Need Help Choosing Engineering Schools.

College Search & Selection
21

@Monster - Again, USNWR is a popularity game largely based upon subjective opinion of college administrators and others on a questionnaire. It means little regardless of what their ranking may be. Regardless, 36 is not in the top 20, and even so, I would dispute that ranking given that Iowa State is almost essentially an open admissions school with an acceptance rate of 80%. Maybe that is why they may have a 50-60% attrition rate in the first year, with that percentage of students accepted they may in fact accept many prospective engineering students who cannot do the work. That is not a good thing. A 43% graduation rate is also a pretty bad statistic. To my mind, an 80% acceptance rate and a graduation rate of 43% isn’t the stuff of which a top school is made.

With respect to Stevens (37% acceptance rate and an average high school GPA of accepted students of 3.8), the high ROI (15th in the nation) is not due just to going into banking and grad school. That ROI is based upon the immediate (starting salary) of the graduates as well as the 15 year mid-career ROI, which is listed separately. While some Stevens students go into banking, 63% or so still go into traditional engineering and STEM careers. Going to graduate school full time yields a salary of little or nothing, therefore those students would actually reduce a school’s initial ROI score, not increase it. Many students (in many schools) go to graduate school part time while holding full time jobs (in many cases the employer pays their tuition).

New York and the NY metropolitan area is the engine that drives the nation’s - and the worlds’ economy. It is the center of practically everything in our modern technological society. Of course, nobody will deny that it is a big change to move from Minnesota to the New York area, but you wouldn’t be the first one to do so. Have you been to NYC or the metro area? If you visited Stevens you got a taste of it I am sure.

22

@Engineer80, some of that is based on the school’s charter as defined by the state. State schools are there to educate that specific state’s children. Some state universities are forced to accept under qualified students based on state law. They aren’t forced to pass them though, hence the attrition rate.

@MonsterCrwu, Steven’s high ROI is based on the fact that most of their student body are STEM majors. Every school with that distribution has a high ROI. That’s why New Mexico Tech and Oregon Tech, neither a great engineering powerhouse, have the highest ROIs in their respective systems. Take ROI with a grain of salt. It’s more a measure of major distribution than anything else. Use employment surveys (also flawed) if you want a better idea of engineering salaries.

As @Engineer80 said, the USNWR rankings for engineering are based 100% on institutional reputation as reported by administrators and faculty. They rank programs they are familiar with on a scale of 1-5. That’s it. We put very little emphasis on ranking when my son vetted schools, even though he had the stats to be competitive at the best institutions. Instead, he looked at things that mattered to him like how early students get exposed to engineering, class size, use of TAs, location, etc. In the end he found quite a few highly ranked schools that, based on HIS criteria, he would never want to attend.

If it makes you feel any better, my uncle, a department chair with a PhD from Stanford, recommended that if he wanted to be an engineer (as opposed to purely a researcher) that he concentrate on schools well recognized for teaching undergrads. The first school out of his mouth…Iowa State. They must be doing something right. They have a National Lab. Look up the schools they are all affiliated with. You won’t find them at marginal institutions.

In the end, you’ll do fine anywhere as long as you take your studies seriously and are efficient in your time utilization.

Good luck.

23

@Mastadon @eyemgh @Engineer80 @aquapt Thank You all for your feedback. I hope you all have a great day !

24

The reason I ask is that the Dean of Engineering is a woman who was a past president of the American Society of Engineering Education which has conducted a number of surveys on best practices for improving engineering retention - and weeding out is not one of them.

https://www.engineering.iastate.edu/dean/

25

It appears that the ranking the dean was referring to was for public universities in 2013. It has dropped a few places since then.

