What is the opinion of small schools on the Pacific Coast-California, Oregon, Washington-with engineering schools. I already know Harvey Mudd and Cal Tech are great. What about Loyola Marymount, USD, Santa Clara, UOP, Chico State, University of Portland, and Gonzaga?
They are different kinds of schools. Mudd and Cal Tech are intense STEM schools with highly competitive admissions. (Yes, I know Mudd is considered liberal arts school, but the engineering academics are among the toughtest.) The others would have more variety of majors. There are pros/cons to each approach.
Has your student visited any larger campuses and is he/she set on the west coast? The reason I ask is that opening the possibilities to a moderate size school brings Cal Poly into the mix. Expanding Eastward there are quite a few small schools with very good engineering including several of my favorites, WPI, RPI, Case Western and Lehigh. It’s very important to visit and especially important to tour the engineering facilities. After doing so, it will become clearer what one gives IOP if they choose a school like LMU (or for that matter, any of the rest that you listed besides HMC and Caltech). Also, what’s your home state?
California
Is west coast and small a done deal?
We are hoping for West Coast. Cal Poly, Chico State, Oregon State seem like good choices too
Cal Poly and Oregon State are not small, nor are they huge. Cal Poly is smaller with roughly 20k students and OSU hovers at 30k. Both are good schools (better in my mind than any of the other schools you listed, simply from a facilities, course catalog and opportunities standpoint), but with some significant differences from one and other. Cal Poly admits, competitively, to each major. OSU is a more classic pre-engineering program with competitive declaration of major as a junior. CP class sizes are much smaller and all taught by professors. That experience can be partially replicated at OSU, as they have one of the best honors colleges applicable to engineering around. Full disclosure…We’re from Oregon and our son is a ME at Cal Poly.
Is staying on the West Coast for cultural reasons or to be closer to home? The reason I ask is that the drives can be long and if you’re close to a major airport you might find that a direct flight gets your student home far faster.
IF you’re willing to consider schools in the CP/Oregon State size range and are willing to have your student a bit further from home, Utah, Wyoming, Washington State, Montana State, Idaho and Colorado State are all pretty good values as they offer WUE tuition exchange. Oregon State does not.
Lastly, and this would depend HIGHLY on your student, Oregon Tech is a small school that offers WUE tuition. The biggest issue is that it’s in Klamath Falls. There’s NOTHING to do there UNLESS your student is into hunting and fishing.
Thanks for the information! It is very helpful
Among the California schools listed, I would go with Santa Clara University. SCU has a larger engineering program than LMU, USD, or UoP, is more selective, and is located in the heart of Silicon Valley.
Not sure why Chico State (with around 17,000 students) is on your list of “small” schools. If you want a “small” state school, I would suggest UC Merced or Humboldt State (similar selectivity, but around half the size). If you do regard Chico as “small”, then I would suggest UC Santa Cruz or Cal Poly (similar or slightly larger in size, but more selective).
For a small school (<10,000 students), with engineering, on the West Coast, without overly competitive admissions, I would reiterate my vote for Santa Clara.
I looked up the engineering school stats at asee.org. For 2016, SCU engineering students had math SATs of 680-760. That compares quite favorably to larger and better-known state schools like Cal Poly (650-740), UC San Diego (640-770), UC Davis (580-740), or U of Washington (620-740). SCU is clearly attracting some very good students to their engineering program (it’s probably a popular “safety” with students applying to Stanford or Berkeley).
Of course, the cost to attend SCU would likely be significantly higher than the in-state tuition at a CSU or UC. SCU is a particularly wealthy private school, which may limit the financial aid that they can offer. And the range of engineering majors and courses would be more limited, although this is to be expected with any small school.
Sorry, that should have been:
“SCU is not a particularly wealthy private school, which may limit the financial aid that they can offer.”
Thank you!
