<p>They cost about the same (NEU is about 3k more expensive)</p>
<p>Major in mechanical engineering</p>
<p>I want to choose UVM for social life, mountains, laid back +outdoorsy student body (I would rather have this stuff than Boston)</p>
<p>Most people I talk with say to choose NEU because the co op will offer me better jobs after college. Yes, I know that I should not base my decision off of other's opinions, but I haven't had to find a career and support myself like the people I'm talking to.</p>
<p>My question is ... how much of an advantage will doing the NEU co op instead of UVM give me in the job market? (Hopefully) In five years I will either be graduating from NEU with 18 months of job experience or I will be a graduate of UVM with one year of work under my belt and any internships I was able to find during summers. How much better opportunity-wise is the NEU option?</p>
<p>In addition to the advantage of coop, the caliber of students is much higher than at UVM, if you consider GPA and SAT/ACT scores. It will be more challenging and competitive.</p>
<p>BUT, if you do not like urban living, you will not like Northeastern.</p>
<p>You’re going to be miserable at Northeastern if what you say about yourself is true. But one wonders how you even thought to apply to Northeastern if what you say is true. </p>
<p>Where are you going to be motivated to do your best work? Are you driven by the kind of people at Northeastern? Or will you be enervated by the traffic, noise, parking trouble, etc. Would a weekend away in the woods each month satisfy your need for the rural? Will the laid-back atmosphere at UVT drain the ambition from you? Do you respond better to internal or external loci of control? The schools couldn’t be a whole lot different, but mechanicaleng is going to require the same rigorous application (at least some of the time) at each school. Know thyself.</p>
<p>Co-ops do make a lot of difference and if you got the stats to get into NEU EA when the numbers of those turned away are staggering, you might find UVT a bit less challenging that you’d like. Then again, engineering is challenging regardless of place and your less driven UVT peers will be weeded out.
jkeil’s question is a very good one: will joining the outdoors club at NEU and going on weekend trips be enough or do you want to be surrounded with the outdoors even if you can’t go outside to enjoy nature? (note that with engineering, you’re unlikely to have more than one free weekend per month, regardless of where you attend school).</p>
<p>thank you for your responses. I guess I need to visit NEU again in order to get a feel for city life (I’ve been in cities for one night at a time max). </p>
<p>“note that with engineering, you’re unlikely to have more than one free weekend per month, regardless of where you attend school”
^
l
l
Is that really true?</p>
<p>yup. one weekend a month, and not every month, to be sure. and the weekend probably doesn’t ever include sunday night. so you want to be an engineer, eh?</p>
<p>I remember visiting lafayette during reading period 7 springs ago. a marvelous spring day. there was a bacchanal being celebrated on the green in front of the library. the greeks had it flowing and thumping over the hill. no students were in any of the buildings we visited on tour. til we got to the engineering building where all those course projects were being last-minute tinkered over by engineer after engineer. S eventually left engineering for something with a life. he’s much happier ;+)</p>
<p>jkeil911, what did he switch to? How difficult was switching? And when did he switch? I’ve heard there is a lot of red tape at northeastern. I can imagine it is really hard to switch when you are supposed to know enough to get a job after 3 to 4 semesters of study. Sorry for bombarding you with questions. This is a big concern of mine because I’ve never taken an engineering class so I can’t know that I will want to major in it.</p>
<p>I think NEU is a better engineering program with a better reputation. And people who have done co-op really love the experience and perspective it gave them.
However, if you are a country person who loves the outdoors and wants to be surrounded by like-minded people, you might be better of at UVM. It’s hard to be successful if your are in the wrong environment.
I do think you should visit NEU to get a clearer picture.
Switching majors is usually not a problem unless you are trying to go from a less-selective program or college within a university to a more selective one. So switching out of engineering should not be a problem.
And don’t let people scare you away from engineering. Yes, engineering majors have more required courses to graduate and have lots of difficult courses but you just need to have the desire, and good time management skills. I know plenty of engineers who found time to party or ski or otherwise have fun. Most engineering students have never had engineering classes in high school, so you won’t be alone…
You may want to cross-post in the engineering forum…</p>
<p>Thank you BeanTownGirl. jibler, I applied to the college of engineering because I like math and physics. This lead me to believe I might like engineering. I know that it is harder to switch into engineering than out of engineering so I applied as an engineer. At this point all I know is that I want to try engineering and major in something math and science related.</p>
<p>My son started out in Mech Eng at UMass Amherst and after 3 semesters switched to math with a minor in economics. It was partly a subject-matter issue, he found he didn’t really like the course material, and partly a “lifestyle” decision, he wanted more time for other activites (he plays club lacrosse). He was Dean’s List in both Eng and math, so it wasn’t an academic issue. He found that his Eng math courses counted towards his math major but he had to take a different computer science course. Overall, it was a smooth transition. It would have likely been more difficult switching to the business school, which has the option to accept or reject transfers into the program. So yes, if you think you might like Eng, by all means try it, but pick a school where it will be easy to change majors if you find out you don’t.</p>
<p>It sounds like you vastly prefer UVM. Go there. Most schools, including those which don’t have co ops built into the curriculum have graduates who get jobs. You can also take a semester off to work if you want. Plenty of students do that. It’s also crock that engineers do t have time to go out and socialize, hike, or do things besides studying. The president of my school’s outdoor club is an engineer with a GPA good enough to get recruited by one of the largest oil companies in the world.</p>
<p>OP, S transferred from chemeng to chemistry. moving from one college to another was not easy at his large state uni. he left when he realized his senior year would be a lot of application of what he’d learned the previous two plus years and he really had less interest in application than he thought he would. He had more interest in chemistry and physics than in engineering, but he knew he needed a way to pay the bills when he graduated and engineering seemed a good way to do that. Chemistry is an intellectual phenomenon to him, and his experience of chemical engineering was not. If engineering might not be the way you want to earn a living, OP, talk to senior engineering students and to engineers who’ve been out 5-10 years about their experiences, jobs, fellow engineers, druthers, do-overs, etc. People will tell you what you will find, but find out for yourself.</p>
<p>Go with your instincts. NEU is city life, UVM is country life. You want the latter. And having a formal coop program is not the only way to gain work experience. While it is a huge plus for NEU, you can land coop jobs or summer internships as an engineering major assuming your grades are solid at UVM. And you CAN have a social life as an engineering major.</p>
<p>Go with where you feel more comfortable. I agree that Northeastern is more about city life (and city jobs) while UVM is more about country life (and country jobs). Figure out which you would rather and go to the school that fits what you are looking for. If you want a big city job in New York or Boston, go to Northeastern. If you would rather something out in the country in picturesque New England, go with UVM. </p>
<p>Neither are bad options, but they are very different school environments.</p>