From their website:

https://www.engineering.iastate.edu/the-college/college-facts/rankings/

26

Here is the admissions profile for Iowa State engineering, stevens engineering and WPI engineering (from the ASEE database).

http://profiles.asee.org/profiles/7790/screen/19?school_name=Iowa+State+University

http://profiles.asee.org/profiles/7636/screen/19?school_name=Stevens+Institute+of+Technology

http://profiles.asee.org/profiles/7851/screen/19?school_name=Worcester+Polytechnic+Institute

27

Does anyone really believe there’s a material difference in the education undergrads receive between 20 and 35? The best anyone can do is take rankings with a big grain of salt and use them with broad strokes. The USNWR rankings are really a proxy ranking of the graduate programs. Indeed, as @boneh3ad has pointed out many times, graduate programs have SOME value in assessing opportunities for undergraduates, but it really has nothing to do with the day in and day out experience of an undergrad, how big their classes will be, who will teach them, what they’ll learn, and what opportunities they’ll have after they graduate. Rankings, probably more than any other thing, have screwed up undergraduate education to the point that everyone is applying to just a handful of schools. It really is an education tragedy.

28

@eyemgh that’s a great point you made there, but if gradate school determines admission also, How is Iowa State’s Average GRE score for Graduate admissions on par with schools like MIT ( it was 167 out of 170) i read that somewhere. and from the profiles that @Mastadon has posted its grad acceptance rate was 18% in 2016

29

You seem smitten with Iowa State and it also the cheapest. Any engineering program weeds out students. i say Follow your instinct.

30

You would get an excellent education at Iowa State. Their engineering program has a strong reputation across the country. If that is where you want to attend, do not hesitate just because of the attrition rate. It is a state school and has less stringent admissions standards. So does Purdue, and it has a top 20 engineering program. You cannot compare admissions selectivity between a smaller private school and a very large public school. You will find smart and engaged engineering students at any of the Big 10 schools.

Good luck to you.

31

A couple of things. I agree with those who say WPI is less rigorous than the others. That cuts both ways.

While you said that UIUC would cost $26,000 per year, you didn’t indicate if you could afford that. That is surely the most rigorous school.

If the cost is holding you back, and it may very well be, if you were committed to working hard enough to not get weeded out, I would go with Iowa State. I get concerned when schools pride themselves on how brutal they are and how many folks they weed out. I wonder how those students would have been better served at WPI.

WPI is a kinder and gentler engineering school whose graduates do very well. I’ve seen a lot of 4.0 GPA resumes from WPI and I wonder if those kids would have been better served with more rigor.

At least in EE, I don’t care for Stevens, but I’m not familiar with their other programs. I don’t actually believe their ROI reporting, and the school is no stranger to fraud (you can google it). I do believe there are Stevens students who have done very well.

I think the choice is more about you than the schools as it always should be.

32

I’m not sure I understand your point. What does GRE have to do with undergraduate?

As for whether or not MIT is the best graduate school, that depends entirely on what you want to research. Sometimes the best professors in given areas are at state schools, like A&M, Wisconsin, even possibly Iowa State. Name is far less important than the name and reputation of the person you work for.

33

Iowa is Big10. Iowa State is Big 12.

34

I stand corrected @twoinanddone.

35

Ask Iowa State if grades/GPA greater than 2.0/C are needed to enter or continue in your desired engineering major. This will tell you if it has capacity based weeding, as opposed to natural attrition that occurs at less selective schools.

Note that several other Midwest schools have capacity based weeding, such as Purdue and Wisconsin, among others.

36

@MonsterCrwu
Regarding WPI:
“2) It was a great school and had a lot of opportunities for me but it was lacking the big engineering clubs and robotics that were offered at UIUC and Iowa State. Worcester is around $18500.”

I am confused regarding this robotics comment. The school has a very long and very well established robotics program from the BS through the PhD. Another new robotics related facility is even opening this August. See https://www.wpi.edu/academics/departments/robotics-engineering.

And yes, the entire university is project based and incorporates a very interdisciplinary approach starting with its course designs. See https://www.wpi.edu/project-based-learning/wpi-plan

Be aware that “Engineer80” is a very highly qualified engineer and is also a proud Stevens graduate. I concur with “eyemgh’s” ROI comments.

For greater detail on WPI’s income/job placement see https://www.wpi.edu/student-experience/career-development/majors/career-outlook/robotics-engineering

When your classmates are very well motivated and have the required support, “weeding out” is not required. According to the latest data, 82% graduate in 4 years, an additional 5% make it in five years and another 2% make it i six years. The average unweighted GPA last year of entering freshmen was 3.86. This is good news and is not the result of lower standards.

You can benefit at any of these universities as long as you remain comfortable and motivated! WPI’s studies are focused around teamwork starting with the first year’s classes. Outside activities are also encouraged for the same reasons… involvement!

