Please help suggest colleges for my S24 interested in Industrial Engineer. He is very introverted and prefers a private, small to medium sized, urban or suburban school. His SAT score is 1590 and predicted IB is 42. (We are American living overseas). At this point Northwestern is his dream school that he plans to apply ED.
We are thinking of:
CWRU
Rice
Cornell
Northeastern
BU
WPI
Crossed out
USC (concerned of campus safety)
UC Berkely (too large)
He could look into Ohio State. If interested he should apply EA, indicate he’d like to be considered for Honors and do the application for Eminence.
He’d likely be invited to apply for their IBE, Integrated Business & Engineering Honors Program | COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
OSU has a First Year Engineering program. Engineering students take the same first year courses. He’d be able to re-select among the direct admit engineering departments but CSE, ME and Bio-Medical would not be one of those options.
If he might be interested in CSE, ME or Bio-Medical he should select that on his application instead.
The College of Engineering is adjacent to the College of Business. OSU main campus is actually very compact and walkable, although it is densely populated. The departments and cohorts make the campus feel small and friendly.
Surprised at the list if he wants a smaller school. For example, both BU and Northeastern are large. I’d suggest Harvey Mudd (general engineering but can focus on industrial), RPI, RIT, Drexel, Lehigh.
Cornell and Northeastern have nearly 16k undergrads and Boston University has more than 18k. None of those would I call small to mid-sized. Also, although your son has some extremely strong academic credentials, the schools on your list are mostly reach schools for all because there are so many strong applicants applying to them. Thus, there would definitely be a chance of your son being shut out. Case Western is very sensitive to being viewed as a “safety” by strong applicants, so your son will want to show a lot of interest to them if he hopes to get an acceptance. WPI I think is likely.
Bradley (IL) – About 4300 undergrads
Lehigh (PA ) – About 5500 undergrads
Rensselaer Polytechnic (NY)– About 5600 undergrads
Stevens Institute of Technology (NJ) – About 4100 undergrads
U. of San Diego (CA) – About 5700 undergrads
The schools below are public, but I think would still be worth consideration:
U. of Alabama – Huntsville – About 7600 undergrads
New Jersey Institute of Technology – About 9200 undergrads
Binghamton – About 14k undergrads
So my son graduated at Michigan IOE in industrial engineering. Yes, larger school but small department and very cohesive. 50/50 men /women. If any questions ask or pm me. Fantastic opportunities.
RPI and Lehigh for matches. Clarkson for a safety.
Similar in size to BU, Cornell… Georgia Tech in Atlanta has had the #1 Industrial Engineering program in the country for several years.
Georgia Tech’s industrial engineering major has been number one in the country for decades. I just looked and it is the 28 year being ranked number one for undergraduate and 32nd year being ranked number one for graduate schools.
Georgia Tech is the same size as some of the schools on your list – around 17,000 undergrads – but not small. It is urban, in the middle of Midtown Atlanta, but has a true campus feel. It’s very green and lush, and it’s actually a certified arboretum.
Thanks for the additional detail! 
I will add that Atlanta is a convenient location for international travel, and GTech is a quick and easy $2.50 subway train ride from the airport.
It’s also a very hard school to get into. So keep that in the reach column… Lol
ABET.org lists 119 schools in the US with bachelor’s degree programs in industrial engineering.
Among these, you may be able to find suitable safeties to add to your apparently-mostly-reach list.
Some of your list does not have industrial engineering listed as an ABET accredited bachelor’s degree program.
You may want to check if ABET accreditation is important in hiring of industrial engineers. It is specifically important for either PE licensing (for signing off on designs used by the general public; most common in civil engineering) or the patent exam, but many working in engineering do not do these things, in which case it mainly matters whether employers of their major are looking specifically for ABET accreditation, assuming that the major exists at the college.
Pitt checks a lot of boxes. It’s rolling admission so he should have an early acceptance. It’s only about 19k undergrads. He’d be competitive for scholarships.
Just curious why Industrial Engineering? What is he looking to do? This might help suggestions. Some schools offer other engineering specialties/concentrations that might work.
My son is an ISyE at Georgia Tech. Excellent program. Look at their website.