For what they’re worth, here are the 2017 U.S. News & World Report rankings for many of the Undergraduate Engineering Programs mentioned in this thread:
At schools where Doctorate NOT offered:
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/engineering-no-doctorate
Cal Poly - 5 (tied)
Chico - 69 (tied)
Colorado State (Pueblo) - 97 (tied)
Gonzaga - 22 (tied)
Humboldt - 55 (tied)
Loyola Marymount - 13 (tied)
Oregon Tech - 35 (tied)
Univ. of Pacific - 55 (tied)
Univ. of Portland - 35 (tied)
Univ. of San Diego - 13 (tied)
At schools where Doctorate IS offered:
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/engineering-doctorate
Colorado State (Fort Collins) - 75 (tied)
Idaho State - 170 (tied)
Montana State (Bozeman) 135 (tied)
Oregon State - 75 (tied)
Santa Clara - 116 (tied)
UC Merced - 151 (tied)
Washington State - 75 (tied)
Keep in mind that the rankings between the 2 categories are not at all comparable.
Various ranking lists can give datapoints in the college search. Job placement for the school/major (especially in the preferred post-college geography is also an important factor. It’s not as easy to determine, but it’s worth some research time.
This is true. For example, the Santa Clara engineering program just shifted between the two categories. They were in the “no doctorate offered” category for the 2016 ranking, but were moved to the “doctorate offered” category for the 2017 ranking.
Their 2016 ranking was #12 (tied). Their 2017 ranking is #116 (tied).
From the perspective of an undergraduate student, there is probably very little difference between the 2016 SCU engineering program and the 2017 SCU engineering program. However, SCU has begun granting a handful of engineering doctorates, and this has moved them into a far more competitive rankings category, dominated by large research universities. As of 2017, US News ranks SCU engineering against schools like the UCs, Stanford, and Caltech. SCU is no longer ranked against schools like the CSUs, LMU, or UOP, as it was through 2016.
When looking for an undergraduate program, ranking based on whether or not a school has doctoral programs is quite odd. Who cares? You’re looking at undergraduate. Forbes has 6 schools in their top 20 engineering programs that do not offer doctorates (Rose-Hulman, Harvey Mudd, Cal Poly, Cooper Union and two service academies). What this all means is that ALL rankings should be taken with a grain of salt. You can’t simply say add 75 or whatever factor and you’ll get the relative with PhD rank.
Thank you, @Corbett for your insight re the SCU ranking. When we first started our search last year, I recall SCU ranking high, and we visited and loved it. Our son was admitted to computer engineering at SCU and has the possibility to receive a full scholarship. And he really loves the school. But when I checked the rankings again this year, it was so much lower than I remembered! I’m happy to know the reason why.
He is also admitted to UCB, Cal Poly SLO, and UCSB (regents), and invited to apply for regent’s at UCLA. Still waiting for UCLA decision and a few others (UCSD, Cal Tech, Stanford). He also has a full ride at Alabama. We are struggling now with decisions like rankings over scholarship opportunities. For example, SLO vs. UCSB–SB regents is worth 6K per year and SLO doesn’t give anything like that. And we may need to add SCU into the mix if he gets that scholarship. But of course, Berkeley is ranked so high (no regent’s there), and UCLA is a wonderful school, too.
It’s certainly not a bad problem to have, but would love insights and opinions! TIA!
The flip side is that UC tuition rates (which you would pay at UCSB) are higher than CSU tuition rates (which you would pay at Cal Poly). Furthermore, the cost of living in Santa Barbara is probably higher than the cost of living in SLO. So you may find Cal Poly to be cost-competitive, even after applying the regent’s scholarship at UCSB.
That is very true. I didn’t mention that we qualify for the CalVet program, so tuition rates at the UC and CSU schools are not an issue, which makes the extra $6K more enticing. Really trying to judge the programs, and the “party school” reputation. My opinion, like everyone else on this forum, is go where you are most comfortable because they are all good schools. But it seems so crazy to turn down UCB, UCLA (if he gets in) and SLO for UCSB or SCU … at least I know that’s what we would hear. I really have no idea what my son is actually thinking, either. We are just trying to give him the best guidance possible.
He needs to visit them all, talk to current students and then decide what’s important to him. I’m not throwing Berkeley under the bus. They do a great job of placing CS grads. Is he comfortable though in a class with 1000 students? That’s how big intro to CS is at UCB. It’s the biggest class in the nation. Some kids just have no interest in that type of learning environment. He needs to sort out what differentiates the programs beyond the rankings.