Hello,
My son may attend la tech for mechanical or civil engineering.
The engineering dept seems to check all the basic boxes (abet etc).
Does anyone out there have a good idea or sense about la tech? Any first hand knowledge about the programs? Reputation in the field? Respect among potential employers?
Anything anyone has to offer would be helpful.
Thanks much.
No first hand, but if you might want to visit they have an interesting department fair of sorts on April 11th that seems to be of a recruiting nature.
We’ve visited and toured. The kid liked it but we just don’t know alot about it.
Google search
Louisiana tech engineering & science day 2017
Look for the Facebook event
What did you do while there? This will be your first trip. She has the regular tour for science/engineering on the 10th then a meeting with honors and committed students day on the 11th. Anything else we should look into?
We toured the entire campus as well as a dept specific engineering tour.
The facilities really weren’t impressive but bear in mind, i’m not an engineer so in some ways I wouldn’t know good facilities from bad ones. It’s just that everything looked old and outdated and they didn’t do the best job selling the program.
Thanks for pointing out the Facebook page.
Louisiana Tech engineering SEEMS to have a great regional reputation (I’m still a student). Just about everyone I’ve ever talked to said they would hire a Tech engineer over an LSU engineer any day, but it’s not like LSU engineers are nationally known either. Of course none of these people were LSU grads, and my exposure is skewed more towards Tech grads.
As far as facilities, the current building that serves as the primary engineering building is very old, but the equipment and technology we use on a weekly basis in the freshmen engineering curriculum always works well.
The university is hoping to break ground on a new integrated engineering and science building that will hold most freshmen and sophomore classes in engineering, physics, chemistry, and math, this year. Even though the new building is nearly 90% privately funded (speaks to alumni loyalty) the university is still waiting for state approval of the other 10% of the money which will come from the state. I’m not to sure why I pointed this out because most likely by the time the building is complete y’all’s children will not be freshmen or sophomores anymore so they wouldn’t really benefit, but it will be pretty to look at haha.
Tech also consistently does very well in Shell Eco car, and 2 or 3 years ago their team held the U.S. records for most fuel efficient diesel and most fuel efficient gasoline car. Eco car is completely on volunteer basis and any engineering student can help. The advisor for eco car is the undergrad engineering dean so being involved in this gets you some time spent with college leadership.
The freshmen engineering curriculum is fairly unique as far as approach, and ALL of the course information is available to anyone that googles LaTech living with the lab, picks a course, and clicks on schedule and downloads. PowerPoints, homework assignments, project details, practice exans etc., in case you are curious.
Unrelated from engineering, i’m sure you heard/will hear “tech family” on your tour, and it is a real thing that has to be experienced to understand.
I know that didn’t answer all your questions, but I hope it helped some!
Maybe someone with workplace exposure to Tech grads can help more.
Actually you are emmensely helpful. You’re a current student and that carries weight. I can speak intelligently on the subject matter only as far as superficial Google search takes me, which of course is to say i’m quite limited.
You’re an engineering student which means you’re very bright and likely had other academic opportunities.
What brought you to la tech instead of maybe lsu, ULL or out of state?
Thanks much.
Glad it helped!
LSU didn’t seem to offer anything better as far as education, experience, or environment than Louisiana Tech. I’m also from a small town so Louisiana Tech just made a little more sense than LSU.
ULL doesn’t offer industrial engineering, so it wasn’t an option.
I was accepted to some out of state schools with good IE programs, and some waived out of state fees. The problem was that they 1) offered little in the way of scholarships besides waiving out of state fees and 2) the Louisiana TOPS program which covered ALL of tuition + $800 a year for Louisiana residents with over a 27 on the ACT does not pay tuition at out of state schools. This was going to add up to somewhere around $20,000 of money that I just passed on if I went out of state. (However, TOPS has been cut to about 70% now, and the future of the program is uncertain).
Also something I forgot earlier was the article published last year that named Tech as one in 20 colleges in the world that could challenge the elites in 2020. Tech was put on this list specifically for engineering, and even more specifically for its Cyber Engineering program which brings together EE CS and “computer engineering” to create a discipline focused on Cyber security. This was created with the military and government contractors in mind and research in cyber security is conducted with these same groups. This article gave some non bias proof to the school pride based belief that Tech engineers and engineering students hold, which is pretty much “we are one of the best and we are just waiting for everyone to realize it”. Links to the original article and study are at the bottom of this LaTech article.
Your response is exactly the sort of insight I was looking for and i’ll read the article now.
Thanks alot.
Oh and we live in louisiana and my son, for the same reasons as you chose not to attend lsu and he’ll likely stay in state for the same reasons.
Keep in mind that LaTech operates on a FOUR SEMESTER system; The regular academic years is Fall, Winter, Spring. And then you have the Summer Schedule. For some kids in the STEM fields, the compressed academic calendar is an issue.
It is a fairly ordinary quarter system, except that it is offset from other quarter system calendars in that the winter quarter is split by the winter break. An academic year consists of three (fall, winter, spring) quarters, each of which has 10 weeks of instruction (2/3 that of a 15-week semester). A nominal four year schedule would include 12 quarters of attendance.
For the LA residents, how comfortable are you all with the funding from the state? How well have they been supporting the CC and U systems, is that funding under siege,etc? I know there’s a fair amount of angst over this issue in IL…