RPI vs. Case Western

Colleges and Universities A-Z Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
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<p>When we visited RPI, my D was told that she would need to attend a community college to take a language class. She wanted to minor in Spanish, and major in engineering, so it was a deal breaker for her. She attends another college now, and likes the ability to have a non-science or engineering class each term. </p>

<p>She has several friends who attend RPI, since they didn’t want to take humanities classes. They are all very happy.</p>

<p>It all depends upon what your child wants and what is a good fit.</p>

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<p>My son is admitted to both. Here’s some stats from U.S. News Rankings and reviews
RPI endowment 2010 $629,728,000, Case $ 1,462,627,000. Case has more $ for scholarships and aid. Classes with less than 20 students, RPI:42.9%, Case: 60.4%,
from Collegeboard.com: Student/Faculty ratio: RPI: 15/1 Case: 9/1.</p>

<p>My son was offered $12k more from Case than RPI. Case’s campus seem prettier and nicer, newer. Cleveland was really nice with cool architecture and restaurants. Troy was depressing and falling apart. RPI has lower acceptance rate. Dr. Jackson, president of RPI’s welcoming address was uninspired, canned and sleep inducing. Did not meet Case’s president.<br>
Albany is not that close, and as a city, has alot of boring looking cement type buildings. Cleveland’s architecture was mind blowing! Case has newer, nicer facilities, dorms, dining hall, lounges, RPI has better rep for engineering? Case has better lifestyle, free printing, free rides on buses, free laundry, free software installed on your computer. RPI encourages you to buy their laptop and “clicker” for classes at $1800, albeit with 4 year warranty.</p>

<p>If RPi comes up with better aid, it would be harder for me to choose right now, but as of now Case is winning.</p>

23

<p>Thanks for sharing the info. All great info…</p>

<p>My d is a junior so we are in the mid stages of defining the list of schools to apply to. We visited Case during the summer so it was hard for her to get a feel for the personalities of the students.</p>

<p>It sounds like you might be asking RPI to come up with better aid (to match Case’s offer)? I’d be interested in hearing the outcome.</p>

<p>Lastly, would you mind sharing what other schools your son applied to? My d is also interested in Lehigh.</p>

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<p>My son applied to Georgia Tech, CW, RPI, and University of Maryland, our state flagship school. I’ve heard Lehigh is very preppy. not sure what your location is, but Virginia Tech is very good for engineering, and I hear Purdue is also very good.</p>

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<p>Our son is an alum of RPI Class of '08 and during his senior year visited both CWRU and RPI among others. We had a very good visit at CWRU and visited the CompSci department in Olin on our own. We were greeted by a professor as we roamed the hallway and was invited to a department picnic outside Olin that noon. Nice. Similarly at RPI he met with aProf Krisnamorthy and attended a compsci 1 lecture. He noted after the RPI visit that he could see himself attending college there.</p>

<p>The choice boiled down to finaid, distance from home(which he visited zero time other than breaks), and program(CompSci-CogSci interdisciplinary AI). He enjoyed his 4 years at RPI a lot, made a number of close friends, got a top notch education and is now working in LA for one of the major computer gaming companies as a game designer. He was also able to graduate with a double major(CompSci-Psych) and a double minor(Philo-Games and Simulation Sci), something that intrigued job interviewers.</p>

<p>If your student has a specific major in mind I would recommend that she research the department of colleges she is considering. What are the faculty resources, course offerings, lab facilities, seminars/colloquia, undergrad research/internship opportunities? I know that our son attended some of the brown bag seminars featuring outside speakers held monthly, worked as an undergrad assistant in the RAIR Lab, and participated in the annual Gamefest competition several years, things that enriched his undergrad experience greatly.</p>

<p>Good luck!</p>

26

<p>Great post Original, and I’m happy to hear your son is doing well because my son accepted at RPI yesterday.
One other thing to consider is the possibility of changing major, and if the school would be as good in another major. For example, my son is planning on engineering, but I’m guessing he may actually wind up with a degree in math or physics. RPI seems to have really good programs in those areas. However, if you’re looking for a more liberal arts feel, Case seems more like the place to be.</p>

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<p>Livn487:
My son applied to Georgia Tech, RPI, Northwestern, Cornell, Tufts, Carnegie Mellon, Upenn, Dartmouth, Vanderbilt, Duke, Safeties: Umass, Udel, Boston, Binghamton, Stonybrook and Case Western. He was accepted to Case, Georgia, RPI, Boston, Bing,Stony, Umass and Udel. The final choices ended up to be RPI, Case, Boston and Georgia Tech. </p>

