I don’t agree that engineers all stick together for housing and socializing. My daughter had one or two other engineering students as roommates over the years but mostly had teammates or other athletes. .
My nephew at one of those big party schools. His social friends and roommates were his lifelong friends (high school, youth sports) and his frat brothers and girlfriend (who did happen to be an engineer but in a different discipline).
My other daughter was not an engineer but her best friend was. She met him in the dorm freshman year.
Maybe it’s hard for some kids to know if they want a more critical mass of high performing students. I get that 25% of a big school means more of those types of kids overall. But that’s one out of four kids. I would say get your son into classes at these schools if possible @121IllinoisDad That’s where S19 decided it was super important to him to be surrounded by kids who will push him. The discussions he sat in on at some of the schools were amazing and made him very excited about certain schools. Some kids don’t mind being the big fish though.
My kids also had plenty of non engineering friends-through meeting in the dorm, fraternity for one,club sport, intramurals, etc.
Your son may not even decide he wants or needs an MBA once he gets into college and then the work world. Illinois has accredited IE as well as accredited Systems Engineering. Consider looking into both there as long as you’re at it…At some schools , they are combined(Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech have Industrial and Systems Engineering Departments, for instance). UVA, Penn and others have accredited Systems Engineering programs. Many Systems Engineering grads are sought after by businesses, consulting firms.
In my opinion UIUC meets a lot of your desires. I’ll just throw out some links that might interest you.
Hoeft Technology and Management minor: https://techmgmt.illinois.edu
It is a selective (competitive) minor for approximately 25 Business and 25 Engineering students. It is important to note that it is a 2 year minor so if a semester study abroad is desired, the student must do the study abroad program sophomore year. https://techmgmt.illinois.edu/current/courses/
I never said all engineers stick together. And definitely not for socializing and housing. But academically they will. Though not entirely and in all cases.
And yes, athletes will tend to stick together (no matter what their majors). Some schools require it. And if there are significant numbers of kids from same high school who were friends, they may well stick together if they attend the same college.
Engineering kids skew toward higher stats of state universities. And that will definitely be true if you look a couple years in from the perspective of who is still in engineering. I have known a few kids who went expecting to be big fish who were rudely awakened.
Think about why you want that “critical mass”, because it’s not necessarily about whether or not you want to be a “big fish” or what the quality of debate is during academic classes. My S likes to have nerdy intellectual discussions so has found a group of friends (in a range of subjects) who enjoy those debates in their spare time. My D isn’t as interested in that so has a much wider range of friends.
Having said that, many of the cohort-based merit programs do provide a combination of academic and social engagement (even living together) with the same group of top students, and are worth investigating for an able student.
“Value” in a college education is not just getting the cheapest/least expensive (note the different tone of each) education. Stop overthinking the monetary angle. Consider the four years of learning inside and outside the classroom. Will your son thrive in the school’s environment? Does a heavy Greek system influence him regardless of whether or not he participates? Is any honors program/college a part of his engineering/business experience, or is it only for other schools/colleges? If that, is it because the engineering students tend to have higher stats such that all are honors caliber? Remember there are schools popular on CC but others that don’t get on the radar- especially given the general east coast bias of the site’s posters.
Your son needs those college visits soon. It is too bad he will not see schools while school is in session. There are many places to get a top tier education. You are so lucky to have an excellent flagship. If money matters make use of that.
As others have stated, do not count on your father’s contribution. Life (death) happens. Most going for a masters in business should work first, then the company might pay or money can be saved.
Be glad if you are in a position where you actually have multiple options within your budget, rather than having your “choice” forced because the least expensive option is the only one that is barely affordable.
They should be glad they are in a position where they have college as an option. Many people do not (for a variety of reasons so of which are not financial).
@121IllinoisDad another thing to consider with Alabama is AP credit. They are pretty generous with it and my son started as a 1st semester sophomore. Also, when you schedule your visit, be sure to call and let them know. They can really personalize it. Out of all the schools my son applied to, Alabama really showed him the love. Oh, one more thing, the keeping of the scholarship is important to understand. Alabama has mercy - and some kids really need it!
“Stop overthinking the monetary angle.”
