@Gudmom I feel the same about Rutgers. We live even closer…15 miles and if my son decides to attend, I’d want him on campus. However, my biggest fear is that it will be deserted on weekends, he won’t have that true ‘college’ experience, and as he puts it, he’ll feel like it’s an extension of high school. In two weeks we are having second looks at some other schools he had been accepted at and hope he sees the benefits of those programs as well.
Why in the world would you send your kid out of state and spend thousands more rather than going to Rutgers,tcnj, or Rowan??? Because Rutgers is a commuter school? Why would that have a bearing on where to go? Wish I had that money to burn
I get the issues with Rutgers lousy campus and buses, but in sheer cost/value vs private or out of state public schools—TCNJ and Rowan engineering for instate students are unbeatable now. Just take a look at their student outcomes—- high retention rates after freshman year, newer state of the art facilities —- near 100% employment or grad school after graduation plus average starting salarys for each engineering discipline in the high 60k’s to over 70k for computer and electrical engineering. Contrast that with out of state public school costs or what I call the “Stevens Dilemma” where a school like Stevens gives huge scholarship discounts to freshmen who fail to pull a 3.0 and thereafter lose that mo ru.
Also consider the smaller pedestrian campuses of tcnj and Rowan where everything is a short walk away rather than Rutgers or PennState for instance. A smaller more manageable campus is a huge benefit to engineering students whose time is better spent studying and having some free time to relax as opposed to riding buses and essentially having to commute to class from your dorm a la Rutgers or Penn State
In some cases those OOS schools are providing better scholarship money that makes Rutgers more expensive as an instate student. Rutgers didn’t give a dime of aid to us. I understand what my son means by having a feeling that Rutgers would be ‘an extension of high school’. That came from him, not me. I grew up near SUNY Stony Brook and was strongly advised by my HS guidance counselor to look at other schools outside the area upstate public and private. For me, it was the best move. Everyone is different. But when a school shows interest and is offering significant aid, how Do you not look further into it.
@njdadjets - From what personal experience do you claim a “Stevens dilemma”? What dilemma? Stevens does not arbitrarily withdraw scholarships. If a scholarship or financial aid offer is made contingent upon maintaining a certain minimum GPA, that will be clearly stated in the offer. I have never heard of the GPA requirements for a scholarship being changed arbitrarily after the fact of any Stevens student or graduate I know personally, nor did it happen to me when I was a student there. If you really believe Rowan and TCNJ are on the same level and attract the same calibre of students and that their outcomes are as good as Stevens (check out Payscale’s survey, which puts Stevens at 15th of 1134 US colleges and universities for starting salaries and ROI on tuition, whereas Rowan and TCNJ are somewhere in the 150s I believe), well, you are mistaken. Stevens has the highest selectivity, highest SAT scores, highest average high school GPA, and highest percentage of students in the top 10% of their high school classes of entering freshmen/women of all NJ schools with the exception of Princeton University. Students clamor to attend Stevens whereas from my vantage point I see students leaving New Jersey to go to college, despite Rowan, Rutgers, TCNJ, et al being “inexpensive” for NJ residents. If those schools are so good and such a good value, then why do so many NJ students leave the state? Stevens and Princeton are the only NJ universities that NJ students really want to attend.
In the realm of NJ public engineering schools, everyone outside of NJ has heard of Rutgers. Nobody outside of this area has heard of Rowan or TCNJ, seriously. I have had job interviews in a dozen different states. All of my interviewers knew of Stevens (and Rutgers).
Many scholarship offers at all schools have minimum GPA requirements. Donors and benefactors of scholarships frequently impose conditions that the student must meet in order to retain the scholarship, and GPA is a very common one. Those are stated in the offers. I had to maintain a specific GPA to keep my scholarship at Stevens for example, and that was clearly specified from the beginning.
YOGO–you only go once.
Not sure why that would be a Stevens-specific issue. Any scholarship at any college that requires a high college GPA to renew could have this issue. Obviously, how big of an issue depends on the GPA. For top-end scholarships that require a 3.0, it is likely that few students lose them (after all, they had to have been at the top-end of the entering class to get the top-end scholarships). But if the GPA minimum is something like 3.5, that can be more of an issue, since students have to protect their GPAs like pre-meds do.
It isn’t an issue specific to any particular institution. As previously discussed, many scholarships (if not most) at many schools mandate that the recipient maintain a minimum GPA. Frequently, those conditions are imposed by the benefactor or funder of the scholarship. If the minimum GPA is not maintained, many will reduce or withdraw the scholarship. That is quite a common condition. The vast majority I am certain will state this or any other conditions that must be satisfied up front, and in those cases the student is made aware of his/her responsibilities up front. In my experience most schools are not in the business of “bait and switch”.
@Engineer80 congrats on your engineering success. My son is considering Stevens for Bio and then plans to go to Medical school. I know their engineering program, job placement record and starting salaries are top. I’m interested in information for students’ experience in the bio/pre-med track. Thanks