He might like Union in NY. And he’d be able to continue with his extracurricular activities. (He’d also probably get merit aid there.)
Virginia Tech
WashU in St Louis - highly collaborative and not competitive at all. Great southern culture. Happy students! #1 dorms, food, happiness, etc. per Princeton Review.
Rice is another good choice.
SMU in Dallas is a great choice too. They offer incredible scholarships to top students.
Norte Dame is also superb.
My Children also wanted highly collaborative universities and they applied to all 4 of these.
Good luck!!
Your child would NOT like Northwestern or JHU - highly competitive cut throat culture.
My children did NOT like any of the Northeast schools either. They are usually cut throat or highly competitive as well. The culture Is nothing like the 4 listed above.
So not true about the Northeast schools. As one of the other posters said WPI is a very collaborative environment no not remotely cutthroat. My S is currently an engineering major at Syracuse and lives in the engineering learning community. They work together on many things, do homework and study together, and even do some socializing together. Far from cutthroat. Stevens in Hoboken, NJ also has a collaborative and chill STEM environment.
Also not true about Northwestern. I studied engineering there and our unique freshmen curriculum requires us to be highly collaborative. We worked in groups of 3 or 4 to solve real world problems for industry clients. The courses were challenging and we ended up working on projects and studying together a lot.
University of Pittsburgh.
Southern culture at WashU??? It’s Mid-western. As for Northeastern schools being cutthroat, you can’t lump everyone into the same category. Olin is competitive to get into since each class is only about 85 students, but the school itself is very laid back and highly collaborative. I’ve heard the same for WPI.
I don’t find that ‘group projects’ means collaborative or laid back. I hate group projects. My daughter, in engineering, hates group projects because she finds she always does all the work. She wants to do it early and not be rushing in the end, and always seems to be grouped with people who don’t do anything until the last minute.
She likes to work with other students, likes to study with others, likes to help those who miss class catch up (she’s an athlete and they help each other with missed class time), but she really hates group projects.
I think St. Louis, and thus WashU, is more southern than many places father south. Missouri likes to identify with the south.
I second Olin and WPI. Olin is more selective because they cover half the tuition for everyone, but WPI gives good need-based aid. Don’t know about merit, but someone here can address that. Your son can’t go wrong with either school.
WPI does give some “merit” scholarships. If a school has a quality pool of applicants, it is difficult to justify merit scholarships when highly qualified students with real financial needs are not assisted because the college ran out of money before it ran out of deserving students. Even endowed schools have budgets and limited resources.
On a per student basis, Olin is close to the wealthiest college in the country. Mr Olin was a very successful engineer who set up the Olin foundation years ago. WPI and many other colleges have buildings given to them by the Olin foundation before they turned it all into the Olin College.
Engineering/science schools have a special problem because of the cost of laboratories and of engineers with PhD’s as industries with deep pockets really want them. Philosophy professors may be smarter, but they can’t command the same salaries.
If your are reading this, WPI is still waiting for a generous billionaire! I did note one fairly recent graduate sold his business for $266,000,000, but is still not a billionaire.
Thank you Mr. Olin!
It takes resources to stay “chill” in a demanding environment.
Haverford’s 4 +1 engineering program. The students are extremely non-competitive there and don’t even discuss grades amongst each other.
People cited specific examples based on their actual experience with particular schools; they didn’t mean group projects automatically translated to collaborative environment. The point is not to paint a broad brush that NE schools are competitive and cutthroat; by the same token, not all southern schools are laid-back or are more racist.
I went to WashU for my freshmen year. It is NOT southern and the fact is less than 20% of the student body come from the South. I don’t think WashU is cut-throat but I wouldn’t call it laid-back; it has many pre-meds, at a higher percentage than most peers. To me, it’s very similar to Northwestern in terms of competitiveness and rigor.
@IWannaHelp, out of curiosity, why did you transfer from WashU, and where did you go?
I preferred to be close to a larger city. NU has a better engineering program in my view and better reputation in my home country (not sure I would go back or not at that point).
100% certified as the perfect school for him
a hidden gem
hendrix college
https://www.hendrix.edu/academics/
My son sounds similar to yours, and RPI worked for him.