What do you mean by this? Affordability is the #1 factor for kids and parents choosing a college, there’s not even a close second. Everyone, even the wealthy, should think a lot about the monetary angle.
"Does a heavy Greek system influence him regardless of whether or not he participates? Is any honors program/college a part of his engineering/business experience, or is it only for other schools/colleges? If that, is it because the engineering students tend to have higher stats such that all are honors caliber? "
If you can’t afford 4-year colleges, all of these are irrelevant.
I don’t agree that all engineering student are ‘honors college’ level. My daughter was not. She was great in math and science but did not enjoy reading and writing at all. She was just fine in engineering, suffered through the required writing and humanities courses (was actually pretty good at them compared to other engineers and many international students), but would have been miserable in a honors college.
@twoinanddone, that would depend entirely on the specific school. Many schools require additional non-STEM work, but others do not. It would really depend on the courses required to determine who is a good fit and who isn’t.
I have absolutely no data to back it up, but I would bet that there’s a higher PERCENTAGE of kids who fail out of Engineering at big schools,(or maybe I should say schools with big classes), than at schools with smaller classes. I wonder if there is any data on that anywhere. I’m sure there is.
I can see where it sounded like I was saying all teachers at big schools don’t care and all teachers at small schools do care, but that’s definitely not what I think. I wrote that post quickly and was reliving my trauma. I do think it’s easier for teachers to care less though, when it’s a weed out environment, and it seems like that exists more in the bigger programs. Again, I have no data to back that up, but I’d be willing to bet that it’s true.
The reason I posted about this was that the OP mentioned that his son might have a little bit of a wild streak or something to that effect. I forget how he put it, but that’s the type of kid I might steer away from a weed out Engineering environment(big or small). I was that type of kid at 18 and it was not the right environment for me. Of course, kids who are serious and disciplined will do well in any program, because they’ll seek out the resources to succeed.
It’s the kids who might be a little ADD or a little too immature or cocky to tone down the partying and hit the books harder than ever before that I’d be careful with. It’s hard for some kids who breezed through high school to realize that they really are going to have to study hard for once in their lives… Those are the kids who I saw slipping through the cracks in the weed out programs.
@WalknOnEggShells. I think you will find the data similar. I don’t have time this morning to look it up. Large schools with large classes also, now a days have wonderful resources for learning its up to the students to use their resources. You can approach a professor at Rose Hulman as easily as at Michigan. Office hours are there for both and go underutilized. Both have math /science labs for help and peer to peer tutoring etc. It’s really not the school but the student.
Also those with learning disabilities can do fine in any field. If they did well in high school they can continue that in college. The only thing I agree with is that yes, the kids that skated through high school might have a wake up call. Heh, college is tough and engineering is tougher. No doubt.
I see the issue is that kids go into engineering because they are good in math. They really don’t understand what engineering is. You can talk with Juniors in engineering programs in college and still don’t have a good grasp. I was on Reddit yesterday and just reading some students don’t really have a good grasp what their intended careers will be. . This could be due to, to much variation within each field of engineering also.
I am really a firm believer the student makes the school not really the other way around. You can do well at Cal Poly Slo as well as Purdue.
Engineering retention rates tend to be quite high, even at the big state schools. Purdue’s retention rate is around 94%. Most programs we looked at, big and small, were between 92- 96% retention rates for engineering.
My impression is that schools do a good job of pre-screening applicants in the admission process.
Retention rates are totally different from 4 and 6 year graduation rates and Purdue has very low graduation rates for engineering, like really low. Here’s their info:
Their 2017 1-yr retention rate for engineering was 94.9% (good)
The 4-yr graduation rate was 54.2% (bad) and here’s the concerning part, only 45.5% of engineering majors stayed in engineering. The other 8.7% were transfers in. The six year grad rate is a little better - 83.9% but, note that 68.0% engr majors stayed in engr, the other 15.9% came in as transfers.
“My impression is that schools do a good job of pre-screening applicants in the admission process.”
It may be, but Purdue is not a school to prove that point.
But the co-op program at Purdue is not required, like at Northeastern or RIT right? The Purdue co-op web page says “majority of students do internships in the summer.” Even if there are a lot of co-op students, the 6-year graduation rate of 68% for incoming engineering students is not that great, 32% are pretty much weeded out to other majors.