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<p>Turning down MIT for Rose? I suppose they are both #1 for engineering (in different sectors), but that is quite impressive. I really do love Rose and I believe that if you want to study math, science or engineering, there are very few schools that would top Rose. I also think there is a lower population of people at Rose who just look for names and prestige to define success, another thing I like. :)</p>
<p>I too think that test scores do not show the “whole person.” I know that the wealthy can afford much better test prep classes , camps, you name it. And some people just don’t test well.
One of the schools my son was considering didn’t even want his test scores- they were moving away from it for all the above reasons.</p>
<p>That said, MIT does want test scores and they want high ones. Very high ones. So does Rice … and Carnegie Mellon. And I can’t imagine MIT letting someone in without either AP Calc or at least community college calc unless they were from some remote jungle. So I guess that is where I got my question from—if students are giving up MIT for Rose , well then I just think Rose’s median ACT score should be higher. </p>
<p>But I think we should end this part of the discussion and agree to disagree. Rose is a wonderful school and one that is still a very big possibility for my son.</p>
<p>My daughter turned down Bucknell, LaFayette, RPI, and Northwestern. In turn she was not accepted at Dartmouth. From her perspective she likes a small school where science, both technical and theoretical is not an afterthought like it is at most small liberal arts schools but vice versa. Sad that we live only 6 miles from RPI and she cannot stand the place. Rose Hulman it is! She loves the campus, the academic structure and support.</p>
<p>vsevolod, what does your daughter dislike about RPI?</p>
<p>All: How is Terre Haute as a place ? I know its small and there isn’t much to do around there, how true is that ? I currently live in Shanghai which is a very good city and so do you reckon it will be too big a change to handle, in terms of city and people…?</p>
<p>Sarthak- It would be a HUGE change. Not to say you would not like it, but I can’t imagine a bigger difference between Shanghai and Terre Haute Indiana.</p>
<p>haha… hope I like it!</p>
<p>Poor RPI–we live about three hours from there and my son would not even consider it. He had been there for 3 years in a row as they are the state hosts for the MATHCOUNTS competition, and decided way back in 8th grade it was not for him.</p>
<p>holly, what about rpi did your son not like ? How is RH better than RPi for your son?</p>
<p>roderick: The city of Troy is not a nice place. The campus is spread out across city streets that are unsafe after dark. My nephew graduated 4 years ago and didn’t like it due to the lack of an overall college experience, more of a departmental experience. Freshman housing has a 19th century Dickensonian feel to it; kind of overcrowded and cold in the winter. Academically a very good school but just too many howevers. Great place if you play football and hockey.</p>
<p>roderick: RPI is now a research grad student oriented school. A different set of goals and values then RHIT. In the last decade RPI enrollment is up about 1200 students and a 125 faculty. The increase is mostly due to grad students and research faculty.
My daughter has noticed these changes and my nephew attended in the middle of this expansion saying that “seems RPI aspires to be a minny MIT.”</p>
<p>thanks for the input on RPI since this might be a cross-app peer college of RH. So it is good to get a sense of how it contrasts with RH.</p>
<p>also, I understand the sense in which you said that RPI might want to aspire to be a ‘minny MIT’, but interestingly, the RH rep at a recent college fair told me that ‘we like to think of ourselves as the MIT of the midwest’ in response to a quote that I had posed to him, to wit, ‘I have heard people say that RH is a mini or scaled down version of UIUC (engineering)’. </p>
<p>I was throwing this out as a complement since uiuc’s dept is very well regarded and the biggest complaint for UIUC’s engineering dept is it’s bigness and less than stellar support for UGs. So if one were all gung ho for UIUC but just did not like the cavernous halls and the TAs, it seems that RH might a good candidate for you.</p>
<p>The rep , a recent 09 grad from RH, was bubbling with enthusiasm about RH, and he was obviously saying the MIT bit in a proud manner , attempting to say that RH contains the good cachet of MIT (MIT is pretty synonymous with ‘the best’ in the tech/science area of higher ed.) He was not making a comment on the grad/research/admin part of MIT.</p>
<p>At the risk of adding even more apps to compete with my son next yr, in the spirit of fuller disclosure and info that is the hallmark of CC: I have to comment on the rep from the college fair. In addition to the enthusiasm about RH, he was also very happily working at a very nice job in dt chicago. That is one of RH’s selling points, from what I am gathering, job prospects and career support, and this guy really walked the talk - vs some professional salesman, no disrespect meant to the august people of admissions. :)</p>
<p>I know exactly who you talked to at the college fair, roderick. “Sully” is a great guy and someone who really came into his own here. He’s also a good example for why I like having alumni cover as many college fairs as possible. I’m perceived as the “hired gun” while a volunteer alumnus is not. I hope you have his business card as he will be a good reference in the future.</p>
<p>Roderick-
My sons lack of interest in RPI started in middle school–he thought that many of the buildings had not been updated the way they should for a tech school. I did make him go back for a tour before we did college apps because it is within 3 hours of our home and he is (a little) more mature now.
What he noticed this time was the city (Troy) and how depressed it was around the college. We heard a few stories about safety that worried us as well.
From what I know the academics are wonderful . But he just didn’t feel comfortable on campus.
