hebegebe, I am old and my friend did her semester at Harvard in 1984. I am sure much has changed since then.
No, we are out of state for Purdue. I think your sonās chances are good for admission to Purdue.
The harder to predict is honors college acceptance. That is much more competitive for engineering and CS majors. Unlike other schools that just take the top applicants for honors, Purdue equally represents all colleges in honors.
IMO, Purdue does a great job of making a big school feel small with their living learning communities. There are a bunch for engineering.
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AP Bio and AP Chem at the same time? NOT SMART. I can certainly understand wanting to have had both before starting college, but still, not a good idea. Too much to manage together.
I think your son sounds like a fantastic applicant. Iām hoping he gets into U Mich, since itās in state for him.
Naviance can be misleading, because it doesnāt tell you whether the student was an URM, recruited athlete, legacy. For example, my kid got into a tippy top this year that virtually no one from his school ever gets into. Looking at Naviance, tons of kids with higher GPAs than his were rejected. But he had an enormous music spike - Naviance cannot reflect that. Some other kid who is an URM might show up as having gotten into a particular school with a particular GPA/SAT - but a kid who isnāt an URM with the same stats, would never have gotten in. Looking back, youād have no way of knowing that. I think that you have to put in some safeties that he can be sure of getting into, where heād get a fine education, and some matches, too, that are all affordable for you. And then hope for U Mich for him - itās very possible for him to get in there.
This is true, and particularly important for schools that are highly selective and where the number of admits from your high school is limited. For those cases, check with the college counselor who will know which admits were hooked.
But for someplace like Pitt, I suspect the OPās son will be well into the green zone, indicating that itās a safety.
@JackH2021 My junior will also be at Catapult this summer. We recently did back to back Rose Hulman/Purdue visits. Night and day in terms of size. Iāll be interested to hear your thoughts.
I think your sonās list is very reasonable and the matches/safeties are well covered. With Michigan as an EA, you can focus on selecting an ED school if thereās one that fits. CMU maybe? Northwestern? I know you said you want your son in the top quartile. Weāre exploring a possible ED at WashU, Northwestern, Rice, Cornell, or CMU. Avoiding stress culture is the real issue.
Parentologist, you are the second person to warn Jack off taking AP Bio and AP Chem at the same time. He had high As in regular Bio, Physics and Chem, and was the high grade in his Chem class. He attended a gifted K-8 school and took the equivalent of HS Bio as a sixth grader, HS Chem (including the sludge test and 86 page lab report) as a seventh grader, and HS Physics as an eighth grader. He is currently pulling As in AP BC Calculus and AP Physics as a Junior. Because he was required by his HS to take regular Bio/Chem/Physics before he could take the corresponding AP classes, he did not have much of an option, schedule-wise.
He was a strong candidate for AP classes in humanities classes like literature, history and government, but he decided to focus his bandwith on AP STEM classes since he wants to be an engineer or scientist.
Search2022, my big concern with CMU is the stress culture, as you put it. When I was there in the early 1980s it seemed like the school was trying to weed out the bottom 20% of engineers before the end of their Sophomore year. They also buried Architects, Industrial Designers and Graphic Designers in mountains of work to see if they really wanted the degree. I knew quite a few guys who either dropped out or switched to less demanding - read āhumanitiesā - majors. The school also had a suicide problem with a bullseye painted at the bottom of a multi-floor staircase callously dubbed āArchitectās Leapā. Supposedly, it is not as bad today, but I think it is still quite the grind.
If Jack were an absolute superstar who could get into MIT, Stanford and CalTech, and would be at the top of his incoming class academically at CMU, Iād encourage him to apply. For him to get in as a reach and enter in the bottom 20% of his class I think that might be setting him up for failure.
We might consider Northwestern, which I think is more student friendly than CMU. We are not yet considering schools farther than a reasonable drive, which eliminates Cornell, Rice and WashingtonU. If we were to broaden our search geographically, we would also look at some other polytechnic schools like RPI and Olin.
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@momofboiler1 do you have a link to the release about Purdue havingmore than 58k applicants this year? Thatās a top target/reach for my S22 in computer engineering. Love the learning communities and national job opportunities.
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@JackH2021 Agree, those a big concerns. No parent wants to put their kid at the bottom of the heap, even if the kid tends to rise when challenged. We want to set our kids up for success.
Would he really be bottom 20% though? His stats look more like 50th at CMU. Regardless, I completely understand wanting your son to be in the top of the incoming class. He sounds like he has honors college potential. Purdue could be a really good academic fit if he doesnāt mind the size.
How selective was admission to CMUās engineering division then?
Many colleges in the 1980s were significantly less selective than they are now, so the departure-from-engineering rate then was higher then than now.
