NJ, NY, PA and DE engineering schools

This week we made some unofficial second visits to colleges with engineering schools as our kid decides on where to apply. We went back to the campuses of Rowan, TCNJ, and U Delaware and also drove around their outskirts Came away still impressed by the new engineering facilities and dorms at Rowan and have read and heard nothing but positive things about its rising reputation. TCNJ campus is beautiful and U Delaware has risen up the list. This is the planned app list

  1. Rowan
  2. Tcnj
  3. Lehigh
  4. U del
  5. Rensselaer
  6. Rutgers
  7. Stevens
  8. NJIT (safety)
    Does anyone have any anecdotal feedback on how generous these schools are with merit aid?

Which are affordable if s/he does not get merit scholarships?

Rutgers Rowan and TCNJ

Not sure of your daughter’s stats, but our valedictorian this year was admitted to Rutgers Honors College with a free ride, while she was accepted to TCNJ with $6,000. From what I’ve seen, that’s as much as TCNJ gives. I know several people who’ve gotten into Rowan with much more than $6,000. They were all engineering majors; not sure if that’s coincidence or if they give more money to the engineer majors.
My son will be starting Rowan next month. I graduated when it was Glassboro in 1991; the changes are quite impressive! We came away from freshman orientation very impressed by the Dean of Students and all of the school officials we came into contact with. Good luck!!

I’m laughing if you are seriously considering Rowan and TCNJ over Stevens, Lehigh, UD (chemical engineering) and RPI. The former are in no way comparable to the latter. Both Stevens and RPI for example (UD and Lehigh I don’t know, but I have a friend whose son just started his freshman year at Lehigh in EE, with a merit/need scholarship covering about half his COA) are quite generous with merit aid if the student’s academic record and SAT/ACT are “meritorious”. Seriously now, they should be your first choices, and Rowan/TCNJ/NJIT should be your “safeties”. I would choose Rutgers over the former three myself (if you limit yourself to public institutions), as it has a far more established research based (unlike Rowan and CNJ) engineering school, and has much better name recognition.

Merit money will depend heavily on SAT/ACT scores and gpa. Unless she is at the top of the school’s percentile for those, I wouldn’t count on a lot of merit money.

I don’t think you’d be laughing if you were paying the bill. I’m not doubting that Stevens RPI and Lehigh are good schools. But unless you have recently visited Rowan, TCNJ or u Delaware, and done the research on their graduate outcomes, you’re not quite up to speed. If our kid gets a 50% discount at Lehigh or RPI then that might be where they go. I know you’re a big Stevens advocate, but Stevens will not get the nod over Rowan or tcnj if the choice is between the three. Job placement, % going on to grad school and salaries for new engineering grads at Rowan, TCNJ and u Delaware are all about the same as Lehigh, RPI and Stevens. Before visiting Rowan and researching graduate outcomes, I was in agreement with you. Rowan is near the top of our choices because it’s upward trend was palpable when we visited. It wasn’t just a showy sales job with a nice video. The faculty presented evidence that a Rowan engineering degree will take you as far as Stevens or Lehigh or RPI. Having new dorms and engineering facilities that simply blew away every other school we visited was also nice

^^Agree completely – it is inappropriate to chide you for factoring price into the college decision. You want to find a strong, affordable, ABET accredited program and your list makes sense.

I’m not sure it beats your in-state options but if you are looking for merit aid Manhattan College in Riverdale may be worth a look.

Thanks. son would like to stay out of city. Wants a more traditional campus.

@nydadjets- If you really believe Rowan will take you as far as Stevens, RPI, or Lehigh, you’re mistaken, seriously. Do some of your own research on outcomes of graduates. Every school’s faculty will tell you how great they are. You cannot claim that a school which has been teaching engineering for barely a decade and has no research of note, notable faculty, graduates who have made significant impact in the industry, Nobel laureates, Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of Fortune 500 and other major corporations, professors in major universities, heads of major governmental agencies, notable inventors, and others among its alumni can claim to be the equivalent of an institution that has been a research university for 150 years and has all of those. Donation money cannot buy that track record, believe me. Additionally, the age of the buildings and dorms means little. I worked for several major corporations in my career before going out on my own consulting practice and I’ve never worked with a graduate of Rowan. Like I said before, having been a consulting engineer and a businessperson for some 25 years I can affirm an old adage, “People know the price of everything and the value of nothing”.

@happy- All reputable engineering schools are ABET accredited. Accreditation merely signifies that they meet a minimum standard with regards to the qualification and number of faculty, course content, effectiveness of learning, coverage of curriculum, and accountability of faculty and admistration. It does not mean that all ABET accredited institutions are equally good.

For practical purposes, this means that these three can be assessed reach/match/safety in terms of admission only (although their prices may vary within the “affordable” range depending on scholarships).

The others need to be assessed reach/match/safety in terms of the chance of earning a large-enough merit scholarship to be affordable. Unless sufficient merit scholarships are estimated by the net price calculator from the student’s academic status, then it is best to assume that the large-enough merit scholarships are reaches.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/schifrin/2017/08/08/turnaround-university-quant-school-on-the-hudson/2/#1bf935204500

We are 80’s Stevens BE/MS graduates living out of state, and we have searched for engineering schools in the northeast for our oldest two children. Eons ago Stevens did find ways to combine merit based aid/work study/students loans comparable to in state tuition at Rutgers. Our friends with academically talented students currently attending get $25K/yr plus other benefits of research stipends and a few frills in NYC. Lehigh gives very little merit aid as a meets full need school (moving to a UPenn, Hopkins model). RPI gives their Medal winners $25K/yr.

