@Knowsstuff , I have PWN the SAT on the brain as D is prepping for PSAT for NMF. I have on the the PWN books right next to me…Sorry I meant PNW…
@eyemgh , Thank you so much for replying, I seem to remember you are up in PNW and son at SLO. OK, We are in West Texas, D is a high school jr. prepping for PSAT with goal of NMF, on target to make it. stats are: 1590 SAT, top 1% of her class. taking the following APs now: AP physics 1, CHEM, Psych, Lang, Calc BC, has taken APUSH 5, APCS 5, APHG 5. Plans to take AP Physics C, AP stats IB HL math, Lit, Gov/Macro.
She has done several coding and engineering camps and enjoyed the circuit lab in EE summer camp.
Any way, EFC is unaffordable at 35K, single mom. Dad will not be contributing to college and he is a high earner so CSS schools are off the table. She also does not have the cred for competitive scholarships. I think we should just count on AUTO merit.
I should be able to contribute 15K a year. I see Washington state gives full tuition and University of Idaho has tuition plus room and board (double) for National Merit. Are those schools recruited by companies in PWN, she would love to work at Boeing in Everette.
@BingeWatcher, yes, from the PNW and my son just finished his BS/MS in ME at Cal Poly and is now at a stealth mode startup in LA.
Don’t break the budget. Utah also offers some full rides to attract high caliber GPAs and scores. It’s an under appreciated program, as is Wyoming, which is pretty cheap. I second Iowa State if the money is right.
As for career dreams right now, they will change radically as she really begins to understand what she will actually be doing as an engineer (really doesn’t happen until well into 3rd year, sometimes even 4th year) and gets to know people at companies.
My son was enamored with Elon Musk. He dreamed of Tesla and Space X. He was ahead enough (basically taking classes with students a year older than him) and stayed for his MS, so he got to know students from two classes that he could query about how they liked their jobs. After that he didn’t apply to either.
OP, what state are YOU from and what’s your yearly budget?
Most of the big names recruit widely, plus applicants know who they are and can easily apply to them. However, they may be quite selective in their interview processes.
The smaller no-name companies may recruit more locally or regionally for convenience, and it may be harder for someone out of the area to know that they exist to apply to them.
I don’t think you will sacrifice anything. Plenty of good schools that offer engineering that are very affordable.
Both large and small no name companies will be at their job /intern fairs for engineering. Not sure how students wouldn’t know about them since they will be at their job fairs and students usually have access to the list of companies presenting or coming to campus. Really not that hard to figure out, on really any campus.
Well, now son is saying maybe not engineering. Maybe international relations, maybe math or statistics, maybe a double-major… He’s at the start of junior year so still trying to figure things out. Likes STEM, but also really likes history/geography/politics. I went into college undecided myself so we’ll see. We live in Alabama so UA and Auburn are close to free, but at this point he wants to leave the state. I’d rather he went in-state and got a masters in whatever he wanted, but it’s a joint decision. Maybe he’ll come back around to engineering and in any case I hope the original post remains helpful for someone whose child does choose it.
@Mama212529. So funny to me that he wants to leave the state and like the whole Midwest wants to go to Alabama (maybe that’s why) ?.. Let him know that a debt free education is the smartest education to grty.
For the free tuition! If we had deals like that up here, we wouldn’t be looking in AL. But, it looks like a couple schools might come up cheaper for us up here anyhow.
Lol… Seems like everyone in Illinois is trying to get the free or close tuition at Alabama and the like… Haha…
That may actually be a more difficult problem.
- Undecided students need to consider difficulty of changing major. For universities divided into divisions (engineering, arts & sciences, business, etc.), that can affect which division to apply to.
- Undecided students need to choose first year course work to work toward all possible majors they may choose, so that they do not accidentally close off some possible majors of interest by not taking the needed prerequisites.
- Undecided students may be less able to take advantage of major-specific scholarships or other programs.
- Post-graduation goals associated with some majors may be more school (or department) prestige conscious than engineering majors.
My son isn’t 100% certain on engineering. I told him to just start there and if he decided it wasn’t for him it would be much easier to move to almost anything else than the other way around. This is also why we’re choosing schools that have a lot of options and aren’t JUST awesome engineering schools.
