UMass was recommended by another poster too, thank you. I’m concerned about recent news of anti-black incidents, but I otherwise haven’t had a chance to check into it yet.
Hmm, that seems to confirm our initial take on RPI. 
I hadn’t heard of Union College before, but have read good things about it on other CC threads. Thank you!
The campus doesn’t feel large to me. The town doesn’t seem large to me either. I’ve run most of it.
Michigan does have various learning communities as well as an Honors program. But Ann Arbor is a college town, recognized as one of the top college towns.
Central Campus is one large rectangular block. The town is contigious to Central Campus. The one drawback for some is that the Engineering campus is located on North Campus, which is about a 10 minute bus drive from Central Campus.
Michigan’s endowment is in the Top 10 in the US, with $12.5 Billion and they also have the 2nd largest R&D budget of any college in the US.
Yes, D18 loves attending the sporting events, but you’re right, there’s definitely a huge amount of college spirit there. And here in the Bay Area too. Wear any sort of Michigan paraphernalia around town, you’ll inevitably hear “Go Blue!” from folks.
Well, see, you’re making it hard to shrink the list! 
Honestly, you’re doing a better job at describing the 7-weeks and housing than the info session we attended! They did do a good job describing the hands-on and study abroad. I’ll tell her to take another look before writing it off as it does seem to fit in so many ways.
Do you recommend she check out Reddit or is there another site where she can talk to other students about her concerns? Someone other than her CC-crazy mom?! Thanks!
There’s a thread on CC called Feedback on WPI that is still active that you might be able to connect to current students through.
Yes, I see Michigan gear all over California. I think the Engineering being a bus ride from the Central Campus might be a concern, although I don’t know if that sounds any bigger than some of the larger UC’s. That’s nice that the town is adjacent, does sound like a nice college town.
Does the school system feel big? One concern I had with the big schools is if kids feel lost in the crowd, like they’re just a number to admin and one of a crowd to the profs. I doubt my D would get into an honors program there, so maybe the learning communities are enough help it feel smaller?
And how bad are the winters?! 
Thanks!
Thank you!
Agree about WPI admit rate as well, but want to
Note that also flagship public universities sometimes share this situation with higher admit rate but strong academic students. Take my daughters college UMass Amherst as One example. Massachusetts has some of the strongest HS students academically and almost all the top kids applying to ivies etc also apply to UMass as safety/likely. The applicant pool there is quite stout. Sorry for nitpicking.
https://www.umass.edu/admissions/undergraduate-admissions/explore/admissions-statistics
We read a lot about WPI, but to be honest, we spent a lot of time there. That’s why I advocated visiting before applying. I understand that is difficult with COVID, but without doing that, you will find schools that looked perfect online and eliminate them after visiting, but more importantly, like what almost happened with WPI, you will eliminate school that could have been great fits because you had insufficient information.
I’m very biased towards our son’s process, because affirmation is a powerful thing. That said, it was pretty good. He only applied to one random reach, Stanford. Even though he was the interviewer’s favorite candidate didn’t get in (they chose an equally qualified double legacy and never choose more than 1 from his school) and had decided it wasn’t his top choice before he got his rejection. All of the rest were matches and financial safeties if merit came through (it did). The take home message is that he had a list of schools where he would have enjoyed attending any one, irrespective of selectivity AND they were all in budget. His final 3 that he agonized over accepted 95% (Utah), 50% (WPI) and 15% (Cal Poly ME).
I don’t think this is possible without campus visits. At a minimum, you should visit the CA schools she is interested in. If nothing else, it will narrow her size preferences and give her a chance to understand the impact of facilities, and whether or not they are for undergraduate use.
I don’t believe the UW Honors Program affects major changes in any way. I suggested looking into UW’s iSchool before because it is one of the few “direct admit” majors (like CS), so once she is in, she is in — no competing later to get admitted to the major. The downside is that she could not switch from that to CS or engineering because those majors are pretty much limited to direct admits only. The upside, from my view, is that the major is flexible enough to turn it into a pseudo-CS or user-experience type major if a student is inclined. But probably not the way to go if she thinks she might want to be a civil engineer someday.
Mine reads r/ApplyingToCollege for other student perspectives. And you can search reddit for specific schools too.
ETA: Fair warning, the tone of the dialogue on reddit is very different than CC!
Agree that it’s going to be tough to match the diversity that CA has, especially wrt to Asians. But there are cities and campuses that are pretty close, MIT has 40% Asians, yes Boston is not that diverse, but Cambridge is about 18%. And once you add in grad numbers, that percentage goes higher, maybe a lot higher in STEM majors.
Outside of that, you’re looking at places like UM and UIUC, wrt larger Asian student populations. If you add in the international students, the feel at Ann Arbor and Berkeley is pretty similar. Until of course, you get to the winter!
International students may be be biased toward graduate students, and may be different in cultural aspects from domestic students of nominally the same ethnic background. This includes SES-related cultural differences, since international undergraduates are typically list price students from the upper classes of their home countries while domestic undergraduates (particularly at California public universities) include many students from across the whole SES range.
I consider it similar to Lake Tahoe, w/o as much sun, where the temps are mainly between the 20-40 degree band, with some outliers like my D’s freshman year when there was a Polar Vortex and the temp got down to -11 degrees. But hey, the basketball game against Ohio State, IIRC, was sold out and the arena filled to capacity.
My California D has adjusted and lived there year round last year, her junior year. But it’s obviously not for everyone. A place like Boulder, CO can be 90 degrees and sunny one day and snowing and freezing cold the next. That’s not Ann Arbor! 
Anyway, Michigan may be outside your budget and there are many folks here that would never send their kid to an OOS public. And that’s totally cool.
There are a lot of adopted Asian kids in Boulder, so the family is white (or biracial) and the kids are Asian. My perspective is a little off because my daughter is an adopted Asian kid, and we know know a lot of people from the Asian communities (through heritage camp, through dance groups and language lessons). We also lived in Orange county California and while there are a lot more Asian faces in California, I don’t think there was more blending of races or cultures there. Her friends seems to be the same mix of kids they’d always been. Her white sister had more Asian friends because she liked the Anime club.
If she’s worried about not meeting any Asian kids, I don’t think that will be a problem at any school in the engineering program.
Yes, they do look like they have strong students and academics. I’ll keep looking into it, but my D is getting a bit overwhelmed with all the colleges I’m sending to her to look into so I’m slowing down.
I want her to digest what I’ve already given her and especially to focus on whether she can narrow down a bit her areas of interest. If she definitely wants to keep (or cut) engineering or comp sci options, that would help with the school list! Thanks!
Very helpful, thanks!
Well I sound like a broken record, but yes, you’re right. 
Seriously, I do wish we could visit more schools first but even without covid, we would’ve needed to narrow the list of visits. So maybe my consultation with the CC experts is something of a substitute for the visits we can’t make now. 
We’re trying to find a way to visit the CA schools like you suggested but most aren’t offering tours, plus we can’t find days where D isn’t in school or extracurriculars to even check them out on our own. Imagine we wouldn’t get a good sense of a campus vibe on Sundays? What do other families do?
Thank you so much that sounds so interesting! But yes I think she’d want more flexibility in changing majors if possible. UW sounds great, but so similar to UC’s regarding constrained majors. I think if we’d looked into it earlier she would strongly consider it, but now the deadline is so soon and she won’t be ready to apply. Thank you!
It’s better than nothing. All 3 of us knew before attending anything formal that Brown wasn’t a fit just by walking on it’s campus. You do what you can do. Ultimately she’ll be fine wherever she lands.
Thanks!