@JackH2021 Should you expand the search and like the small feel of Rose Hulman, WPI, URochester, and Lafayette are all interesting schools.
ucbalumnus, You make a good point. Like many universities, CMU was not as selective in the 1980s as it is today. Back then it was a strong regional university, like Case Western, that was trying to build a national reputation. Schools today - at least the quality schools - can afford to be more selective because there is a growing number of applicants chasing a finite number of spots.
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Search2022, Rose-Hulman is already on the list, and after Jack attends their Catapult STEM program this Summer, it may go to the top of the list. Rochester and Worchester are still a bit far geographically.
I could do a whole separate thread on RHIT. Suffice it to say, I am very impressed with them so far, and if Jack likes them after this Summer I would be happy if he went there. RHIT is to CMU and MIT for STEM what Williams is to Harvard and Yale for liberal arts; a smaller, less prestigious school that by every objective measure - class size, access to professors, etc. - provides a better undergraduate education.
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Thatās what I meant to say - you have kids applying to 8 schools - all top 15 and getting turned down to all. As smart as they are, theyāre not that smart because they failed to get into college.
You have all bases covered - and frankly, I think you can do a few more up market if ārankā is important.
One thing Iād be careful of though - you have Rose Hulman (tiny) and Purdue (huge) - what is your son looking for in a college vs. just applying for great namesā¦so you can narrow down.
My son did the week long camp at Purdue. We are OOS. He got in with a $10K scholarship with 32 ACT for MECHE (34 SS).
We did the opposite - visited RH on the way up. Itās tiny. After I picked him up, we went to UIUCā¦while many say itās similar to Purdue, he loved Purdueā¦but did not at all like the UIUC campus.
So yeah - you want to find the right fitā¦not just a big name.
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Tsbna44, Jack has spent time on UIUCās campus a couple times for Science Olympiad meets while in Junior High, so he is familiar with a large Big 10 campus. At the other extreme, he has been to Kettering (the old GMI) a couple times for Robotics meets, and that is even smaller than RHIT (1,900 undergrads). We also plan to take him to UofM and/or MSU this Summer. Both are just 1.5 hours from us and his mom went to MSU. We may do a road trip to Pittsburgh this Summer to see Pitt (19,300 undergrads), CMU (7,000 undergrads), and hit Case Western (5,300 undergrads) on the way home. If all goes as planned, by Fall he will have seen small, medium and large campuses, and as I mentioned earlier, weāll have a better idea of what he likes.
For what is worth, I agree with your son about UIUC. I went to grad school there in the 1990s and I was shocked by how run-down the campus looked when we were there four years ago.
Iāve mentioned that - but more harshly on the CC before - and I was obliterated.
I was flown in by the school when I was pursuing my MBA - I knew flying in that I wouldnāt be going there. I left the fly in a day early and drove to Bloomington - which I liked a lot - although I ended up at ASU - because they paid me to go to school there - canāt be that.
When I took my son to look at UIUC, he was like - hmmmmm - no. Just personal preference. My daughter loved American (which most rate ugly) but hated GW (and obviously GW is a very popular college).
Sounds like you have a good plan - except about the wanting to be close to home part 
I dragged my kids everywhere - they hated me for it. If you can, skip the info sessions (do them on your own) unless itās a demonstrated interest school. Just tour. One good thing about covid - no on-campus activities - so my daughter and I toured 11 schools in 4 days. Had we needed to go to info sessions - forget it. She never would have gone - they are all the same. All the same!!!
No doubt your son will do fine anywhere as long as he has the dedication and determination to finding an internship. Not all kids do.
I donāt know much about it and itās probably not close - but how about Michigan Tech - I believe, while itās probably not a national name, supposedly itās a good school.
Posters routinely get defensive when it comes to who āteaches class.ā At nearly all schools instructors with terminal degrees teach lectures. At nearly all large research schools, especially ones that regularly get defended, labs and discussions are all taught by graduate teaching assistants. Rose and Cal Poly stand out in that classes are small and almost every instructor, even those teaching first year labs and discussions hold PhDs. Does that make them all better? No. They are there for a purpose thoughā¦to teach.
Rose is a great school and produces fine engineers. Cal Poly has a few advantages though (in my highly biased opinion). Engineers only makes up 25% of the student body. The M:F ratio within engineering is a little more balanced than Rose, but campus wide itās roughly 50/50. Then thereās locationā¦itās idyllic, unlike Terre Haute. 
They get a lot of applications. Even though they have 13,000 fewer undergrads than Purdue, they received 65,000 applications this year. Yet another record.
Have fun on the quest. Youāre asking the right questions and keeping the proper perspective!
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A prof that was on my sonās masters committee at Cal Poly and did his graduate work at CMU actually said that same thing, only about CP rather than Rose. In all regards though their engineering is very equivalent so I think extrapolating his comment to Rose would be fair.
You will get all sorts of pushback on this idea by those who believe in rankings, but this person had a unique insight having taught at both and having been a student at both.
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