social life isn't as great. Students talk about the Ratio a lot (although I don't care) and how the male/female ratio is depressing. Where are you from? I gotta go. ttyl</p>
<p>I'm from Atlanta. GA Tech has an excellent reputation. Academics are tough - at least for some majors. They weed out a lot their first year. That makes the degree that much more valuable. What major are you looking at? The school is highly respected for some, less so for others. Campus is not "closed" - out on the streets of Atlanta. Dorms are not great. Many fine facilities and labs. Opportunities are excellent, both scholastically and culturally. They do seem to take care of their own. I know many students who went there or go there now -- loyalty to the school is very high. I heard a comment -- perhaps a joke grounded in some truth -- that the main "social" activity is kids in their own rooms playing internet games against each other. :) As poster above said, co-op is quite common.</p>
<p>It is a competitive environment but not super intense either.</p>
<p>Are you serious? I heard it was intense for a public school.</p>
<p>binx, i'm probably going to major in civil engineering</p>
<p>I think academically it is very intense. They have weed out classes, certainly. My bro was telling me one of the Physics classes had more people fail than pass.</p>
<p>with that said I think it is a very good school. BECAUSE it is hard the degree is worth more on the job market and elsewhere. If you go there it's a given that you work hard and are very intelligent. </p>
<p>I think alot of the negativity is from those just whining. honestly, yes, it's hard, but people pretend it is different at every other college except tech.</p>
<p>According to US News, MIT has a graduation rate 1 percent below expectation, Cal Tech has a graduation rate 4 % below expectation, and Georgia Tech has a graduation rate 12% below expectation. This is despite the fact that GTech offers lower in-state tuition. Is Georgia Tech harder than MIT and Cal Tech?</p>
<p>going off topic here....</p>
<p>firai, what were your stats? I'm thinking of applying to Ga Tech.
Please and thank you.:)</p>
<p>"According to US News, MIT has a graduation rate 1 percent below expectation, Cal Tech has a graduation rate 4 % below expectation, and Georgia Tech has a graduation rate 12% below expectation. This is despite the fact that GTech offers lower in-state tuition. Is Georgia Tech harder than MIT and Cal Tech?"</p>
<p>Although it sounds strange, the schools that are toughest to get into are the easiest to graduate from. Grad rates at Princeton, Yale and Harvard are 98+%. Look at the grad rates in the US News rankings.</p>
<p>"schools that are toughest to get into are the easiest to graduate from"</p>
<p>This is a good point and you encouraged me to take selectivity and perhaps grade inflation into account. However, I still think something is not right at Georgia Tech. RPI and GTech have very similar admissions stats but RPI has a grad rate only 1 % below expectation. Plus, RPI is more expensive. Case Western and Tulane also have admissions stats similar to Georgia Tech and their grad rates are 7% below expectation (which is not a good thing, but still better than GTech).</p>
<p>I think it has to do with the fact that GaTech engineering is probably almost/as hard as the top engineering schools (Stanford, CalTech, MIT, Berkeley, Michigan), but since Stanford, Caltech, and MIT all have students with higher average scores, most of them are prepared for the workload; I imagine there are quite a few people who didn't expect GaTech to be as hard as it is since it is easier to get in. In the case of top engineering at state schools like Berk, Michigan, and UIUC, engineering makes up a relatively small % of majors, so graduation rates are balanced out by the rest of the school.</p>
<p>Georgia Tech is brutal with a capital B. My D was a presidential scholar a few years ago - got the FULL ride - $25,000. She had concerns when she heard that a number of previous scholars had lost their $ due to the rigors of academics there.</p>
<p>I understand what you are saying. Maybe you are right..GT is rigorous.</p>
<p>I just wonder how much fun the students can have. It's really dead there on the weekends. (from what I saw on our 3 trips there.)</p>
<p>yeah, I know numerous people instate who received teh HOPE scholarship because they couldn't keep their GPA up FIRST year. I have actually decided against going to GT simple because their quality of life seems suspicious. It IS pretty dead and dropouts are high. </p>
<p>but I still don't see how the schools that are tougher to get into are easeier to graduate. So the classes are the same dificulty. But the PEOPLE make the differnece, right?</p>
<p>My D ended up at Yale. Difficult classes right? But the PROFESSORS make the difference. At GTech all they ever talked about was how difficult the school was, how challenging it was...we didn't hear that kind of dialog at ANY of the 15 OTHER schools we looked at!</p>
<p>If a school is tougher to get in to, then naturally they are typically going to have a higher % of the top students. It makes sense that most students who get in to a CalTech can handle the work (and even then most of them consider their workload tough), while some people who got in to GaTech, especially in-state, wouldn't really know how tough it is until they got there because they figured they could handle it if they got in. </p>
<p>For instance, take Cornell. Many prestige whores choose it simply because its "IVY LEAGUE!!1" and a bit easier to get in to than the others. These people usually don't last long once they realize that Cornell is actually hard, especially if they do engineering. However, people who chose the school for its own merits, other than simply being IVY (it's "Ivy", by the way - it doesn't stand for anything), typically do fine.</p>
<p>GTech makes a point - almost a MISSION - of talking up how difficult the curriculum is...it's the first thing out of everyone's mouth...really over-emphasized when we visited 4 years ago...and this is what they told the most QUALIFIED STUDENTS - their Presidential Scholars!</p>
<p>is the male/female ratio really that pronounced?</p>