Ours was fairly smooth this time around. D23 had gone visits when D19 went. We did one visit but only because we were going to be in that town for another reason. That was 2 summers ago. D23 went on a visit and D19 was her companion.
We did visit one school since the fall and it was because of the scholarship competition.
We did have to monitor D23’s progress more than we would have liked with apps. She won her scholarship competition and it took two weeks for her to decide to go to the school. Then we were done mid Feb.
Boilermom answered well. And it seems from your list the only plus UT has is he likes the location better. Purdue has the honors community, money, study abroad and fye. If the programs have similar ratings and outcomes, then Purdue seems to offer more.
And then maybe try to find internships in TX or another fun city.
When my S21 was trying to make a decision and factoring in potential internships, we discovered many schools offered summer housing for kids from other universities who were there for internships. I guess once they have them open anyway, they would rather make more money and fill them up.
There is also an active “sublet” market, where groups of upperclass-people and/or grad students have signed full-year, off-campus leases, but some bedrooms won’t be used during the summer.
Each year, those are advertising for summer internship students who are looking for (furnished!) housing and will help defray the cost.
S23 is struggling with weighing the importance (or lack thereof) of prestige / rankings in engineering (Mech E or Materials).
His short list of schools he is seriously considering right now: UMN-TC, UW Seattle, UCSD, UCD, Cal Poly SLO, Oregon State.
He has already crossed off his list the following acceptances (lots of good ones!): UCSB, UCI, UCSC, CWRU, Northeastern, U of Toronto, UBC, McGill, Ohio State, U Conn, Pitt.
Oregon State was his original safety school and he is still interested in it, but he is worried that it is too low ranked compared to others. He is asking me how much the rankings matter, and frankly I don’t know enough to advise him!! (I myself attended Stanford and MIT, but everything was so different back then!)
I would focus more on the opportunities and facilities within his intended major at these schools over the rankings. Look at what electives are offered (especially if he’s leaning towards materials which is typically a much smaller program than mechanical). Do a deep dive on what research is happening on campus by those professors.
And FWIW, one of the brightest, most driven, young engineers I’ve met recently went to Oregon State ; )
No, it’s not different in engineering. My D’s engineering friends have all gotten good positions from a gamut of programs from regional schools ranked in the 200s to T10 program. And at similar salaries. Getting good work experiences through internships and co-ops seem to be the most important factor, not the name of the university.
I wish you all the luck in your son’s decision, but I’ll chime in to say that here in our locale, in the Silicon Valley area, I’d say of those mentioned above, UCD, SLO, which are quite similar, and UDub are some of the most popular destinations for local college students.
UDub is very popular for CA students from our area. It was near the top for D18, since they offered her the Purple & Gold scholarship.
So, S23 is obsessed with Formula 1 and he really wants to spend his 4 years of college working on a Formula SAE team. Oregon State has a Formula SAE team which is one of the very best in the world (Global Formula Racing), competing both in electric vehicle and driverless classes (the only US team to compete in the European driverless events). The GFR team is formed as a unique partnership with a German technical university, so their design and manufacturing process includes global coordination, transportation of parts and completed cars back and forth between the US and Germany, and competition at events around the world. So it is not only one of the strongest and best competition teams (with interesting and advanced technology), it also offers a unique experience of working on a globally distributed team with a global supply chain. Our family has dual German/US citizenship and S23 is interested in potentially working in Europe in the future, so you can see how the team structure would interest him.
The other unusual thing is that the honors program in engineering runs very deep. In the mechanical engineering major, there are honors versions of almost all the classes in the major… we were just looking at the catalog and were amazed to see that the honors versions of courses in mech E go all the way to the senior year of the curriculum. So he would be in small honors courses from beginning to end. Not sure if this is a good thing?
Yes, all of these schools are really great. UDub might not be worth the price (it would be about $20-25k per year more than the others, all the others are close to the same cost) but seems like a great school too. So many choices
We just got back from a Loyola New Orleans visit. It was kiddo’s first time in N.O. and he fell head over heels in love with the city. He truly had a difficult couple of days mulling it over, but he just couldn’t see himself at the school. He says it’s too small; he felt like it would be too much like High School 2.0.
So it’s down to Pitt and Bama; he is accepted into the Blount honors program at Bama, plus he has the auto-merit scholarship.
Pitt has offered him nothing. But he feels like that’s the place for him.
He visits Bama in a couple weeks. I think they will woo him pretty hard, at least that’s the impression I get from the personal emails he’s getting.
But … Tuscaloosa vs Pittsburgh: I don’t see that it’ll be close in his mind, since the city has been his number-one priority all along.
Sigh. I sometimes feel like I failed him in not coming up with a wider range of city schools. We were just so hamstrung by our budget.
Sounds like Oregon State is a terrific fit for him!
(My S23 has an engineering classmate heading there in the fall, and I was just on campus there a couple weeks ago for a UF tournament - great school! And they have adorable little robots toodling around all over the place delivering meals )
If he goes to a school and has a great four years - doesn’t matter the range. You can only go to one.
If he visits Tuscaloosa and decides with the Blount and the gorgeous campus, it’s for him - lots end up loving what they didn’t envision at first. Make sure he walks the quad - and looks out from there - not look at the quad from the street. It’s really nice.
I almost wonder if the honors classes at Oregon State are too small? I know this sounds like an odd concern… Most of the honors classes appear to be capped at 15-20 students, and a lot of the engineering core classes seem to have around 10-12 students registered (in the past quarters I was looking at). Some have fewer than 10 students. Is this too small?
The overall mech E program is pretty big (graduating over 250 students per year), but I am not sure how many students are in mech E honors.
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