<p>Son, like everyone else on these boards right now, is in the final leg of college decisions. I'm wondering, from the engineers out there, if the technical knowledge gained at a school like RPI outweighs the tech and liberal arts end of a school like Union?</p>
<p>The main problem I see with interviewees is their inability to communicate. Even our new hires, with excellent technical knowledge, cannot seem to type an email or write a simple letter. Do you feel that a college like Union would develop that more and make a graduate more marketable?</p>
<p>First, I am not an engineer, so take my post, as you should any CC post, with a grain of salt. What I am is a parent of a Junior in the search process trying to find out the same information. What we found was interesting.</p>
<p>We just finished a visit through the same corridor. Although we didn’t visit Union, we did visit Bucknell and Lafayette, the two most analogous schools to Union, LACs with engineering. We visited RPI on the weekend, but did an extensive tour of WPI and Lehigh. What we found really broke my perception.</p>
<p>I can’t speak for Union, but engineering at Lafayette and Bucknell are stand alone curricula. In neither case does it function like engineering within an LAC learning environment, but rather as engineering adjacent to an LAC environment. Sure you can take and will be required to take a few non-engineering courses, but there is very little room in the prescribed course work to take classes beyond engineering. Our final take was that there’s actually more opportunity to explore LAs at WPI than either Lafayette or Bucknell.</p>
<p>The only place that we visited that really wraps engineering into a liberal arts curriculum is Thayer at Dartmouth. The catch is that the BS program takes 5 years.</p>
<p>So, I didn’t specifically answer your question, but offer a potential caution about your assumptions.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>M</p>
<p>P.S. There are few buildings cooler than the EMPAC at RPI.</p>
<p>In my opinion - I think whether an engineering student is a good communicator depends 75% on the student’s interest and aptitude in writing coming in to college, and another 25% on what happens in college.
Even at a STEM-oriented school, they want their students to come out ready for the real world and that includes the ability to communicate. Although it is emphasized a bit more at some schools, all of them have required liberal arts components including English, tech writing, rhetoric etc. The deal we made with our son who chose a STEM school over a small university was that he had to take at least one English course above and beyond whatever was required. But he is doing a substantial amount of writing in some of his other courses, mostly non-engineering ones though.</p>
<p>As an RPI grad, who still knows people at the school, I would say it’s not so much that one is better as that they are different.</p>
<p>At RPI, many students will treat their liberal arts/social sciences classes as a necessary annoyance, something to get through to get a degree. Philosophy discussions can be painful to someone really wanting to explore topics. The professors are top-notch but understand the limited attention their courses will receive. </p>
<p>There will also be more access to specialized research and fields of study within engineering. The best stuff, though, is competetive and reserved for the best students. Kids overwhelmed by the quantity of work are unlikely to be offered an extra research position or work on a project. The fact that 20% of the students are poor socially is not too much of a distraction.</p>
<p>Union will have more of a mix of students, more engagement in the liberal arts classes, but fewer resources for the tippy-top technologists. Bulk engineering coursework will be about the same but with fewer TAs.</p>
<p>^^^Great comments. My son also applied to both schools…and really liked both of them very much. As Magnetron nicely summarized I think kids that go to tech schools are really looking for a tech education… and that sort of lends itself to some self-selecting stereotypes. (Say that 10 time fast!).the nice thing about RPI is that they’ve made so many efforts in the past few years to push past their technical roots and build up the arts and humanities. Of the 15+ colleges I’ve toured with my son, I still think the EMPAC is one of the most exciting buildings we saw.</p>
<p>A college like Union would develop that more, but you pay a heavy price in terms of technical rigor, so I think the RPI grad would be more marketable coming out of school for engineering positions. </p>
<p>The problem with communication can be overcome in most locales with either continuing education or in-house training. The technical gap is much harder to overcome. I’d rather teach an RPI grad how to communicate than teach a Union grad how to be an engineer. Many of the engineering programs at LACs are “light”. Harvey Mudd is the notable exception.</p>
<p>Love all the comments and the insight. These decisions are never easy and we will see both colleges this weekend at the admitted student days. As a civil engineer myself I keep flip flopping in my opinion on this, but coming from a state school experience I never had the luxury of a top notch technical college like RPI. Time will tell.</p>
