Mid-size Engineering options

So with that in mind, OP’s kid can find the social and academic atmosphere that she actually prefers by screening schools listed in posts #5, #6, and #11 for mechanical engineering major and adequacy of some aerospace-related electives and activities. Then do well there and target some name-brand tech program for the master’s degree that @rogracer says she’ll likely need or want anyway. Such as those on his recruiting lists that I linked in post #10. If that’s her best plan at the time. Or if she even still cares about aerospace at that time.

Someone mentioned Bucknell and Lafayette, these schools are smaller than OPs stated target size, I believe.

@Monydad - I think you have a narrow definition of what constitutes a “university”. A “university” doesn’t mean “liberal arts based” alone, which is what I believe to be your idea of a “university”. What you perceive as a “tech school” that has limited non-“tech” offerings is not the case at the majority of technological universities (such as Stevens, WPI, Caltech, MIT, RPI, Cooper Union, etc, naming those only because they are member schools of the American Association of Independent Technological Universities which is more or less a peer group). Those schools do not turn out people who only know engineering and nothing else. They too study liberal arts, humanities, languages, cultures, art, music, etc. Some of them even have majors in those subjects believe it or not. MIT for example has humanities majors. Stevens has a highly regarded Music Technology and Art/Visual Arts major. Attending one of them doesn’t mean one cannot interact with those having interests outside of STEM you know.

UAH?

You can actually get a degree in Music (and many other “liberal arts”) at MIT. Check out their web site.

Most (all??) “tech schools” require a fair number of units in “liberal arts” to graduate. You many times take those classes at the tech school or another college with which they have an agreement with (if you want out of the “tech” environment for such classes).

@Engineer80
" So studying a STEM major in a technological university (“STEM school” - I prefer the university nomenclature, since that is what it really is) is an impediment to “discovery and growth”? "

My terminology may be perceived as an impediment to discovery and growth. However, this is a common perception held by many, largely outside of the STEM university community. Over the years, many marketing studies have indicated this perception and consumer concern is very real. As a STEM graduate who edited the STEM institute newspaper, worked as a German translator loving the German Culture and as a big fan of the history, I also feel this commonly held perspective does not reflect the caliber and depth of STEM students anywhere.

Historically, these universities have been stereotyped by the more classically evolved educational world. Education was largely a more genteel pastime consisting largely of theologians and the well heeled. Then along came this soot covered technician with his steam engines (Stevens), steel (CMU), liquid rockets (WPI) and Ferris Wheels (RPI).

Due to the industrial evolution, Engineers were needed, BUT:
"… science and “technology” had been separate, primarily because of divisions enforced by the colleges, which disdained engineering altogether. By mid-century they had begun to interact. The primary impetus for this change was the growth of larger and more sophisticated manufacturing companies (Noble, 1977).

Despite these great inroads, engineering retained its “outsider” status in academe. While science (as the experimentally directed outgrowth of “natural philosophy”) was gaining slow acceptance as a bona fide element of classical studies, engineering remained more distinctly separate. (It is significant that engineers and other “special school” students were excluded from membership in Phi Beta Kappa by the late 19th century; engineers formed their own honorary society, Tau Beta Pi, in 1885.) Engineering professors experienced this disdain most directly, and it was partly through their desire for greater academic respectability that, after 1870, engineering curricula became progressively more scientific in content (Noble, 1977). See https://www.nap.edu/read/586/chapter/4#21

Early and well funded attempts to launch fully developed engineering programs at Harvard and Yale largely failed because of resistance from faculties focused on Classics. It was so bad that my classically trained father refused to let me fix the lawn mower. It always was fixed after he went into the house. My teenage sister wanted to know why I was studying how to drive trains. While I was cleaning the windshield of her car, a French professor from Wellesley took note of my enterprising attitude and wanted to know if I hoped to have my own gas station after graduation from WPI.

Our culture seems slow to recognize its own perspectives while it has largely criticized the engineer for an education they often perceive as uninteresting and narrow. Many of these same people run from Calculus as though it is a disease of the untouchables, but are critical if lacking background in Irish Literature. My take is we should do both, BUT.

Four years does not give enough time for most smart people to obtain a broad education as measured by a list of courses. The tool kit requires some facts, some techniques and an attitude which never stops learning. Technology pushes all of society rapidly in many unexpected directions. As a right handed hockey player I know you can shoot with your left hand if you try hard enough!

