I was wondering if any current or former students or students parents had any comments about the size of the ISU engineering program. I am worried about getting lost or just becoming a “number”’ since the program is so large. Also I have been accepted into the honors college if that makes any difference
Thanks
@tyler1231 - What major? To some extent, it will matter what your major is. For, example, ME is about three times the size of any other department and is the second largest in the US (after Georgia Tech). There are over 2000 students enrolled. My son is in materials engineering (graduating in December!), where only 260 are enrolled. No matter your major, you will still have large lecture sections for your physics and calculus classes.
My oldest son graduated from Texas A&M in aerospace engineering. TAMU felt huge by comparison to ISU, even though ISU has about 7700 engineering undergraduates compared to 10,800 at TAMU. My middle son is graduating in May from Miami (Ohio) with a degree in biomedical engineering. Miami has just over 2000 engineering students. Based on my discussions with all three and my impressions from visits, ISU feels more like Miami than TAMU. But ISU’s career services (job fairs, etc.) are much closer to TAMU than to Miami. As you may have noticed by now, I’m a big fan of ISU.
For in-depth statistics about engineering schools, go to: http://profiles.asee.org/, from the American Society Engineering Education. ASEE’s Engineering by Numbers summary is great: https://www.asee.org/documents/papers-and-publications/publications/college-profiles/2017-Engineering-by-Numbers-Engineering-Statistics.pdf
My son really liked ISU’s freshman honors program. He took advantage of the opportunity to do non-destructive metal testing research with a graduate student and a professor. The courses and seminars were great too.
@Beaudreau I’m planning on computer, software, or electrical engineering if that makes any difference
The ASEE profile shows 769 in computer engineering, 348 in software engineering, and 500 in electric engineering. So they are midsize departments.
https://www.ece.iastate.edu/the-department/
The numbers written by @Beaudreau are a bit old.
These are the latest figures.
Electrical Engineering: 557
Computer Engineering: 800
Software Engineering: 785
You’ll not just be a number, the school is very good at keeping the numbers around 30-40 for each EE class. So those classes will be ok. Later when you reach junior year, the classes would be very small all together because most people would have dropped or transfered out of engineering. Physics and calculus classes would definitely be bigger. But you can always get the professors attention. Inside or outside of class