You are really way ahead of the game with CSE at Uminn in your hand. Unless you have money to burn, your options there and UW Madison are a gift. If you have financial need then the generous endowment schools could be worth a shot (Is your 33 your first and only ACT? Do you have APs/IB? ECs?).
Really, you need to talk money first.
The 33 is my second act, my first was a 27. I am also registered to take it again. I have 5 ap classes (US, Euro, Lang, Calc, Econ). I only have scores for US and I got a 5. I plan to take 4 more APs next year (senior year). For EC I don’t have a whole lot, I run cross country, I am in NHS and Spanish club. I have been to UW Madison, and it was okay, but I don’t know if I want to be in a big metropolis area in a school with 50,000 students. I also toured Iowa state university, how do they compare? The price is similar
Again, budget. What is your EFC?
Most colleges have surveys on employment outcomes for new graduates. I would look at those for the majors and schools you’re interested in.
I have started looking into colleges and have went on a couple tours. With a 4.0 gpa and a 33 act, I am wondering what colleges for engineering would be good. Right now, I’m just thinking general, I have yet to get into specifics with many colleges. I am just looking for some ideas.
Run the NPC on some of the colleges and see. MSU and OSU have very good OOS scholarships and are still driveable. Certain schools have reciprocal tuition - for you look at schools in Wisconsin, ND and SD. SDSMT is very, very good and low cost. UW-Madison will be reasonably priced too.
Michigan engineering does not seem as big as the campus in general ; there are about 6000 undergrads. It’s going to be pricey if you don’t get FA or scholarships.
Raising your ACT to 34 will qualify you for the most $ (e.g. at OSU) too.
First, I would back up a bit and ignore your stats for a second. By focussing on stats alone you get lists like this proffered earlier: MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Caltech, WPI, RPI, RIT, Georgia Tech, Columbia, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Purdue, Northwestern, Virginia Tech, Duke, Vanderbilt, Rice. Stylistically those schools, and the experience you’ll have are all over the map. You don’t typically see a students who feel small engineering focussed schools like RPI and WPI are a good fit, also looking at big schools like Berkeley, Cornell, Virginia Tech, etc. unless there’s some unifying theme beyond ranking or prestige.
Iowa State and Michigan Tech are both good undergraduate centered programs, but one is quite a bit larger than the other. Did that impress you one way or another? Did you tour the engineering facilities? What about non-scholastic, school centric interests like engineering clubs? How about non-academic interests and hobbies? Hiking? Gaming? Skiing? Want to learn to surf? How important are big time athletics to you? Will you do better in smaller classes or do you prefer the anonymity of a large lecture. These are all important parts of your collegiate experience. Give us some guidance and then we can better guide you.
You did say one telling thing, that you are undecided. This has ramifications. At some schools, as @ucbalumnus has alluded to, there are limited spots. You will have to compete to gain admission to your desired major at some programs. Sussing out schools where you can easily change and don’t have to compete for a slot will be important for you.
While ISU is a much larger school, to be honest it did not feel like a big school. I don’t know if it was the way the campus was layed out, but it seemed a lot smaller than it is. That kind of appealed to me. Not a giant university, but not too small. MTU was still nice though. I did tour both facilities and it could have been due to the nature of the tour, but it seemed like ISU had more lab/research/testing equipment. Athletics don’t mean much to me. They had similar clubs, but ISU had much more variety. It seemed ISU had more engineering design projects. Would you say ISU or MTU is better academically? From what I have seen, they are both ranked decently.
Minnesota uses a first year pre-engineering system; students apply to the major after completing some college courses. A 3.2 college GPA in technical courses assures admission to your desired major. Otherwise, admission is competitive, but only a few majors were full enough that a GPA higher than 2.0 was needed: http://www.advising.cse.umn.edu/cgi-bin/courses/noauth/apply-major-statistics
Wisconsin engineering is more oversubscribed; all engineering majors required technical college GPA of at least 2.8, and some required technical college GPA as high as 3.5, to enter or continue in the major (also, overall GPA must meet a threshold of 2.5 or 3.0, depending on major): https://www.engr.wisc.edu/academics/student-services/academic-advising/first-year-undergraduate-students/progression-requirements/
A 3.5 GPA is a lot harder in college than in high school.