We have heard great stories about campus safety at Rose and that really does mean a lot.</p>
<p>My son has remarked to me that he cares about ‘sketchiness’ of buildings, grounds, and the like. I suspect that he wants to just worry about his studies and not other stuff.</p>
<p>I turned down these following colleges for RHIT:
University of California San Diego, Davis, and Irvine
California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo
Drexel University </p>
<p>It’s probably not as crazy as some of the other guys that have turned down Carnegie or MIT for RHIT. </p>
<p>You can probably tell by my stats anyways that it’s not amazing.
Stats :
4.08W GPA, 3.69UW GPA ; 1950SAT (670C-700M-580W) ; 31 ACT (30Eng, 34Math ), SAT II 760M-IIC 700USH 530-German; 26th percentile in class of 480, 500+ Service Hours, Sports for 2 years, Orch. for 4 years, Sole Proprietorship for 6 years. + Other ECs and Clubs (with 3 positions as officers/president)</p>
<p>red, can you share a bit of your thought process in nixing the ones you nixed for RH, and alternatively what made you affirm RH?</p>
<p>those are great stats, btw. I am sure you’ll continue to be very successful at Rose and beyond.</p>
<p>@roderick</p>
<p>Alright. One of my reach schools and possibly #1 for me was Harvey Mudd. I applied there as an Early Decision II applicant and got rejected. (Stats aren’t good enough)
The one thing that stuck out to me when I visited Mudd was their close-knit environment. One of my friends suggested me to check out Rose-Hulman because it had a similar atmosphere other than the fact that they tied with Mudd on the USNWR. From that I applied to Mudd on mid-Feb and got my acceptance letter from them two weeks later. </p>
<p>At the end of March, I had basically received all my acceptance letters from the UCs , CalStates and the Out of States I applied to.
I eliminated the lower UCs and CalStates I applied to…leaving only the flagship ones of my list left.
Drexel was essentially a free application for me so I just did it for the sake of having another option although I really didn’t have much of an interest in it. </p>
<p>After narrowing things down…I got it all down to </p>
<p>UC San Diego
Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology</p>
<p>During my spring break, I took time to visit all three universities to grasp a feel of the atmosphere, student life and academics.</p>
<p>With UCSD, I didn’t like how people were situated in 350-capacity lecture halls for most general classes that were designed to weed people out. Talk about highly impersonal. Our tour guide gave us all sorts of facts about UCSD getting in the rankings for research and development as well as its events, but it really didn’t seem like I was able to find real enthusiasm for the college (or at least not in its students…and that’s a bad thing). Whatever was presented was much more convincing to my asian parents than me. (after all, I am the one going to university and not them.) Financially, I did not receive any sort of aid from UCSD…so it would cost me 30k a year here and considering engineers take typically 5 years here from what i’ve heard…Hello 150k out of the bank. </p>
<p>With CalPoly, I did like how the classes were smaller and the hands-on focus to undergraduate education opposed to the theoretical focus at UCSD. However, I heard lots of things about the CPE classes weeding out around 70% of the people that apply for the CPE major. Not only that, it takes many people 5-6 years to fully graduate. I went there for their multi-cultural overnight program and had lots of fun with college parties there. However, I really thought that I’d be tempted to go to the parties over doing my work and get weeded out anyways. The people here did seem more amiable opposed to UCSD. Financially, this place was considerably cheaper. I got a 1500 dollar scholarship from CPSLO. Overall cost would be ( 110-132k over 5-6 years)</p>
<p>Now with RHIT. I visited the campus during one of its campus days and immediately found the friendliness and the close-knittedness of the students to be rather appealing. People seemed extremely amiable here and it really felt like an environment where everyone was geared towards academic success by working together whether it’d be through study groups or what not. I spoke with one of the CS professors and he was very kind to answer my questions, but also pleased that I walked in and had questions to ask to begin with. I didn’t get a name of the professor but he was really encouraging. I talked to several other professors/department chairs and they all seemed to have the general attitude of “if you’ve been accepted…we truly believe you can succeed as long as you put your heart into your work” instead of the typical “you’re going to get weeded out…might as well just get out of here already” attitude from some much larger institutions. I think that’s what really got me. The support structure consisting of both the students and faculty really seems to allow one to not only feel like an important part of the university, but allows one to discover their full potential and dreams. I think what Rose-Hulman does shines in its high 83-84% graduation rate compared to the national 40% graduation rate in engineering schools. [That comparison (in the social and academic context) can probably be used to judge Harvey Mudd and Olin College as similarly also.] </p>
<p>Financially for Rose…I was offered 11k as merit aid per year and assuming that each year would cost an average of 37k a year (excluding laptop cost and after merit scholarship)… It would put out around 148k out of the bank. </p>
<p>When I looked at the costs , academic quality and social aspects if each university…it came down to a couple factors…</p>
<p>The most important being the environment in which I can be successful and feel like I fit in. RHIT essentially took that spot. Additionally, it wasn’t that much more compared to the in-state universities that offered me virtually no aid. I felt like I would be getting my bang for the buck at RHIT too.</p>
<p>thanks, red , for sharing your thought process; very analytical, and good observational detail. Sorry for the dumb question, but what does CPE mean?</p>
<p>also, you net was nat’l. How far away wd u have to go to go to RH?</p>
<p>CPE stands for Computer Engineer. </p>
<p>From where I am to RH is about 1660 miles approx…just guessing. Quite far away from the West Coast though.</p>