NC State Engineering for OOS Student- Worth It?

Hello,

We are a family based in India. Our son is a senior in a boarding school in the US. We lived in California until he was in sixth grade, and then moved to a small, rural town in the first range of the Himalayas in Northern India. He is a US Citizen, has a 3.6 GPA and a composite ACT score of 33, with a fair number of extracurriculars.

He is considering applying EA to NC State into their Industrial Engineering program. We know very little about the US higher education landscape and wanted to check with experts about the strength of this program and the academic and cultural environment of NC State in general. One of his concerns is the fact that about 80% of the kids at State would be NC natives, and whether that would lead to a lack of diversity overall compared to some other schools that he is applying to for Engineering such as Virginia Tech, Purdue and Case Western. We will be paying OOS tuition at NC State, and hence we are trying to evaluate if it would be worth the OOS tuition.

Any input would be deeply appreciated.

I don’t know much about industrial engineering but the college of engineering at NC State as a whole is one of the fastest-growing in the country. They have been ranked as one of the top feeders for silicon valley companies for their tech students. NC State also has the second biggest career fair in the country for engineering students and people from around the state come to talk to the employers there whether they go to NC State or not. I would recommend signing up for one of the college of engineering virtual information sessions on their website. I attended one a few months ago and they had some really useful information. When it comes to whether or not it’s worth OOS tuition that really depends on what you’re looking for in a school. If you’re paying OOS for Virginia Tech or Purdue then I feel like State is really worth looking into as it ranks up there with those schools.

The engineering programs are good at all those schools. The 80% in state is driven by state laws capping it OOS at 18% for all public NC colleges. There is still diversity within the university and college of engineering though. Raleigh and Charlotte (two biggest cities in NC) have a lot of diversity and internationals. https://www.engr.ncsu.edu/ir/fast-facts/fall-2018-fast-facts/

Absolutely. The kids from that program all come out with great jobs. Apple, Microsoft, BMW you name it. Those companies don’t visit the other colleges. While 33 may be a great score the competition for OOS applicants is very high and may not be enough.

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