<p>Hello, I'm looking for a smaller engineering college that's relatively selective. I've already seen Olin but I'm worried that it might be too small. I'm also kinda interested in Aerospace, but right now I'm still undecided.</p>
<p>Resume
ACT: 35 (33E, 34M, 36R, 36S)
GPA: 4.02 (My school calculates gpas by percent averages. It also a pretty well regarded college prep school)</p>
<p>Have you looked at Harvey Mudd? It is also small but it is part of the Claremont 5 college consortium with about 5,000 students in the immediate adjacent area, and you can take classes at those. Also has a liberal arts minor requirement. One of my daughter’s HS best friends went to Olin, the other to Mudd.</p>
<p>Case Western Reserve
Embry Riddle (may be too specialized)
WPI</p>
<p>Hey BrownParent, do you know what she thought of Olin? It has a lot of what I want, except people.</p>
<p>I’ve talked to a student at Olin (she graduated two years ago from D’s high school); she loves it. She just started her sophomore year. Very project-oriented. </p>
<p>I asked if there was a problem going from a high school of 2400 to a college of less than 400 (right?). She likes it that way. The size, she says, is a benefit because she already knows the person when they are assigned to a project, so they know pretty much how the other person works. It sounds like a tight knit community. </p>
<p>I hear the application process is different from the usual. Students do apply but then a subset is called to attend a weekend on campus to work with other applicants and for interviews.</p>
<p>Agree that Harvey Mudd is a strong choice. You could give CalTech a try although it is a big reach for everyone. Some other ideas: Swarthmore, Bucknell, Lafayette, Union, Trinity. Some not huge universities could include Carnegie Mellon, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, URochester, Lehigh, Villanova.</p>
<p>I’d get your hands on the USNWR list of top undergraduate engineering schools. I don’t put a ton of stock in their rankings it could help you to come up with some other schools to look into pretty quickly.</p>
<p>Just a note on Cal Tech, while it doesn’t have an aerospace engineering UG major it’s possibly the best school in the world for the field because of the JPL and plethora of microgravity/fluid dynamics research projects going on there. There are also plenty of courses that can be taken which substitute for an AeroE curriclum although be warned that a CalTech engineer is almost fundamentally different than a traditionally trained one. One of my former bosses likened the education to an engineering analyst, that is these are the people that focus on the whys behind the material while traditional engineers execute the theories. It’s obviously an excellent school although the education is likely very different than Olin or Georgia Tech.</p>
<p>Rpi…</p>
<p>Rose Hulman</p>
<p>wpi perhaps</p>