@retiredfarmer - When a “classically trained” liberal arts type says something to me like “well you’re an engineer so what do you fix?” I tell them “Engineers do not “fix”. They create. When you drive to your underwater basketweaving class at Harvard who do you think designed (that is, created) the car in which you drove? The highway you drove on to get there? The power system that lights up all the streetlights? The computer on which you wrote your “senior “honors” thesis” (big deal)? Are you aware the most significant factor in the longevity and lifespan of mankind today is not medicine (though it certainly had a significant impact), but the advent and development of sanitary water treatment, distribution and plumbing, and sanitary sewage treatment and disposal? Did you ever need a CAT scan or MRI (I hope not, but for argument’s sake)? How many lives were saved by those, by EKG machines, by artificial kidneys, hearts, prosthetic limbs, drugs (produced by chemical engineering plants), a car accident victim is transported to the hospital, in the meantime, his EKG, EEG, and vital signs are transmitted by radio modem from the ambulance to the hospital where the ER physician evaluates them and is at the ready as soon as he arrives - that radio, the ambulance, all the equipment on the ambulance and in the hospital, the machine that keeps the patient alive during an open heart operation - modern medicine simply would not exist without engineering, radio, television, cell phone, Internet, and everything else that sustains life and keeps the world running - you guessed it - all created by engineers. Tell me, does your “Bachelor of Arts” in dead language theory from Hah-vahd enable you to do any of those things? No, of course it doesn’t. Engineers create the world. You certainly do not. Have a nice day”.

I actually gave that speech (in somewhat abbreviated form) to a friend of mine who is a history professor at Rutgers, who echoed some of those pretentious trifes echoed by liberal arts types. She couldn’t dispute them. I also gave that speech (abbreviated) to my first year Circuit Analysis students when I taught EE at night.

See http://www.theaitu.org/. It’s an interesting collection of schools, some which might not be on your college research radar.

My husband and I didn’t know about this list when we were looking a engineering schools for our kids,. Interesting it includes our school (Clarkson), son’s school (Olin), 6 schools that we visited (son applied to at 5 of them) plus a few others that I researched closely. I credit this CC site for helping me put some of those schools on our interest list.

I’ve slogged through a similar college search as OP with my daughter. She is hearing that her daughter wants to be in college of arts and science classes where a large portion of the student body are not engineers. Remember, that includes not only humanities courses, but the core math and science courses (most of freshman and sophomore year) and any minor concentrations.

Every prospective engineering student has a short list of intended major specific requirements that help narrow the process. OP’s is an AE program with a diverse student body at a mid sized school. My children’s were a flexible ME curriculum with lots of mechatronics labs (including drones) or both BME and Chem Eng with a top hospital research program in a city. It is very short sighted to value/rank an engineering program without looking deeper into the major specific department, research and on campus opportunities.

Employers know where the research centers in their field are planted and funded. They do not need to come to a top tier campus in order to hire students full time or for internships. Some university research experience and an excellent GPA will open doors. Even in an ABET accredited program, undergraduate experiences vary greatly by school. Beyond the core, some schools are coop based, project based, undergraduate research focused, have tons of student led competitive teams. In the EA/ED/SECA environment, visit the departments, spend time on campus and apply wisely.

BTW @Engineer80 Hoboken is a drone free zone, so we toured, met alumni at our favorite restaurants and stayed long enough to see the night view at Castle Point - easy to forget exactly how beautiful. Flying drones in what used to be the Davison’s circular tank area wasn’t a draw. It took Stevens decades to start investing again. Honestly, we were surprised that they seemed to have wiped out the ‘Tech’ in marketing their brand. They have finally set a good path, just not convinced that students will not bear the burden of the chaos during the building process given their real estate restrictions.

Anybody mention Case Western? Students do coops at NASA Glenn.

Note that ABET accreditation requires that the school have a general education requirement for students in the ABET accredited engineering programs. Even Brown, which normally has no general education requirements, requires that students in ABET accredited engineering programs take at least four humanities and/or social studies courses (granted, this is on the low side compared to other schools like MIT).

Case was on my son’s list. Both the school and the city exceeded our expectations, plus they were very generous with aid. It didn’t rise to his final three though.

We all liked Case (where I had been accepted myself a generation earlier). It was one of our best offers for merit based in 2010, but not sure if things have changed. It was the best school we found for weaving music into engineering. After touring I added a lot of comments in the Case threads.

College visits can be helpful. On paper, Tufts would have been a great match for for our ur IB scholar / musician / engineering son. A college coach highly recommended it. But at the summer campus tour he was unimpressed. Perhaps part of the problem was the fact that we had toured MIT that morning (a school he really liked, until a tour again months later during the school year.)