Rank is not nearly important as many make it out to be. First, they don’t measure outcomes, so in a sense, what good are they? Second, they’re easily rigged. Third, sometimes they make no sense, sometimes they do. For example, Harvard has a highly ranked undergraduate engineering program by USNWR, which is sort of a joke. It’s a pretty weak program. Most importantly, rank says nothing about what’s important to you. You can go to many highly ranked programs, be in classes that hold 500-700 students and have discussions led by TAs who may have a poor command of English. Been there, done that. If those things aren’t super important in YOUR methodology, then that’s ok. You might be in trouble if you were expecting something different though.
There’s a reason you liked ISU better and felt the facilities were better. They are. ISU has a national lab, but unlike many other institutions that host national labs, it prides itself on undergraduate teaching. I’m not saying ISU is the be all end all. It may or may not be depending on your priorities. I will leave you with an anecdote.
My uncle was discussing Stanford with my son. He has a Stanford PhD, was a long time department chair at a University and has also had a very fruitful private sector career. He told my son that if he knew he did not want to be a practicing engineer, but wanted to get a PhD and do research, Stanford would be ok, with a few caveats. Classes would be large, and he’d have a lot of TA instruction. He spoke very highly of the graduate program, but said if you want to practice engineering you’ll learn more about how to be an effective engineer at a great teaching institution, like Iowa State. That’s one highly informed man’s opinion so take it with a grain of salt. My son ended up at Cal Poly.
“I have a 4.0 gpa,”
One thing that I was surprised wasn’t discussed to this point: Is this weighted or unweighted?
If unweighted, does this mean that you are at a school where unweighted GPA of 4.0 means that you have never had a grade less than 90, or does is mean that you have never had a grade less than 98, or somewhere in between? I have heard of this full range in various US high schools.
I have a 4.0 unweighted gpa. On a 4.0 scale. I have straight As. Ranked #1 in my class. And have taken all the honors and AP that I can.
And Eyemgh thank your for the great advice.
I feel like I should not just have one college that I am looking at, are there any others that you have heard of and would recommend?
Oh certainly, but I need more from you. What states are you willing to consider? What is your family’s financial status? Will you be eligible for need based aid, or hunting merit? What hobbies do you have? Iowa State certainly isn’t huge, but is it about the limit in size that you’d consider? Do you want the typical college experience like Iowa State will offer or are you more content being surrounded by people that are primarily thinking engineering 24/7? You also would serve yourself well by posting your stats, home state and the answers to these and any other questions important to you, on the engineering forum under majors. There’s a plethora of wise posters there.
Isn’t U of M the obvious choice?
@57special, Michigan or Minnesota, and what makes it “obvious” for the OP?
I would imagine that UMinn CSE would be really low tuition with an instate rate and scholarship, so THAT U or M does seem the obvious choice. The only way it isn’t obvious if OP has money to burn. The stats are nice enough but wouldn’t even get a guarantee of honors in CSE and won’t necessarily be unusual stats for better schools. If OP wants out with merit then the options are probably going to be a compromise compared to his own state school.
Personally, I believe UMN to be a great option too. Playing Devil’s Advocate though, what if the OP doesn’t want to stay in MN, or doesn’t want to compete for a slot, or wants a smaller school, or whatever? What seems obvious to anyone replying has to then be viewed through the lens of the OP to see if it is truly a good fit or not, no matter what we think.
UoM TC is not necessarily the obvious choice. It isn’t that much cheaper, in-state tuition with room and board is still almost $27,000
Until OP understand the real budgetary guidelines, it is pretty pointless, right? Again, those stats are fine for entry but not necessarily for great merit in eng anywhere other than the auto schools.
Maroon and gold gives him 12K a yr. Dunno what else he might be eligible for. That is almost full tuition. R&B cost s going to come up at any residential university scenario. $10K for that is probably pretty average.