Yeah, just trying to give him some time. Major major ambivalence means we need to explore more options, but no real harm at this point in the process. I’m actually enjoying learning about different schools and programs, and maybe I’ll pick up information that’s useful for my daughters too.
Students who are very successful in engineering generally KNOW that’s what they are cut out for. It is so difficult and you don’t really even get a feel for what engineering is until fairly late in the game, that the equivocal ones, or the ones that choose it for the money, tend to bail. There’s a reason that engineering is the largest exporter for major changes at most schools.
That said, it far easier to start in engineering and to switch out than it is to start in something else and try to switch in.
Just be aware if you are graduating from a ABET accredited Tier 2 or Tier 3 engineering school, you will need to graduate with a 3.5+ GPA to be competitive and you won’t be getting a sniff from top tier companies at top tier salaries. Still you should be able to find a job in todays market, but 100K plus starting is not in your future. Look at the average starting engineering salary for your major and subtract 10K (someone has to be below the average). So unless your in a very high COL area where they have to give you above average salaries just to actually live there expect a below average salary.
@CU123, how does one know what Tier schools are? ie…US News Report Rank undergrad 1-25 Tier 1, 25-50 Tier 2? Can you explain please?
@BingeWatcher, there is zero consensus to that question. USNWR is highly controversial. They rank several Ivy League programs high whereas most engineers would not consider the likes of Harvard, Yale and Brown to even be up to the standards of Iowa State. Couple that with the fact that there are great schools like Olin, Harvey Mudd, Cal Poly and Rose Hulman that don’t even show up on their rankings because they don’t offer doctoral degrees. Rankings are HIGHLY subjective, most of them based on prestige not measurable quality or outcomes. The prestige is determined by their doctoral programs. There are some very highly ranked programs that are very poor undergraduate experiences.
As for finding a starting salary of $100k+, don’t count on that no matter what the school. The only majors commanding those salaries are SE and CS majors. The average new hire salary out of MIT is $88k, Berkeley…$92k. Remember those include SE and CS that raise the mean. The average new grad to Stanford Mechanical Engineers is $74k. So, although possible, no one should consider $100k a sure thing regardless of school and regardless of GPA.
If the school doesn’t have a strong engineering program its not Tier one, personally there are several ways to decipher this, the American Association of Universities are generally considered Tier one for engineering, but this isn’t all inclusive since there are a number of smaller colleges that are just as good like @eyemgh suggests. I’ll disagree with him on the Ivy’s just because the cohort for them is top notch and they could have gone to almost any other university. It really comes down to the cohort attending the college, is the average ACT for engineering students above 30 (just my personal number) for the college? If its not then they have to take a slower approach with less depth in the classes. They may teach the same subjects but the depth simply isn’t there because the students simply can’t do it. I had a young engineer who graduated from what I considered a tier 2 college and asked isn’t Calc 3, Calc 3 everywhere? The answer to that is an emphatic no, Calc at UCB is not the same as Calc at New Mexico State. That is just reality. They just have way smarter students at UCB. Both are ABET accredited engineering programs. The business world understands that and they compete for that top talent. The degrees are not equal. The good news is you can still get a job. graduating from schools other then Tier one.
@CU123. I think you raise good points. Also the learning in high schools are not the same,even though the standardized tests are given to equal that out. Same as engineering standardized tests are given but the depth and understanding that some schools go into is different then others.
Seems like you are judging college graduates by how they did in high school and their parents’ financial circumstances and choices (the main factors determining the name of one’s college).
The high minimum standards of ABET accredited engineering mean that even if a college’s entering cohort is weak, its graduating engineering cohort has the strength to do engineering (this may be less the case in some other majors where there is no external accreditation or where the standards of such are low, though).
Regarding UCB, you do realize that many graduates started at community colleges, took calculus 1, 2, 3 and other lower level courses there, and then transferred to UCB to complete upper level engineering courses to graduate with engineering degrees, right? Do you treat these UCB graduates with disdain because they took calculus 3 at non selective community colleges?