I would definitely not assume that one ABET engineering degree = another ABET degree. Schools have better programs in some majors and may be missing smaller engineering majors(chem, civil) - best to learn about your preferred departments early on. Do not forget the student population. Most engineering courses (at any good institution) are graded on a curve and that curve moves with the student population. The academic talent of the student population in project teams and study groups is what raises the bar of any education. Most of your child’s academic time will be spent working outside of class. Ignore the marketing games about accepted student data and go straight to the schools’ Common Data Set for information about the students attending.

For example, if your child has a 1500 SAT score (750M, 750R), who will his/her peers be?

  1. Rowan (Reading 2% above 700, Math 4% above 700)
  2. Tcnj (Reading 10% above 700, Math 14% above 700)
  3. Lehigh (Reading 17% above 700, Math 42% above 700)
  4. U del
  5. Rensselaer (Reading 32% above 700, Math 62% above 700)
  6. Rutgers
  7. Stevens
  8. NJIT (safety)
    You can fill in the blanks. SAT scores do not mean everything, but they are the only benchmark of data available. You can see/hear the difference in populations by attending classes during the semester.

Institutions have different teaching styles; programs; goals. Lehigh’s IDEAS program pushes and away from technical depth, RPI is very research focused with less collaboration between departments (i.e. lack of investment in robotics/mechatronics), Stevens still gives an BE degree but is dropping the ‘Tech’ in their name and investing in financial degrees.

Rutgers is highly regarded everywhere except NJ. I would think that would be higher on the list. Top engineering school.

@KLSD

In comparing engineering programs and peers, it’s also fair to compare the stats of other engineering students, not just the school overall, because that is the group an engineering student will be associating with most often academically.

At Rowan, the average engineering student’s SAT is 1270. For mechanical engineering, the average is 1350.

I’m seeing average SAT at Lehigh at 1315 and Steven 1331 for the overall student body.

I don’t know what their engineering stats are but I don’t think there will as much variation as with Rowan’s because Rowan’s mission is much broader.

I’d remove Stevens and Lehigh from the list if you really wanted to make your list shorter. TCNJ would probably be a third. Stevens is just far too expensive for what we could afford, even though it offered a good education but who wants a 100k loan in the end. Rowan gave us a great price in the end and NJIT was a full ride, Carnegie Mellon offered us more aid than even Rutgers which gave us ZERO. RPI gave us net price of 19k while Rowan gave us a net price of 14k so for the 5k extra we chose RPI but definitely Rowan would have a been a great choice.

TLDR; if you go with Rowan you can’t go wrong. they are really climbing up the ladder in the quality of their degree.

I looked it up and was quite surprised about the cost of Rowan in state
TUITION AND EXPENSES
Cost of Attendance In-state: $30,004 Out-of-state: $38,274
Tuition and Fees In-state: $13,108 Out-of-state: $21,378
Room and Board $11,688
Books and Supplies $1,600
Other Expenses $3,608

compared to Lehigh/stevens/RPI
Lehigh
TUITION AND EXPENSES
Cost of Attendance $63,075
Tuition and Fees $48,320
Room and Board $12,690
Books and Supplies $1,000
Other Expenses $1,065

but check the Net Price Calculators anyway

It is not fair to argue quality/connections/alums/jobs when the prices are so drastically different

@swampdraggin , Also remember Rowan gives generous scholarships which can cut quite a bit off the cost.

Notice, too, those Rowan “other expenses” are rather high compared to the others. Either one is artificially high or the other is artificially low because they should not be so different, especially considering Rowan has a more local or regional student body and thus should have lower travel expenses compared with the others.

At a Rowan info session I attended they explained that the COA given on the website is very much on the high end of estimates.

A friend son attends Rowan for engineering and lives on campus and the total cost is less than if he had commuted to the local community college, due to his scholarships.

Thank you for the comments. Let me ask: if it came down to Rowan’s combined electrical and computer engineering degree vs TCNJ electrical engineering degree, which one would you all choose if the price was EQUAL?
Here are some comparisons:
TCNJ is the overall higher ranked school over Rowan but Rowan engineering is MUCH higher ranked on all the subjective lists like US news.
Although Rowan is larger, average class size is small like TCNJ. Rowan offers the combined electrical/computer degree, TCNJ does not. Rowan offers a masters in engineering, TCNJ does not. TCNJ requires graduates to take the professional engineering exam, Rowan does not. TCNJ has a nice campus but freshman dorms are rather run down. Rowan has brand new beautiful freshman dorm. Rowan has brand new engineering facilities, TCNJ’s pale in comparison.

If it came down to the two, which would you choose? Would the overall reputation of TCNJ win out or would the higher ranked engineering program at Rowan win? Which do you think a potential employer would lean toward? Our son is leaning TCNJ at moment because of the perceived overall prestige. But Rowan remains an extremely appealing choice in so many ways

Any of you that also visited Rowan recently, did you get an impression that the value of a Rowan engineering degree might grow in the future as the rest of the country and east coast starts to catch on? Am I wrong in wondering whether Rowan Engineering in few years may actually be on par or exceed the “prestige” of some of the more expensive schools like Stevens, Lehigh and RPI? A lot of the Stevens advocates on this site are not aware of the investment going on at Rowan on campus and surrounding area in terms of healthcare and tech companies.