Northeastern versus Drexel for mechanical engineering and honors college

<p>My DS has been accepted to both Drexel's and Northeastern's honors colleges for mechanical engineering. </p>

<p>He seems to be most interested in the robotics/mechatronics side of mechanical engineering. </p>

<p>What are your thoughts on the pros and cons of each of these departments for my son's interests, considering both research happening on campus and access to relevant co-ops? And what do you think are the pros and cons of each of the honors programs. (We have some ideas about these things already, but we'd like to hear what others think.) </p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

<p>I live in Philadelphia and my son attends northeastern. He is in the honors college and so far he is having a great time in boston. Boston is a better city than Philadelphia for college students. The transportation is good and it just feels safer than philly. My older son was a mechanical engineering student at a different college and coop is a very important consideration for this degree. From what I understand, Drexel makes you pay tuition even when you do coop. Sometimes the guys who clean my pool are doing coop at Drexel! So imagine paying tuition so you can work as a pool guy for your coop! Also, Drexel is on the trimester, not semester plan, so your classes are going by very quickly. Depending on your kid this is a good or bad thing. However, mechanical engineering is very difficult, it is hard when you have a few weeks of class, then you have midterms and the final in rapid succession. I would send my kid to northeastern over Drexel any day. Northeastern students are very friendly, the honors dorms are beautiful. Drexel’s campus is not very attractive. My son does community service as a part of his scholarship and that has also been very interesting. </p>

<p>The “Drexel makes you pay tuition while on co-op” thing is just a different way of handling the tuition for co-op students. At Northeastern, they take 4 years of tuition, divide it into 8 semesters, and you pay for each of your 8 academic semesters. Drexel takes 4 years tuition, and divides it evenly over the 5 years. Actually I just looked it up and they seem to have changed that – they now only charge tuition for the quarters you are in school, just like Northeastern does. <a href=“http://www.drexel.edu/drexelcentral/billing/billing/quarterly_billing_1415/prospective/5_year_3_coop/”>http://www.drexel.edu/drexelcentral/billing/billing/quarterly_billing_1415/prospective/5_year_3_coop/&lt;/a&gt;
In any case, total tuition and fees over the 5 years is very comparable. </p>

<p>I don’t think my kid has figured out whether quarters or semesters would work better for him, but that’s something interesting to think about. </p>

<p>Now if kids are getting co-ops cleaning pools that is no good, obviously. But hopefully those kids are not mechanical engineers.</p>

<p>What is your Northeastern student studying?</p>

<p>@mathmom -Computer science. But he is interested I many different things. There are lots of combination degrees available.</p>

<p>I had two pool cleaners and one was studying biology and the other chemical engineering. They were freshman, and it can be hard to get your first coop.</p>

<p>They start co-op their freshman year? That might be part of the challenge - it’s hard to get a position in your field with so little experience. With Northeastern’s co-op, you do your first co-op after your third or fourth semester of classes, so you actually have knowledge and experience that employers are looking for.</p>

<p>Drexel does not have Freshman doing co-ops:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.drexel.edu/undergrad/coop/coop-options/”>http://www.drexel.edu/undergrad/coop/coop-options/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>If they were freshmen, it sounds like those were just regular summer jobs for their first summer off. From what I’ve heard, all the co-op schools require the co-ops to be relevant to the degree, and would not accept pool cleaning as a co-op for credit. By the way, U of Waterloo in Canada does have kids co-op’ing freshman year – half of them after only 4 months, and they do manage to get the students into relevant (though very entry level) jobs. No pool cleaning.</p>

<p>They accept pool cleaning as credit. I was there and talked to those kids as well as the pool company. I was surprised that the pool company had been able to hire these bright sorts and that is how the topic came up.</p>

<p>Something doesn’t add up because if they’re on co-op, they can’t be freshmen. </p>

<p>Mistake…</p>

<p>Oh sorry I said they were freshmen! I meant it was their first coop. </p>

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<p>Ah. Would you be willing to PM me the name of the pool company? I actually want to ask Drexel why they are allowing that kind of co-op.</p>

<p>Armond
pool…
At the end of the day, your son should just pick the place that looks like the best fit and gives him the most money…</p>