A proud WPI alumnus.

37

@retiredfarmer - and to the OP, be aware as well that Mr. Farmer is a graduate of WPI, and promotes it just as I promote Stevens. I also attended Rutgers University and MIT BTW. Those schools were pieces of cake compared to Stevens as a result of having a broad-based undergraduate training that only a handful of schools in the United States continued (as compared to the narrow specialization of many, if not most, engineering schools today).

With respect to the caveats I pointed out regarding attrition and graduation rate, again, those are not good statistics and if true, it suggests as I say the school either accepts many unqualified students (not that that means the OP will have the same experience, I am certain he/she is up to the challenge of studying engineering) and/or the academic and non-academic environment is subpar. If the State of Iowa forces the university to accept all or most comers regardless of academic acumen (as the OP was apparently told by the dean) then that also does not bode well for the university. If I were the applicant, those would be major disincentives to attend, frankly.

Also to Mr. Farmer, WPI is not unique in having a “project based curriculum”. The current ABET accreditation requirements for engineering schools mandate that project coursework (hands on, engineering design lab work) be given every year. When I was in school (and likely you as well), the requirement was for a capstone design project that was usually done in the fourth year. Many schools back then had little hands-on work in the first three years. All accredited engineering schools now must offer this work each year. Stevens (and many other schools) for example has engineering design laboratories - which are part of a project-based design curriculum - in every semester.

I mentioned Stevens only because the OP had an offer from Stevens. In my opinion he/she will have a huge career advantage at Stevens as opposed to a public university such as U of Ia. The caveats discussed in the prior posts alone would be sufficient to go elsewhere if it were me.

38

@Eyemgh - Stevens has four national laboratories (or “Centers of Excellence” as the federal government agencies that established them call them) on campus. The Cybersecurity Research Center (funded by NSA), the Maritime Security Center (funded by the Department of Homeland Security), Systems Engineering Research Center (funded by the Department of Defense), and the Atlantic Center for the Innovative Design and Control of Small Ships (funded by the U.S. Navy).

Understand that the U of Ia. may be forced to accept marginal students by the state and as a result has a high attrition rate, but, nonetheless, that is bad for the university and for the students as well. At the very least, they are expending valuable resources on students who won’t graduate, which takes away from the qualified students who will.

39

@ClassicRockerDad - Stevens’ (and all the other schools’) ROI reported by Payscale does not come from the school. It comes from Payscale’s independent survey and analysis. I don’t think you know much about Stevens or the quality of its programs at all. Stevens graduates would not be doing as well as they do (15th in the nation for ROI) nor would the 300+ companies, government agencies, military, et al. who recruit at Stevens each year would be clamoring to hire them if the school did not prepare the students as well as it does. Have a nice day.

40

@Mastadon posted the links to the ASEE profiles for ISU, WPI and Stevens…

http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/21605921/#Comment_21605921

We can compare the number of enrolled freshman to the number of enrolled Juniors (Seniors tend to be 4th and 5th year students, while Freshman and Juniors are only 1’st and 3r’d year students).

ISU:
Freshman: 1,830
Junior: 1659
“Attrition”: 9.3%

Stevens:
Freshman: 580
Junior: 509
"Attrition: 12.2%

WPI:
Freshman: 723
Juniors: 618
“Attrition”:14.5%

Keep in mind that this is only an approximation, it doesn’t take into account how class size can vary by year, or the number of transfer students (which would increase the number of juniors). Also, at ISU, you may have a lot of “undecided” students (outside of the college of engineering) that take a few calculation/physics classes, and then decide engineering isn’t for them.

If I compare BS degrees awarded in 2017 to the # of Freshman, I get a higher percentage:

1404 BS degrees/1,830 Freshman = 23.2%

Many of the caveats with comparing Freshman to juniors, also apply when comparing awarded degrees to Freshman.

Still, I don’t see 50%+ attrition rates at ISU. So where does the 50% attrition number come from?

It’s from the introduction in a 2013 study done by ISU and it’s often quoted by engineering “retention program” advocates:

“Why They Leave: Understanding Student Attrition from Engineering Majors”

https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1890&context=abe_eng_pubs