Check back in when you hear from Lehigh, Lafayette and Stephens. If the financials don’t look good, I would take the free ride and not look back. There are lots of intern and job opportunities in the Newark-NYC corridor. I’m sure he’ll make the most of his opportunity, wherever it happens to be.
Is Rutgers not on the list? As @MYOS1634 said, NJIT is an adequate school for engineering and other technical fields. We’ve visited the campus several times for my kid’s robotics tournaments, and the campus itself seemed okay to me. The surrounding area is iffy, and the college experience will be quite different from that of Lehigh or Lafayette. There are many commuter students, and NJIT has a wide range of students, in terms of ability. That will not be the case in more selective institutions. In the past few years, my kids’ pressure cooker NJ public school has been sending a few kids to NJIT. One that I know of accepted a full ride.
Wait to see what offers come in from the other schools. If they can be affordable, I think they may offer the kind of experience your son is looking for.
I’m from NJ & NJIT was a top choice on my list, so I’ll give you my thoughts:
NJIT is pretty good for a STEM Major, & you can’t go wrong with a FREE ride to college
It’s worse than those schools(Niche gave the others around an A rating while NJIT got a B-)
It’s a SAFETY, so consider it if finances become a major issue
Compare Net Prices & Financial Aid from the other schools
Overall I’d rank the schools(Best to Worst)
Carnegie Mellon
Lafayette
Lehigh
Stevens
NJIT
P.S. Be glad he got a full ride at NJIT, I got waitlisted there. Still waiting on Drexel(Top Choice) & Temple.
William Paterson & Montclair are my safeties. Your son is doing better than me
@TheMerm1962 I’m curious what you chose in the end.
We are struggling with the same decision. We did Cornell just for the stab in the dark, and being unlearned about how expensive college now is we didn’t know better. That’s fine, we’ll figure something out.
So we are hoping cornell will turn us down so we can get a more realistic decision between Lehigh, Lafayette, NJIT, Rutgers,Rowan and The College of NJ.
He wants nothing to do with TCNJ and he won’t tell me why but I think it might be affordable and it’s a campus setting so I wish I knew why he prefer not going there. I know nothing of Rowan and there isn’t much online about it. Lehigh and Lafayette seem to be twin sister schools in many ways except that lafayette doesnt have a doctoral program which we don’t care about any way unless the research facilities for a potential master’s degree is effected by that. Rutgers is a huge school which isn’t really the setting that I’d prefer for him but NJIT is pretty much already garaunteed him a free ride entirely and he is qualified for the honors program to boot.
I suggested NJIT honors and then get the master’s at an affordable more prestigious school. Not sure if that’s the right thing though so any thoughts would be appreciated. Both his mom and myself went to free community college so we know squat. xD
@reformedman We were in the same position last year. NJIT was supposed to be just a back up and i asked my teen to apply as one of my friends (who works for 1 of 2 large package delivery co) kept telling us that they normally get interns/recruits from either NJIT or stevens. So far, i’m happy with the decision as i’m not paying a single cent for tuition and dorm/food + my teen is at home on most weekends (we live in NJ). Costwise, the most affordable is always in-state but Rutgers was somewhat stingy. I think they took to heart my answer to the question “How much can you afford to pay?”. We might have answered 12K and somehow the merit was small. My teen also got in RPI, BU, NE, NYU and only applied in one ivy just to see (we thought this was lottery anyways) and got waitlisted with CMU (dream school). The waitlisting dragged for a month past decision time and we got notified if we would want to wait some more, so NJIT it was and we agreed that the 529 can help later with grad school (perhaps CMU??).
There’s a lot of on-going improvements within NJIT. The honor’s college dorm is nice and relatively new. SAT average for the honors freshman class is the highest ever and comparable to other schools out there. Yes, Newark gets some bad rap due to some areas and the news, but it may add up to the kid being more street smart. i myself tried 3 routes on how to get to NJIT (via 287, exit 15E, 1&9/broad st) to check things out.
now for the disclaimer, i chose to be pragmatic as wife and I are living proof that it’s up to the individual to make progress in a chosen career regardless of where you graduate. We’ve been working in the Financial IT for years, mostly in the city and we come across a lot of people with same background. Yes, we’re not management or C-level but we live comfortably enough due to our work. Of course, job security is always a question, specially in this world economy we have now. I believe if your kid graduates without big debt to worry about, he/she already has one leg up to succeed. In the end though, it’s your son’s decision (so he can’t blame you later haha!) if it’s a good fit for him. btw, a neighbor told me, some months after start of class, about their friend whose son was also waitlisted at cmu but ended up in njit. The son is happy with njit too.
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@tff4ebwtrtw Thank you so much for that, really nice view into NJIT Honors!