<p>I appealed all the aid that was initially offered and received more in response. With RPI, they wanted a copy of my award letter from Case (since this was the one I cited). I asked if they could match their aid. In essence, they offered $4k more in grants and lots more in loans (which I didn’t really want). Financially speaking, Boston U was the worst to deal with in terms of their responses (I met with FA on an admitted students day and basically, she said they don’t match aid/grants/scholarship and handed me a pamphlet on loans and told me that although their school was expensive, it was worth taking out more laons for… duh! I also felt she sounded condescending and that she was tired of repeating the same messages over and over to all who had meetings with her… I wonder why they even offer such meetings.</p>

<p>Anyway, in the end, so far my son is going to Case. over 30k in grants/scholarships and about $13k in loans. </p>

<p>btw, Georgia tech FA person always sounded like I just woke her up and spoke really really slowly. After a couple of weeks of no response, I called, and found out she no longer worked there, but no one bothered to tell us! I could only chalk this up to them being a State school. This turned me off since I felt administrative-wise, they were not on top of things. Plus their admitted student website looks so amateurish, that I’m not sure technologically speaking, how up to date they are… again, state school traits?</p>

<p>good luck to you!</p>

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<p>jujumak:</p>

<p>Thanks for sharing the details and best wishes to your son. We continue to hear many good things about Case. </p>

<p>My d enjoyed her visit to RPI very much so it’s probably right in the running for her along with RPI and probably Lehigh. She decided to pass over Boston U and she did not care for Georgia Tech. In fact Georgia Tech cancelled our visit with them after we bought plane tickets to Atlanta last year. It was in Dec and they decided to “shut down” for the holidays and they did not return any of our phone calls for requests to arrange to meet with a grad student or someone. We visited anyways and found many people on campus…it was hard for any of our family to be positive. Then, we trekked over to Emory (but they have no engineering program-- only a 3/2 with Georgia Tech) which was quite nice and very appealing.</p>

<p>Many of her other schools of interest are ones that your son applied to–Northwestern, Cornell, Tufts, Carnegie Mellon, Vanderbilt, Duke and there are a few others. All very selective and difficult to get into. </p>

<p>Thanks again. Enjoy the rest of his senior year and graduation!</p>

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<p>HI!</p>

<p>I’m new to this thread and found my way here because of a poster whose son seems interested in the same schools we are interested in. Then I came here and found that many kids (boys and girls!) have the same lists of schools! My son is still a Junior, so we are earlier in the process. We have seen RPI, WPI, and Lehigh, and Tufts. Still plan to see Penn, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, and Case. He is VERY interested in Duke, but we don’t know enough about it yet. So where did everyone decide? Our vibe from our RPI visit was not a good one, unfortunately. Kids were not outside, dorms were very old and drab, friendliness was not there. I find it so ironic that 4 years can come down to a particular day or a certain tour guide. Ever seen the thread of “stupidest reasons a kid did not apply to a certain school?” or the one entitled, “Schools that were crossed off the list after the tour”. Pretty funny stuff!! I may PM some of you to pick your brains as to good classes to take as Seniors, financial aid, test scores, etc. Good luck to the future engineers!</p>

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<p>Hi my3gr8boyz: Feel free to PM me or we can hijack this thread if we want to talk about RPI. Yes, the lists of schools look the same:) I’ve got a junior d and we’ve been on many tours so we are starting to get past the tour guide and info session first impression and a little beyond the gothic and georgian architechure. We skipped over Penn so I’d love to hear what you think… and she was not interested in WPI. Otherwise, we’ve toured all that you mention and then some.</p>

<p>School is still in session afor her and i’ve been waiting to talk to her about her list of potential colleges. It is way too long in my mind.</p>

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<p>Hello,</p>

<p>Sorry to hear you didn’t chave a great experience at RPI. We actually had a great visit to RPI, everyone we have encountered along the way has been very helpful, and my son will be going there in the fall. We never visited Case, but it seems like a very good school, and they have great merit aid packages. We visited GT and the visit was wonderful (my son spent the night with a student and GT and RPI were his final 2 choices, but engagement
after the visit was terrible, which is why my son won’t be going there in the fall. (As someone indicated, sometimes it’s small things that make a huge impact). Feel free to PM me also if you’d like to discuss anything. Other parents from CC have been very helpful in this process.</p>

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<p>1214mom:
what do you mean “that engagement
after the visit was terrible”?</p>

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<p>At Georgia Tech, I often had trouble getting the people on the phone that I needed, people didn’t give correct information, they didn’t return e-mails promptly, if ever, things like that. Actually, on about April 30th I reached out to a couple of people not within admissions or financial aid, and they were more responsive. I have had several e-mail dialogues with RPI, and people have always been helpful, considerate, hooked me up with other people as necessary, things like that. Even on the last day when my son was deciding between GT and RPI, and waiting to hear final scholarship amount, RPI said take extra timeif you need it… Their “customer service” has just been far superior to that of GT, and GT is NOT a cheap school for those of us out of state.</p>

