Anybody??
Ohio State’s engineering program is higher ranked and OSU definitely has a stronger national reputation. However, at OSU, it looks like you’re admitted into pre-engineering and have to take 8 classes your freshman year and then apply to your specific engineering major to continue. It looks like students needed a 3.2 GPA or higher to continue in engineering after those 8 classes. At Iowa State, it looks like you’d have direct admission into your desired engineering major from the beginning. I can’t claim to be 100% sure about this; I recommend that you contact the departments at both schools to verify. Also you might get more replies if you post a question about the computer engineering program on Iowa State’s red dit (no space) page.
@illini23 - My youngest son (from Arizona) just started materials engineering at ISU. So far, he loves the school. He visited and was also accepted by Arizona, Arizona State, Alabama, and Michigan State. He has older brothers studying biomedical engineering at Miami (Ohio) and aerospace engineering at Texas A&M. Between the three boys, we visited 20 campuses, from Caltech to Michigan. My opinion, FWIW, is to don’t bust the bank on undergraduate education, particularly if you are studying engineering. Be sure that your program is accredited by the ABET. If this is the case, classes are pretty standardized no matter where you go to school.
Jobs should be available to anyone who graduates with an engineering degree. For example, at ISU, 81% of computer engineering graduates have jobs or admitted to graduate schools at graduation. Within six months, placement is 100%.
http://www.engineering.iastate.edu/ecs/files/2016/07/Annual-Report-2015-2016-Final.pdf The ISU career fair is also quite large.
Overall, I’d agree that OSU’s reputation is slightly higher, but I don’t think that matters much. For engineers, its all about how well you do on your first and second jobs. After that it won’t matter much if at all where you went to college. If you go to graduate school, that school trumps your undergraduate school. I have a friend who’s son got his mechanical engineering degree at Northern Arizona, and he’s working for Boeing.
We did not formally visit OSU, but I have been to Columbus. In the Big Ten, we visited Michigan, Purdue, Michigan State, and Illinois, The other midwestern schools we visited were Rose Hulman, Miami, and Iowa State.
Overall, Columbus is a big city and the campus is pretty urban. That’s a plus for some and a minus for others. Iowa State is in a pretty small town (Ames), with a lovely park-like campus. I’d compare it to Purdue and Michigan State.
The Engineering Colleges are comparable in size at the OSU and ISU. OSU has about 7300 undergraduate engineering students; ISU has about 7700. Of course, total undergraduate enrollment at OSU is about 45,000, compared to 30,000 at ISU, so there are proportionately more engineering students at OSU.OSU’s 25/75 percentiles for engineering are 29/32; ISU is at 25/30. FWIW, Miami’s range is 29/33. I am getting these statistics from http://profiles.asee.org/ and http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/
At ISU, my son lives in Martin Hall on an honors floor. It’s a very nice ten-year old dorm. He’s in a two-bedroom/two bath suite. His suite-mates are from Illinois, Nebraska, and Iowa. (BTW, there are a ton of kids from Illinois at ISU, probably second only to Iowa.) Ames is a nice college town. We fly in and out of Des Moines, about 40 miles away, which has non-stop flights to Phoenix.
And @momfactfinder is correct. You are admitted to a major at ISU. (My son already switched from mechanical engineering to materials engineering.)
@Beaudreau how come you didn’t end up choosing Arizona state since you live there? Thanks
@ilini23 - I would have loved it if at least one had stayed closer to home. ASU has a very good engineering schools and the Barrett Honors College is the top ranked honors college in the country. All three boys got merit scholarships everywhere they applied. For the most part, our net costs were pretty close between ASU, Arizona, and the schools that made their final cuts so we left the decisions up to them. In each case, they just ended up after visits, etc., liking another school better than ASU.
FWIW, ASU is a huge school, even bigger than Ohio State. The campus is quite institutional, but Tempe is a great college town. Arizona is in Tucson. The campus is much more like a Midwestern campus, but I don’t like Tucson around campus as much as Tempe. Arizona’s engineering college is good, but much smaller than at ASU’s, which is huge.
Ultimately, it came down to gut feelings, where did it feel like they wanted to spend four years.