Let me start by saying that I know nothing about Trinity other than I know they offer engineering and it’s a small program. I have no clue about their facilities. It’s not a condemnation of Trinity, but an observation about small programs.
When faced with initial vetting the very first thing I do is to look at the curricula and course catalogue.
Eliminating independent study and credit for internships, Trinity lists 37 engineering courses across all years and all concentrations.
Contrast that with Penn State. They offer 54 classes in Mechanical Engineering for just the 4th year.
I have no doubt that Trinity, or any other school like Union, Swarthmore, or Smith, as examples, with severely limited curricula can produce competent engineers. I think it’s fair though to assume that breadth and depth of the experience, both in terms of courses and indirectly in terms of facilities to support those courses, just can’t rival bigger colleges and departments.
The question becomes how “excellent” can such limited programs be?
Penn State is much larger and more impersonal. It depends what you are looking for. At Trinity, students have smaller classes work closely with professors on projects, independent studies and theses. Students are well prepared and immediately secure good jobs. Many go on to get grad degrees as well,.
Independent study is available everywhere, and a senior design project (often referred to as a thesis or capstone) is an ABET requirement.
This is an existential question about what defines “excellence” in an engineering program. I’m of the personal belief that small classes and direct attention from faculty cannot offset severely limited curricula and facilities. There are plenty of programs that offer both.
Trinity offers concentrations in electrical, mechanical, computer, and biomedical engineering, which means that they don’t offer concentrations in something as basic as civil engineering as well as areas like chemical, nuclear, environmental, aerospace, industrial, and materials science. In addition to facilities, I think that the real difference is that they just don’t offer the range of options for engineering majors.
In the Hartford area…University of Hartford has a well regarded engineering school. UHart in general is not a tippy top school, but their engineering grads do well.
There are a lot of local engineering firms that hire from this school, and co-ops and internships can be found also.
I’m certain that’s the case for Trinity grads too. Engineers from most schools are employable, and will have opportunities. That is really the minimal requirements of being a successful program though. Most programs are.
Hi all! Well, he’s still saying engineering, but after a summer internship experience involving machine learning and coding, he’s also interested in that. Who knows? He also decided to consider at least a few larger schools, and eliminated small schools with heavy Greek influence. He unfortunately got very ill when he was scheduled to retake the SAT to get the math portion up to competitive engineering school standards. A good lesson in don’t put off for tomorrow what you can do today. So, he’s applied to the following, and for most, did not submit his SAT score. It kills me because a 1450 is so good…and he was hitting 1540 on his mocks just before the test. Oh well, we’ll see what happens!
University of San Diego
Santa Clara University
Seattle University
University of CO Boulder
Purdue
Case Western
University of Rochester
Villanova
BU
Vanderbilt
WashU
Tufts
In the engineering profession, machine learning and coding are quickly overlapping with traditional engineering duties, so I wouldn’t necessarily view these as competing majors. If an engineering program has embraced this overlap, he could learn machine learning as part of his curriculum. If not, he can pick it up on the side.
I also wouldn’t be too concerned about non-tech EC’s. Many stereotypes about engineers are flat out wrong. He’s just interested in a lot of things. A good problem to have!
I do agree based on the info provided that a more balanced school rather than tech-focused school is probably a better fit.
