Looking for safety schools for CS or engineering

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You need to read her comments b4 you say that - she’s in Illinois, not in CA where the options are plenty.

She has plenty of options…even affordable ones at top schools…but they don’t necessarily cut it for the name recognition she wants (IIT, Braldey, etc).

It seems pretty clear to me that I considered 70% to be a conservative admissions estimate at each individual school. Re-reading, I still don’t see how that’s not clear.

Are you saying a 70% admission chance of a 4.0/1580 in-state students at Penn State is “most aggressive/overly optimistic”. Same for Ohio State?

If so, we can agree to disagree. I know many “experts” at CC told me my older daughter “didn’t have any safeties” and how risky she was being with applications. She was accepted to 7 of 8 schools, wait listed at only her fee-waived/no essay/because-a-friend-applied reach.

I have zero concern she will be rejected from all of the schools listed. Zero point-zero.

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Fwiw, we never hired CS/CE graduates based on their ability to write code. We had 30,000 employees in India for that.

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I think you misread my comment. You calculated a combined probability of admissions (99.7%), based on 70% probability of admission to each college (I don’t question the validity of the 70% number at all). To get to the 99.7% combined probability, you have to assume admission to each of those 5 college is completely uncorrelated with admission to another college among those 5. That’s that least conservative assumption you can possibly make. As a matter of fact, it almost certainly isn’t true, because admission correlation coefficients between pairs of these 5 colleges are surely not zero. When these coefficients aren’t zero, the combined probability is much lower.

Word of warning on some of the safeties. Do the campus tour, especially if a school considers “Demonstrated Interest”. And I would strongly consider the campus tour for Penn State even though the school indicates that they do not consider Demonstrated Interest. I have friends whose kids had great stats got into excellent schools but got rejected by Pitt and/or Penn State. Schools that are looking at a candidate holistically may be reluctant to waste an acceptance on a kid they do not think will come to the school.

The school is not much good as a safety if your kid gets rejected for an avoidable mistake like not bothering to do a campus visit. Especially when some of these schools do virtual tours.

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One of the best ways to demonstrate interest is to submit a complete application, for example, applicants should always do the optional essays.

PSU is a perfect example. I have no idea what proportion of students submit their app with both the common app essay (stated as optional by PSU) and PSU’s separate ‘optional’ essay…but neither is optional.

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Some of these salary compilations also boil down to student location preferences and biases between school populations. It’s not too surprising to see a lot of MI schools up there, because most of the students are presumably from MI and specifically many are from the Detroit area.

Detroit isn’t for everyone, but if you don’t mind living there AND you’re qualified, there are plenty of high paying ME jobs in the auto industry.

Fewer kids from Purdue, UIUC or Ohio State are willing to move to Detroit for those jobs, but if you are, I don’t think there are additional hurdles. Clearly those schools produce enough grads that the auto industry isn’t going to ignore the talent pipelines.

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How important is it to target a specific industry in engineering? Do some colleges cater to certain industries more than others?

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For admission, probably not other than for some specialty schools like Webb Institute.

But college location can influence what industries are more commonly found recruiting, and what additional elective offerings may be offered. For example, midwestern schools may have a greater emphasis on the automotive industry than others, while schools like Wichita State, UAH, and AAMU may have a greater emphasis on the aerospace industry than others.

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Yes, some schools do have stronger ties to some sectors than others. Depends on the major, school, and industry. For example, U Del chem E has strong ties to Dow Chemical, some of TX schools have ties to petroleum companies, etc…

First destination surveys are helpful to parse that out too.

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The other thing is that your student’s interest will change. Both the industries my son was interested in and the type of work he wanted to do evolved substantially over time.

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With those stats I would suggest looking at Honors colleges at large public universities if only as safeties.

Don’t limit yourself to local schools. As long as universities are located next to a major airport it is easy to get there.

ASU and University of Arizona are pretty far from Illinois but should probably be considered. They both offer rolling admissions. I agree that Alabama is a good choice too.

Discover why the Barrett experience is right for you. | Barrett, The Honors College (asu.edu)

Honors Village | Honors College (arizona.edu)

(disclosure: my son is studying engineering at ASU)

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Sorry I’m just replying to this. To answer your question regarding engineering specialization, it depends. Some parts of the country are broadly diversified in terms of engineering demand, but some are highly specialized. Two good examples: Detroit and OK/parts of Texas.

Detroit has a huge ME demand due to the automotive industry. More ME jobs than Chicago, NYC and LA combined. The BLS uses something called a location quotient to determine occupation and/or industry concentration in given markets. Location quotient 1 = occupation x / total jobs =!national average. A location quotient of 3 means an area has a highly developed employment/industry base in a niche. Metro Detroit’s location quotient for MEs is7.4 To put that in perspective, the location quotient for software engineers in San Jose is 7.5. For actors in LA it’s 8.

So colleges in MI will pump out a lot of MEs for the automotive market. A kid from Purdue could easily go up there and get the same $$$…if he/she wanted to.

In OK and TX there will be more ChemE and geophysics intensity to meet the demand for oil and gas.

Page for ME state and regional data below. About two thirds of the way down, there’s a table and map highlighting LQs for for metro and micropolitan areas.

https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes172141.htm#st

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Pittsburgh isn’t that much farther than OSU or Case. If your son is considering OSU and Case, I’d add Pitt.

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I will admit that I didn’t read every post in this thread - sorry if I repeat something.

I know a lot of people are suggesting Wisconsin. I live in WI and hear about great kids from Illinois not getting admitted to CS and Engineering every year. I suspect like many state flagships it’s a harder admit for out of state kids than in state which makes looking at the overall admissions stats useless for out of state kids. It’s a great school, but I would not call it a safety and not sure it’s a necessary application if your son would be just as happy at UIUC.

I would consider Minnesota a strong match for your son if he wants to stick with the Big 10 type schools. Michigan State I would consider a safety as well as Iowa State.

I saw someone else mention Miami of Ohio. I think that’s a safety for your son as well and they offer great merit for someone with your son’s stats. MSOE in Milwaukee is also a safety but would be a different experience than the Big 10 type schools you first mentioned. We know a lot of kids there that really like it - it just depends on what you’re looking for.

Hopefully your son will be more engaged in the process, but he might not. If he can at least get a list of a few schools - and the list includes one clear safety and a match or two, he might just be good with that. Not everyone needs to apply to 15 schools!

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Thanks you for sharing this resource! Fascinating data!

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Wisconsin the last 5 years has been getting tougher for kids from Illinois to get into. You are correct with what you said and agree with the other schools.

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