Quality of Undergraduate Preparation for Engineering at Small Private vs. Big State School

My observation is limited but I believe that the size of the engineering department has more to do with the amount of resources available than the overall size of the school. That is why somewhere like WPI can be a small school yet have the resources. It is almost all engineers. After all, a piece of equipment cost the same whether 50 students use it (and it is in constant use) or 5 students use it (and it sits idle much of the time). Also, with more students, a more diverse set of classes can be made available.

Your impression of a school is also influenced by how much you put into your education. One of my good friends at MIT did little more than attend the classes and he isn’t a great fan of the school. I got involved in undergraduate research with a professor and we got a NASA contract for the project. I believe I got a lot more out of the school than my friend and had much more fun doing so. I am a fan of MIT.

@cobrat I will double-down on what @Much2learn mentioned. It is really important to know how the program works. At some state schools - like Penn State or UWash, you might get directly admitted to a major, but you might have to be “reaccepted” as a soph or junior. Other schools allow you full ability to change throughout your career, others accept you to a specific major and while you only have to reapply if you want to change. It’s important to really dig into those rules at the schools you are looking at.

The second thing I’d mention is since engineering schools are usually a separate school from the overall university, many will have a very different “feel” than the overall school. Some manage to get a “small school” feel inside a bit U. I think it’s very hard to generalize - except that bigger schools tend to have more “on campus” opportunities: clubs, research, networking, etc. But you can only join X number of clubs and you can only work in X number of labs, so at some point it’s just window dressing.

@calidad2020
I am also told that at some schools when you complete the form to apply for an engineering major, they ask for your top three choices, and then they try to fit you where they can. I think you have to be a pretty flexible kid to be comfortable with that.

I think some of the concern might be how good the GPA needs to be to get your first choice. My kids’ schools (UVa and Virginia Tech) both had a general engineering type first year program , after which you moved to a particular major. I liked the idea that they could spend some time exploring the options before moving into a major. Other kids probably want to know even in high school that they can start right away in a major. I think some of that is kid dependent. VT was 3.0 to get your preferred major. If I recall correctly, UVa was something similar.That seems pretty reasonable to me.

Examples:

Texas A&M: https://engineering.tamu.edu/academics/advisors-procedures/entry-to-a-major/application-recommendations
Purdue: https://engineering.purdue.edu/ENE/Academics/FirstYear/T2M

Minnesota, Virginia Tech, Penn State, Ohio State, and others have similar systems where pre-engineering students need to apply to and compete for entry into their majors. Washington direct admits some to some majors, but most must compete for admission later. Wisconsin direct admits students to engineering majors, but has progression requirements that include GPAs that may be substantially higher than 2.0 to stay in the major.

Some other schools like UIUC and UCSD do primarily direct admission, but those not admitted to the major may be admitted as undeclared to the school. But since the majors are mostly filled with direct admits, getting into the major later is difficult (CSE in particular is extremely difficult to get into at both schools if not direct admit).

@sevmom “I think some of the concern might be how good the GPA needs to be to get your first choice.”

Yes.

  1. It is important to ask what gpa is needed to get your first choice, and that often depends on the specific program you are interested in.
  2. It is also important to know what the average gpa is for applicants.

Example:
One school told D2 that the gpa average to get into Chem E, her primary interest, was either 3.3 or 3.2 during freshman year. I thought that seemed reasonable at first, but became more concerned when she asked what the average gpa of a freshman engineer was, and they told her it was only 2.8. It thought the target level was achievable for her, but I also thought that a narrow miss was possible, given that 1/2 of the engineering students have a 2.8 or below. That could leave her with the option to choose another major or transfer to another college.

As colleges are struggling with budget cuts and limited funding, the number of major U’s with impacted majors in engineering is becoming a big problem. Some business schools have this issue too, but it not so wide spread.

@rdtjgk @sevmom And if I remember from last year, some programs have minimum GPAs, but don’t guarantee that gets you into the major - you have to compete with other students, while some will allow anyone to apply, but have a “likely minimum needed to be accepted” or similar. Which set-up works for you depends on how much flexibility or certainty the student thinks they need.

I’m sure that is dependent on the particular school in terms of guarantees so that would be important to check if that is a concern… VT guarantees choice of major with at least a 3.0 freshman GPA.

There are many others. I’d expect most selective privates that do not admit freshmen to a separate engineering college fall in to this category. For example, Stanford students can easily switch to/from engineering majors. However, a Cornell A&S student would have more requirements for transferring to Cornell college of engineering, It is certainly a good idea to review how easy it is to enter and change majors for the colleges you are considering.

