Every time I meet a female engineer, I ask if her dad was in engineering. I have met only a handful of these women in many years whose father was NOT an engineer. Even though my dad was an engineering professor, I didn’t think about going into the field until I was in high school and Dad jokingly introduced me as “the next engineer in the family” at a party for his students that he threw. The light bulb went off and I thought, “I could do that!” So somehow we have to get the word out to girls in middle school and high school that engineering is an option.
Must fight the urge to ask @sushiritto why a certain football team in Michigan didn’t end up in the top 10…
Since Florida was listed as one example (and I’m sure the other large university would be very similar to UF), I would agree with your list of “Positives”.
The only caveat, is that AE (and ME) does have a low % of female students, as compare to the other engineering majors. Maybe around 15%? While Environmental or Industrial is closer to 50%. On the other hand, I don’t think it’s the case that they drop out of AE/ME, as it’s simply not their first choice.
UF does have two large women in engineering groups, SWE and Phi Sigma Rho. PSR is a large women engineering sorority (which was founded at Purdue).My daughter ended up joining Phi Sigma Rho, since she wanted a more “social” experience while at UF. The (very popular) president of her sorority, when she joined, was LGBT. My daughter really enjoyed having a large number of other women engineers as friends and study partners.
On the negatives, it wasn’t hard to get any required classes. While most “paid” research goes to graduate students, undergraduates do get involved as volunteers and UF does have several undergraduate research scholarship programs. However, internships, co-ops and design teams are much more popular than research. it’s hard getting the kids interested in research, when they have friends doing well paid internships (or they can compete in Elon Musk’s Hyperloop competition or join the design team that builds small satellites, etc).
There is very little hand holding, you have to actively make the effort to engage professors (and the campus in general). In a way, these large public universities force you to grow up and take the initiative with your career.
My D chose the small tech school (IIT in Chicago—3000 undergrads, 8000 total students). The other schools she considered were all large universities.
I’m not sure there’s a right or wrong answer here, and it may just be a matter of fit for the particular student at a particular school.
D’s undergrad major had about 50% women but she definitely experienced the feeling of being in the minority, university-wide. Most of the other engineering majors had lower numbers of women. It wasn’t intimidating, just a bit isolating at times. She had plenty of support from her professors (who were nearly all men). The dean of the engineering school is a woman. A lot of the girls joined one of the two sororities. As far as opportunities for research, internships, competitive teams, club leadership, and job recruiting, I’d say she had more, being at the small school than what I’ve observed from other students I know at our large state university engineering program, who seem to struggle more with being lost in the sea of engineering students. She definitely dealt with less unwieldy bureaucracy than I see with students at our state universities. For her particular major, architectural and structural engineering, she benefitted from being in a big city with lots of buildings, new and old, whether or not there was a high percentage of women at her school.
At her firm (less than 50 employees) I believe she is the only woman currently working as an engineer. They have some architects and some women who are engineers but currently working in more HR positions. It’s something to consider that the gender imbalance is a problem long after college is over and it’s going to take a while for that to change.
@MaineLonghorn my D doesn’t have any family members who are engineers. 
@Parentof2014grad, that’s encouraging!
Thank you for all that have posted. There are no engineers in my family except for my cousin and he is civil. I guess that is also why we are looking for some help and I appreciate what everyone is saying. She is pretty set on aerospace with a focus on astro. Even did an 8 week internship last summer that sealed the deal. She may double with mechanical or there is a small possibility of moving to industrial, but the focus would be on working in world of building for space. The only degrees I see her leaving engineering for is astrophysics/planetary sciences or maybe AI.
The names I gave for schools were just general and she absolutely doesn’t care about the attendance and win/loss record of sports. Just the atmosphere. She didn’t even apply to Michigan. And I guess I didn’t want to put the schools because I didn’t want people going back and forth about specifics - yet. Once we get the rest of RD in and start attending admitted student days, we will narrow it down.
I appreciate those who looked at both and made decisions. I know it will come down to fit. But this is our first heading off to college and we are not pros in the engineering dept at all. So a lot of these posts are very helpful while we are in the process.
Boneh3ad especially - thanks.
“women still seem to be dodging ME, EE, ChEng, CE, and even the PH majors.” - My guess (with no data to back it up) is that girls with high Math SATs often also have high Verbal SATs too… and end up in fields like medicine and law that have higher % female.
You’d get better advice if you listed the specific schools. You should collect as much info as you can BEFORE planning accepted students visits. Remember that you have a pretty short window for those… some schools don’t notify until later in March, accepted visits are in April, she has to decide by May 1. The accepted days aren’t usually on weekends, and it gets impractical to go to too many of them. So why not collect opinions now on the actual schools? She might not get into all of them, but you still could collect more info while you wait.
@boneh3ad You don’t need to arrive at the doors of hell to know you don’t want to be there.
My daughter chose Penn State’s engineering program over smaller schools. She loved the rah-rah aspect, loved all the opportunities she had. She was very active in the Society of Women Engineers, had interesting on campus jobs and just really took advantage of all a big, big school like PSU had to offer. She was a captain with THON for two years and really thrived there. Networking there was huge and she had a terrific paid internship in Houston between her freshman and sophomore years and then had paid internships every summer after with the company that eventually hired her. At the national conferences for SWE and Grace Hopper, she ran out of resumes at their job fairs. It was as positive an experience as it could’ve been. Could all of this have happened at a smaller school? Perhaps but she really was able to make it work for her.
Which post is this responding to?
Re: CWRU:
CWRU was created from the merger of a LAC and a STEM school in 1969. So you get people majoring in the liberal arts as well as engineering. Case also has a Single Door admissions policy…once you are admitted you can major in whatever you want…no applying to the engineering or business school or whatever…so you could also easily change to a non-STEM major (obviously you need to meet the requirements)
LGBT: http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/case-western-reserve-university/2077402-lgbt-at-cwru.html
Case Western Reserve is among the Top 25 LGBT-Friendly Colleges and Universities, according to Campus Pride, a national organization that aims to make universities safer and more inclusive for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals. The recognition follows Case Western Reserve’s first five-star ranking on the Campus Pride Index, a detailed survey of universities’ policies, services and institutional support for LGBT individuals.
Electives: When I was at Case, you had to take 4 classes in a particular Social Science/Humanities Area. Lots of Engineers took Economics, but I took Anthropology because I always found it interesting.
Case is in the University Circle, Home to world-renowned museums, prestigious universities, nationally recognized hospitals, eclectic restaurants, beautiful parks, and cozy spaces.
https://www.universitycircle.org/
For Aeronautical Engineering, Case has Coop opportunities with NASA Glenn.
https://online-engineering.case.edu/blog/nasa-glenn-research-blog
As with any schools, the opportunities are what you make of them.
You see this a lot on CC, so I’ll repeat: you can make a big school feel small, but you can’t make a small school feel big.
Also, your daughter sounds quite dynamic, to the point that she could end up not wanting to major in engineeeing, which is common for females. A bigger school will have more alternatives to offer.
My general observation is that people who have thrived at small schools knew they wanted to go small when they began.
Good luck!