Egads, this was supposed to be a short summary – I didn’t even look at my notes!
D and I did the northeast sweep during her spring break last week. She wants to major in electrical engineering with a focus on renewable energy. The only schools we’d visited before this trip were CU-Boulder and Oregon Tech. If anyone is interested in hearing more (yes, there’s more!) about any of our visited schools feel free to ask.
Clarkson University: This is the first small college she’s seen with that real “college feel” and D liked it almost immediately. She did an interview and the admissions officer talked to both of us after. He seemed very impressed and D felt it went well. Our tour guide was excellent and the group wasn’t too big. The best part was that D got to sit in on a class and I was invited as well, so naturally I went too! The class was Chem 2 and the professor was just great. He was really engaged with the class and made great use of props and examples. I spent some time scanning the classroom. Some students sat together and others on their own. There were about 150 students (one of their larger classes), but it didn’t feel crowded or overwhelming to D. The school had a casual friendly vibe. I think the male uniform there is a plaid flannel shirt (seriously, I’ve never seen so many in one place!) There were quite a few students in Clarkson gear. Campus was small, but still lots of green space. Many of the buildings are very nice and modern and also connected to each other which students said was important in the winter! D loved the school and it immediately went to the top of her list.
Rennselaer: The atmosphere was a little less warm, but certainly not unfriendly. D liked the fact that core requirements were very flexible. I may not have this exactly right, but outside of major requirements, students just have to take a certain amount of humanities/arts classes but no particular type. Our guide (also very good) said he was getting a minor in psychology practically by accident because he’d mostly used psych classes to fulfill this requirement. He also said one reason he chose RPI was because he loved STEM and didn’t want much to do with liberal arts. Hopefully this doesn’t imply those classes are sub-par. D was supposed to sit in on an engineering class, but it was cancelled. Very disappointing. The campus was nice and felt quite big for the size of the school. D’s favorite building was the performing arts center that was very impressive. Odd for such a techy school, but apparently it was paid for by an anonymous donor. D liked RPI quite a bit, but it went to number 2 with Clarkson maintaining its top spot.
Smith College: Certainly the school on her list most different from any of the others. She had never even considered a women’s college, but liked the sound of the small engineering department and the fact that there would be a wide variety of class choices with the 5 college consortium, while still being in a small school. We were quite lucky that my D11 had a good friend there who was a senior and who met us for lunch. She really loved Smith and told us the only real problems she’d encountered were when dealing with the administration when she sometimes wanted to do things a little differently (for example, taking a gap year between freshman and sophomore year). The info session was the most interesting one we attended. They stressed that they don’t expect their students to take every AP class and are also test-optional (although D will send scores). Their outside of major requirements were even more flexible than RPI: half of your credits must be outside your major. That’s it! We’d seen some big tour groups earlier in the day but totally lucked out. It was just us and one other mother and daughter and we had a wonderful tour guide and equally wonderful tour guide-in-training. Housing and meals were great too. The students live in houses with anywhere from 20 to 100 other girls. They usually form tight-knit bonds and actually do gather in the living areas frequently and are very welcoming to freshman. Meal plan is unlimited and there are 15 small dining halls. Smith immediately soared to the top of the list.
Worcester Polytechnic: D and I really liked the hands-on project based emphasis here. Students do a junior year project which is usually inter-disciplinary with a team. It can be done overseas or in the US. The senior year project is more focused on the student’s area of interest. D was supposed to sit in on a class, but this time they were taking a test. Bad luck! Once again we had a good tour guide. We were then taken to lunch by two other tour guides, with just one other family. This was really informative and our guide described her junior year project which was working with a team at Disney World on a new type of animatronic. How cool is that?! We could tell she had absolutely loved it. I believe she said her senior project would be at Hasbro working on a toy based project. D liked the dorms here the least (mostly quads) and the food the best. We both really liked WPI and it barely edged out Clarkson for second place.
Union College: They were on spring break, but it was so close to WPI that we jumped over to take a campus tour. The campus was very pretty, but there seem to be some worries about the safety of Schenectady. I think our guide was pretty inexperienced (probably not much of a pool to draw from during sb). She was very nervous and I felt bad for her. Unfortunately she knew nothing about the engineering program. There were no students around of course, so we couldn’t get a feel for the campus. No ranking here since it really wasn’t much of a visit.
Northeastern: I don’t remember too much without my notes as my brain was not in the best shape by this time. D and I both found their co-op program very interesting. D likes the idea of getting real world experience and earning money while still in college. She also liked the campus location in the Fenway section of Boston. It was miserably cold and raining, so we didn’t get a great look at the campus hurrying from building to building. Of course it had a very urban feel. D really likes Boston, but I’m not sure she sees herself in that kind of atmosphere for 4 years, plus it is bigger than she prefers. It went to number 5 on the list. I’m not sure it’s even worth applying, being one of her most selective schools so even if she got in I doubt there’d be any merit aid.
Boston University: We did the engineering school tour first. Unfortunately there were more people than expected and our tour guide was a student who worked in admissions but was not normally a tour guide. She was in mechanical engineering and couldn’t really answer many questions relating to the other fields. They had an amazing materials/manufacturing lab, but this is not D’s area of interest. The regular tour was better, but I could tell D was just not interested. She said she’d rather go to CU-Boulder (our local public), so BU came off the list.
Probably needless to say here, but of course these “rankings” are purely about being a good fit with my D. All the colleges seemed like fine schools that would be somebody’s best fit. The trip was exhausting, but we had a great time together. All the driving time didn’t even feel that long!
). From our perspective, there are only a handful of Catholic colleges where Catholic teachings completely permeate the campus culture. Those schools are the ones found the Cardinal Newman list. (If someone is not comfortable with Catholic theology, the schools on this list should be avoided.) 