There are probably numerous less selective schools where engineering majors are not restricted, other than for completion of the prerequisites (e.g. several of the less selective CSUs like CSUC, CSULA, CSUN, CSUSac). At less selective schools, the number of students able to handle the rigor of an engineering major may not be enough to overflow the department’s instructional capacity.

The same may apply to many smaller schools, where the minimum size of an effective engineering department can handle the instructional load even if a large percentage of students at a smaller school choose that department’s major.

UMich does not admit to or restrict majors. USC does not either. Princeton, Brown do not restrict major. There are many others.

For a very solid school with great opportunities for women who are interested in studying from the practical-application point of very, consider Kettering University. GM’s CEO, Mary Barra, is a graduate (me, too).

At Mines, all students take the same classes the first two years. So no need to worry that a student didn’t take the correct prereqs for their major. They prefer students to declare their major when they are sophomores.

For students already in the engineering divisions in good academic standing (2.0 GPA), these schools allow free choice of engineering major.

At Michigan, students changing from non-engineering to engineering need a 2.5 GPA (not a very high bar, and probably not a concern for many, since it is unlikely that students earning 2.0-2.4 GPA in the beginning courses for engineering want to continue that path):
http://www.engin.umich.edu/college/admissions/undergrad/cross-campus/requirements

At USC, non-engineering students need to apply to change to engineering. There is no indication how difficult it is to be admitted, although it appears that there is the possibility of not being admitted.
http://viterbi.usc.edu/students/undergrad/advisement/changing-majors-to-engineering/

Another potential issue is what the students back up plan is if they decide they do not like Engineering.

My D had decided that in that case, she would consider business. Many of these schools have additional barriers/applications if you want to change to business.

@PrimeMeridian

But she wasn’t comparing outcomes for jobs, she was talking very specifically about the nature of their courses at the two schools. That is what the OP asked about, gender was nowhere in the OPs questions, only quality of preparation which the post you responded to was directly on point about. Please don’t take things off topic.

Well I would hope not since they are all building the same bridges and planes and cars and whatnot.

All of these things can be had at large state schools as well. The difference is that students have to make a conscious decision to pursue those sorts of opportunities and then seek them out. In a smaller program with a smaller student-to-faculty ratio, those are more natural. For example, at a large Big 10 program, I also had the keys to a lab as an undergraduate and could do research on my own time. In fact, any professor at any school of any size that hires undergraduates will do this provided said student has proven to be trustworthy/competent enough (i.e. maybe after getting to know the ropes with an older student, then he/she gets a key). When I was in graduate school at another large school, my advisor periodically had dinners for his research group that included undergraduates both at his house and at various restaurants around town.

It’s a lot easier to blend in and even fall between the cracks a bit at a large program. That doesn’t mean you have to do either of those thing.

@ucbalumnus Yes, I was talking about students in the engineering schools. Many competitive engineering schools allow fairly simple changes of majors - or allow you to enter with no major designation and select later.
An applicant really has to check each school’s guidelines, they vary so much.
For instance, Penn SEAS has a good number of students admitted with no selected major and those that wish to change need to meet with an advisor but there is no specific GPA requirement.
RPI allows students to apply to the major, the school, or “undeclared general studies” which allows a student to end up with a major in any of the RPI’s schools - although they “encourage” applicants to be as specific as possible.
Harvey Mudd, Cal Tech, Brown (among many others) allows accepted students to pick their area of study among almost all majors at the school, not just engineering majors (certain programs, like Brown/RISD require special apps.)
As a general rule, the state schools are most restrictive around major selection and changing majors, but that is just a generalization. It is imperative a student look into this before accepting (or wasting the time applying) if flexibility is important. I know of more than one student who got into a program they ultimately did not like and had to move schools when they could not change majors.

“The engineering schools that I know allow students to choose and change majors freely are Lehigh, and Case Western Reserve. (and MIT).”

When I said these three allow you to change majors freely, I was including within engineering, and also changing to business, or science, if the student decides to do that.

Can others share additional schools that allow that? I think that would be very useful information to many students.

Re: #58

Making such a list can be more tedious than it seems, since many colleges do not maintain a centralized list of what majors may be restricted. When there is no such centralized list, it is possible that all majors are open, but it is also possible that restricted majors are only listed as such on the departmental web sites, so going through each department’s web site may be necessary to check whether there are any restrictions on changing major (beyond completing the necessary courses and being in good academic standing).