Hey guys! I’m posting this since it seems that there is a recurring theme in the questions asked on the RPI Reddit page. To make life easy, since I have a feeling a lot of people here are the same one’s posting on Reddit or may have similar concerns, I wanted to address some issues that prospective students typically have with RPI pertaining to the gender ratio and social/party scene. I’ll be copying and pasting responses from various Reddit users as well as including my own insight so this isn’t extremely one sided. I’d recommend this more for students than parents, and will be very blunt as a current RPI student.
Question #1 (quoted from Reddit):
I got into RPI and they’re giving me ~28,000 a year as of now. I am a CS Major. I went to their Accepted Students Day and was actually really amazed by the job finding that RPI does. Butttttt, I’m actually sorta concerned about the social scene (the CS student I talked to said that him and a lot of people stay in their rooms and play video games a lot and the food is boring every week. He also said that there’s just bowling in the real city-part of Troy. I also actually saw so few students on campus itself that I thought you guys were on break tbh) I really like how they are committed to getting every student involved in internships and everything, but idk if I could survive 4 years with the people I met that day.
My favorite responses to Q1:
A. Hey! It’s unfortunate you had that sort of interaction. Personally, I’ll have to admit that I was terrified to enroll at RPI last year since I was convinced I wouldn’t get any “action” for four years and I’d end up by myself without a social life. In the end, the complete opposite ended up happening both in terms of girls and the party/social scene. There are parties every weekend, people tend to be very social, and I’d say most people go out with varying consistency. There are basically parties every single day of NRB. I’d say that if RPI gave you a good deal, seriously don’t go to UC Davis or UConn since the social issue is not even close to as bad as people make it sound. Those that say things like that are usually the ones that are staying in their dorms (the minority). The majority (most of us), have a lot of fun on the weekends.
Summed up, I’d say the motto is “study hard, play hard.” Clubs also help, and I personally go out on the weekends also with kids from my club. I pledged a fraternity first semester as well which has assisted A LOT in helping me make new friends/have fun whenever I want. Just be sure to pick the right group of people, and remember that Greek Life isn’t what they make it seem like on the news, at least not at RPI (in the good sense, not the nerdy sense).
B. Honestly, I saw more students on campus when I visited RPI than when I visited most other colleges. Current students don’t exactly spend weekends walking around the academic side of campus introducing themselves to every stranger and talking to friends and sitting on the grass, despite what admissions photos would have you think. That applies to literally every college. I don’t know how you avoided seeing current students, considering that students are involved in an awful lot of Accepted Students Day, unless you just went to the two big presentations and lunch and left, without talking to anyone at lunch except a current student who sat down at your table to talk? Well… a lot of people stay in and play video games. There’s thousands of students here, a lot of people do anything. A lot of people go out and have fun and do stuff too. Anyway, you wanted me to convince you. RPI is not as non-social as stereotypes would have you believe. You met a very very small fraction of people on campus.
For more check out this link: https://www.reddit.com/r/RPI/comments/65s15e/help_me_choose_rpi/. There weren’t any responses affirming the view expressed by the person that posted the questions - meaning that all people responding agreed that the stereotypes about RPI’s social life are extremely overstated.
Question #2 (general): Is the gender ratio really that bad?
From a guy’s perspective: I’ll have to say that if the concern is “getting girls,” it’s not going to be a problem. If it is, then it’s a personal problem, not an RPI problem. Go to a party, and you can easily get with 8 girls in one night. Join a club, and you can meet a nice girl and get her number/get pizza sometime. Go to class and sit next to a random girl you want to talk to, you’ll probably get her number. I’d say this goes for most guys at RPI. In college, there’s a little of everything and whether you’re looking for hookups or a relationship it won’t be too hard to find if you look enough. It’s probably easier at other schools, but trust me that it’s not bad at RPI and the difference isn’t by much.
If the concern is making female friends, you can do the same thing as above but in a friendly manner and there still won’t be an issue.
From a girl’s perspective: You may be somewhat scared by the response I gave above, specifically the thought of random guys sitting next to you in class. You may also think that’s awesome. Hate to break it, but in college that’s going to happen no matter where you go. Being a girl, it’s really a two way street at RPI, or really at any school. Girls that don’t want to be noticed by guys typically make it very clear that they don’t want to and vice versa. In terms of finding other girls, I’m a guy so I can’t speak from experience, but I’d say that it’s also not very hard. RPI has over 2,500 girls enrolled from what I’m aware. It’s not like you’ll be the only girl, even in a really specific courses like quantum physics or computer engineering. I’d say that the school of engineering actually tends to be the most female dominated segment of the school after architecture (which is mainly female) or humanities. If you really are scared of finding other girls, there’s SWE, sororities, clubs, and many other outlets you can reach out to. Girls once they enroll typically don’t really care about the gender ratio from what I’ve seen. It’s typically a fear that manifests itself in prospective students, but once you enroll you’ll see it’s not as bad as it seems since girls tend to group up pretty early and expand their groups. Girls are also extremely powerful on campus both in terms of student representation and job prospects/academia, and in many cases even more so than their male counterparts. Females also typically have higher GPAs than their male counterparts, which is kind of just a national trend. Girls don’t get special treatment, they just end up doing better for some reason - I can’t exactly say why.