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<p>@1214mom: It is disappointing to hear about your experience with Georgia Tech. As my earlier post indicated, GT was very unhelpful and rather dismissive with us. Anyhow, thanks for elaborating about them. My d did not enjoy the visit and crossed the school off. Our d did not like Purdue and she has not shown any interest in Virginia Tech. She is somewhat interested in UVa but we do not know much about their engineering program. She will likely apply to many schools and because she will be heavy into a fall varsity sport I’m STRONGLY encouraging her to begin brainstorming and drafting some of her college essays:) At this point she is definitely going to apply to RPI but I’d say it’s not at the tippy top of her list of schools. Our state flagship, just feels way too big for her even though there’s an honors program. She visited there last year and has been on campus for various science and sports competitions. It’s in a nice city but it’s all too familiar. She would prefer to venture out of state.</p>

<p>We have only good things to say about RPI and all the people we met on campus:) Congrats to your son on his choice!</p>

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<p>From a parents perspective RPI is very attentive. My son needed to choose a major and was able to set up appoints with two department chairs and meet with them, all in the span of three days.</p>

<p>My son is not in a fraternity but does go to their parties as it is the only social scene available to students. There are lots of nerds/gamers who stay in their rooms and play video games. Thus the frat parties are welcome on the weekends.</p>

<p>He does play Club ice hockey and that is fairly involved with practices, games and travelling. But it is a great group to bond with and a good activity to stick with.</p>

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<p>So did a google search today on RPI vs. RIT vs. WPI or something like that and got tons of 3 page CC threads. I’ve been reading for quite a while. I noticed on this particular thread that I had actually posted way back in May of '12! The really ironic thing is that I did my search tonight for my son who is now a junior, a different kid from the one I originally posted about. That son ended up being accepted ED at Duke into the engineering school. </p>

<p>My DS14 actually attended a robotics camp at WPI last summer. He didn’t love it, but I don’t know how accurate it was to what school is really like there. This son plays racquetball and would love to go to a school that has an active team (albeit at the club level). We just met two RPI grads at a recent r-ball tournament who really loved RPI and their r-ball program. They did not deny, though, that it is quite a nerdy place! They met (they are actually married) freshman year in the dorms (they say Barton is the best. That is also what our tour guide had told us. It’s very new and also has A/C) The housing is based on admission time, so ED kids can get better housing, or are at least more likely to get their housing choice. RIT also has an active racquetball program and there are some schools south of us that have racquetball, but those are larger schools, which I don’t think would fit this son (VTech, UVA, UNC Chapel Hill - UNC has 9% admit rate from our school!) I also think he should be a decent drive from home (RIT is farthest at 5 1/2 hours) Have thought about Case, but that is 11 hour drive. Purdue has R-ball, but is also large and is a 11-12 hour drive… RPI is looking best to me personally, but I guess it’s really where HE wants to go, right? :wink: We definitely need to visit again because of the dreary first visit we had. Maybe meet some professors this time, sit in on a class? </p>

<p>So livn487 and 1214mom - do you guys have any decisions yet? Did either of your kids do ED/EA? Where are you waiting to hear from? My inbox is almost full, or I would’ve PM’ed you both… ;)</p>

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<p>My daughter applied Early Decision and was accepted. I think the visit that made up her mind was the Engineering Open House. It gave her the opportunity to tour the labs and talk with a number of the students on a more one on one basis. And yes, I am also hearing that Barton is a good choice in dorms. </p>

<p>The other big differentiator for her is they do Division III sports. She is a softball player and should have a good chance of making the team.</p>

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<p>My son is currently a freshman at RPI and is doing well. RPI has been a really good fit for him. He is currently a math major and will likely pick up another major as well. From the parent perspective, RPI has also been great.</p>

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<p>My D loves RPI. As for housing though, she didn’t put her forms in until April and chose Barton as her 10th choice and that’s what she got…realizing now that Barton is awesome!!
She always thought she would go to a big school but she loves the size of RPI.</p>

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<p>I’m an undergrad at Case but also spent a summer at RPI doing research. RPI and Case are both very strong schools, but I do think that Case is much more balanced. In addition to a strong engineering program, we have a good number of students studying nursing, management, and the liberals which leads to a much more diverse and fun social environment. We’re also in a city, albeit it’s not as great as Boston or NYC, there is still plenty to do downtown and near campus. I remember frequently getting bored while at RPI because there was so little to do with Troy.</p>

<p>Case is also a school that seems to be going places. The university is shooting up in the rankings (higher than RPI in many things) and is getting a ton of donations from alumni to improve facilities and higher top notch faculty. </p>

<p>You’re going to get a great education and a valuable degree in either school, but I think you will be much happier at Case. </p>

<p>Feel free to PM with any questions!</p>