<p>Can anyone give an honest assessment about this?</p>
<p>My son is a Medalist (but he's already been accepted to Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon and Northwestern...still waiting to hear about Cornell). It is difficult to turn down $15,000 a year, but I am worried about the m/f ratio. In high school, though he has many male friends, he has more female friends and I'm concerned that this will be a problem in the long run at rpi. We have visited there twice and liked it very much. When you ask kids about it, they say it's not a problem, but I can't imagine that's really true.</p>
<p>The M/F ratio is shrinking every year but it’s still a significant differential. Whether your son is comfortable with it may be determined in large part by whether he views his world as just the RPI campus or the larger Capital District. There’s a small girl’s college in downtown Troy and a well-known girl’s prep school just a few miles away. Siena, St. Rose, SUNY Albany, Skidmore, Union, etc. are within close driving distance. With their relatively bright economic prospects, RPI guys are usually popular with girls at surrounding schools.</p>
<p>I heard from a couple of rpi students it’s still an inconvenient issue and that relationships with sagies are pretty short lived. Unless you have a car, getting off campus to meet females wouldn’t be easy. But I shouldn’t be talking because I’m a female.</p>
<p>Our son is a freshman and loves RPI. His social circle is very coed and he has no trouble meeting new people. He’s in his second relationship while on campus, newly started. He might be different than typical since he’s very social and well molded by his two sisters, but I’d say the M/F ratio has not at all been an issue. The campus joke is that if you discount all the obsessive gamers, the ratio is 50/50.</p>
<p>Johns Hopkins and Cornell are both grind schools, not near the fun that we see at RPI. (I’d go as far as to call Cornell engineering a boot camp mentality for first few years).</p>
<p>If your son can maintain many friendships with girls in high school, college should be no problem I’d just suggest aiming for Barton Hall, triples in the rooms, since that is actually a co-ed hall (bathrooms are shared by two adjoining rooms of same sex but hall is co-ed).</p>
<p>i heard that architecture has had an influx of females and i even heard that there are more females than males in arch (not sure if this is true)</p>
<p>Dad’O-
That quote made this mom smile. My daughter’s wording is “socially awkward”. She has found a lot of the guys there this way. Therefore the social group remaining is much more even Best piece of advice- get involved- don’t sit in your room hidden away :)</p>
<p>kgrmom and Dad’O – We visited RPI today and definitely saw many representatives of the “socially awkward” male population! My daughter is definitely not “socially awkward” – but she loved RPI because she just loves science! There were also lots of just regular kids that do not seem to be especially “socially awkward” and were friendly and outgoing. Most likely many of these young “socially awkward” young boys will mature in the next few years and find their voice. At the very least they will get an excellent education.</p>
<p>As of this moment in time – RPI is #1 and we may not even visit anywhere else. The laboratory tour was excellent. The professors were just so excited and engaged in their research. It really felt like a university where entrepreneurship and scientific discovery happens…the weather was miserable but the day was good.</p>
<p>At our visit yesterday, my S commented that RPI must have convinced all of their female students to serve as ambassadors at the accepted students’ event. </p>
<p>On a personal note, he is a little concerned about the ratio because he does tend to have friends who are female as well as males. He did however, find the engineering facilities very much to his liking. We walked through the tabling event for the campus clubs and my husband and I suggested that he join the Ballroom Dancing club if he wanted to meet more females.</p>
<p>RPI definitely tries to paint a picture that deviates a little bit from reality. My daughter and I got a bit of a laugh from one of the 4-color glossy brochures. We counted the students pictured and it was about 60% female - hardly a random cross-section. Nonetheless, many an RPI male has been able to have a normal social life both during college and thereafter.</p>
<p>As for the gamers, they definitely exist. I lost a very close friend after freshman year because he got hooked on Dungeons and Dragons, which was my generation’s equivalent to the current electronic fantasy games. I didn’t understand the attraction of such games then, and I don’t understand the attraction of today’s games either. I’d like to think that’s because I was one of the normal ones, but there are many times when my wife would argue that there must be another explanation.</p>
Best piece of advice- get involved- don’t sit in your room hidden away :)</p>