<p>I agree. At the more competitive engineering schools, students need decent math and verbal SATs. </p>
<p>Of course, a heavy technical workload (at any college) means less chance to keep up the writing skills. I decided to mitigate that by adding a Technical Communications concentration to my MechE degree.</p>
<p>I’m not convinced that high verbal SATs correlate well with great communication skills. I know plenty of them who are great at spotting the rules of written English but can’t hold a conversation - won’t make eye contact, flat affect, inability to stay on topic. Conversely, the remedial writing classes at the local CC (my son has helped a number of them) are filled with highly communicative, social kids from lousy high schools. I work in custom design where friendliness and salesmanship are important. Spellcheck and the simplicity of most emails help those without the most developed writing skills.</p>
<p>“Sarkis Acopian, founder of Acopian Power Supplies, graduated from Lafayette College … gave back to the College by donating the Acopian Engineering Center.” This, by any measure, would be considered successful for an LAC engineering graduate. My former boss got his EE degree at Pratt in Brooklyn.</p>
<p>Some thrive at RPI, manage to get top grades and experiences, then the job offers come rolling in. More typically it is a slog, difficult to the point of losing any merit scholarships and not always enjoying life, but those who survive will have some quantifiable amount of knowledge above what they would have gained elsewhere. For those with intellectual stamina and a Rocky-like ability of getting back up when they are knocked down, it can still be a great experience.</p>
<p>I guess the point I’m trying to make (finally!) is that the choice is highly individual, based on the personality of the kid and the eventual goals. Because selectivity is about equal, most kids have the adaptability to have roughly equal success at either. For some, the extra rigor of technical theory at RPI or the balanced education at Union makes one a clear choice.</p>
<p>Magnetron - I like your take on things, from both posts. I do agree that comfort plays a major role in keeping up with academics, regardless of the location. The smartest of kids could excel or bomb in either environment. </p>
<p>I’m glad S has these options, and a couple of others, because he has worked hard for them. I’m also glad this is ending is a couple of weeks because at this point it has turned into analysis paralysis for me.</p>
<p>Below are the links to the Union curriculum and the RPI curriculum respectively. They certainly don’t look that different with respect to their humanities requirements. That leads back to my original opinion that schools like Union, Lafayette and Bucknell do not offer engineering within an LAC curriculum, but adjacent to LAC students. The difference isn’t the courses you’ll be taking (i.e. less engineering at the LACs), but the degrees the people around you are seeking. We were just at Bucknell and Lafayette. I didn’t see anything to make me feel otherwise. In fact what we all walked away with was a better understanding of how much “tech schools” are enbracing breadth by adding liberal arts. My observations certainly run counter to the group consensus. Am I missing something? </p>
<p>Mag - You make good points about communication, but the original post mentioned writing skills (which is tested via SAT Writing) - “cannot seem to type an email or write a simple letter.” </p>
<p>Regarding RPI, I was impressed during a tour several years ago that students do NOT loose scholarship due to low GPA. They said students struggling with academics already have enough stress w/o worry of loosing their scholarship. (Applicants should double-check if still true - it’s an nice but unusual policy). </p>
<p>Union would give a more diverse cross section of majors. For some students that would be preferable to STEM-centric RPI. For others it would feel good to be among so many similar peers. Good luck!</p>
<p>What’s missing is that the curriculum of each course will be tailored to the students, and the tests and projects will be tailored to produce the needed grade distribution.</p>
<p>A course in Modern American Literature at Union will have English majors in it. It might require 8 books to read and 8 papers to write. At RPI it might have 5 books and 3 papers. The typical RPI student would spend 3 hours writing a near-final draft. The Union student would spend 3 days writing and re-writing.</p>
<p>Thermodynamics at Union will be spread out over 2 semesters, 3 credits each. At RPI they will do the whole darn book in one semester in a 4 credit course. Calculus takes 3 semesters at Union, 2 at RPI. The pace the technical information is being thrown at you can be shocking. </p>
<p>I took a 3 credit course in Electromagnetic Theory junior year at RPI. A few years later, I signed up for (and dropped) a graduate course called “Advanced” Electromagnetic Theory at a state school; it used the same book but only did the first 14 out of 20 chapters. Their undergrad EMT course had a much more simplistic textbook. Same course name, same course description, very different flavor.</p>