Original Poster here, he did end up choosing NJIT. He’s in for Mechanical Engineering and all seems well. He likes the courses, professors and the campus if fine. He’s not into socializing so if there is a lack of it here, it’s not bothering him.
The surrounding area is OK. To come home he takes the light rail (about a block from campus) to Newark Penn station then a train home. No issues at all, perhaps because he’s traveling rush hour times.
Before deciding, he spoke to many HS teachers, some engineers we know, his boss, anyone he could ask, and the consensus was that NJIT would provide him with a quality education, at almost no cost (we still had to pay $1900 fees each semester).
The full ride was great…however…he struggled his first year, not academically but with I guess the transition and responsibility of being on his own, which affected his grades He got an Incomplete his first semester which he never told me about (I found out during winter break) and he got a F on a cake-course second semester because he left after each of the 3 tests, not realizing assignments were given, which he missed. His GPA was just below the 2.0 needed to keep his scholarship. Didn’t find this out till August 30th, so I didn’t apply for financial aid - I had no idea he was kicked out of the honors program. It’s a case of a smart guy thinking he’s too smart to be bothered. He sure got knocked down a peg or two or three. Now, we’re struggling to paid full tuition, no more honors program, no more honors dorm, in fact no on-campus living. For the time-being, he’ll be moving in with his dad and grandma until a dorm room opens up. His deadbeat dad has refused to pay on grounds that he’s broke (not true, and which will be determined at a later date by the court). Son also has to get an on-campus job and next spring will have to apply for and get loans. Because of our uncertain family financial situation, so glad he chose the less expensive NJIT versus any of the others. If he had lost scholarship money to any of those other more expensive schools, he’d be transferring out, probably to NJIT.
I hope this info helps others. Especially the remarks about the smart kid screwing up.
Thank you for the update.
Wow, what a roller coaster.
To the OP - indeed, a roller coaster. Kinda remind me of myself when i was in Engineering School. I struggled a bit but somehow managed to pull it through. I hope your son has the fortitude to finish what was started. Good Luck!!!
Anyway, I thought I’d give an update as lots of people are making decisions at this time of where to go so bumping this thread up.
My kid’s progress is doing great. Freshman year was good. Maintained Honor’s standing.
Perhaps due to applications being sent out late, we got the paid internship confirmation from a company almost as the summer was about to begin. Work was in line with the CS degree being pursued, market rate pay.
Somebody i know also took advantage of Honors’ and enrolled her kid at NJIT Fall 2017
Sophomore year is even better. The paid interships for upcoming summer were confirmed late 2017. One from a big financial company in the tri-state, which we had to turn down as the other offer was from one of the Tech giants of today. This will be an out of state gig, with great perks. Collectively, the company belongs to a group of companies whose acronym sounds like the biting part of a spider (a little riddle for you folks).
We’re almost halfway thru the NJIT journey and I know this is anecdotal, but goes to show, you can take advantage of opportunities and make it work for you…as long as you work for it too.
Hello @ttf4ebwtrtw,
My son got accepted into NJIT. He most likely get full ride. He also got accepted in rutgers . Now the question is which one to choose. I feel rutgers being too crowded, lot of competition for opportunities .I really like NJIT. Any advise / thoughts ?
What made your kid choose NJIT?
@umagopi99 - Right now i’m biased towards NJIT but honestly, when we made our decision, we were being practical about the free ride and not having a student debt. We made a visit to the campus and liked what we saw.
I don’t think there’s a right or wrong decision as both schools have their pros and cons. So it depends on your son where he feels more at ease but you are right to say that there are more students at Rutgers than NJIT
@LBad96 Just because you are from NJ doesn’t mean it is factually accurate. A lot of people seem to think Newark=bottom of the barrel, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. I have known quite a few graduates who have not only enjoyed their time at NJIT but have gone on to have incredibly successful careers. Also the area where the college is in Newark is no less safe than Rutgers-New Brunswick.
I’m amazed at how many NJ students and parents overlook Rowan’s engineering program. It seems pretty solid to me. Their provost is a Carnegie M grad who really sells the school well in my mind. I like their overall approach and the downtown they’ve developed is pretty cool too. Lots of $ invested in their program over the past several years thanks to Mr. Rowan!
OP, thanks for the update. I’d love to hear more about ME and NJIT’s new machine shop. We’re deciding between similar schools and will be re-visiting NJIT this semester. Are there things for a non-partier to do socially? It didn’t have a “cozy” feel to the campus, unlike Stevens and other small technical institutes but maybe the available resources compensate for that lack?
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Closing thread. The thread was started 3 years ago and the OP is long gone. Best to start a new thread with a new question.