My daughter is majoring in Engineering. However she is having a difficult time deciding on a school. Swarthmore is ranked 24th in the Nation as a whole, and has a very strong engineering program that pretty much guarantees her admittance into the top master’s programs in the country (statistically). Its know as one of the 7 little Ivys and its reputation academically is ranked with the bigger Ivys. Stevens is also a great school but with more specialized programs of study. Everything is geared specifically to your field and they do have a great reputation for job placement as well… opinions are greatly appreciated!
These are two VERY different schools…very.
Does your daughter want to attend a “technical school” like Stevens…or does she want a LAC feel like Swat?
Is cost a variable? One would think if she got accepted to Swat, she got some merit aid at Stevens.
What if your daughter changes her mind and decides to not become an engineer. If that happens, Stevens might not have the breadth of other options that Swat has.
I would put the rankings aside…presumably your daughter applied to these schools for a reason. Re-examine the reasons…make a pro and con list.
Let her pick.
What pro’s and con’s does she list for each?
At Stevens, she would be able to specialize in engineering and then work right after graduation as an engineer. At Swarthmore, grad school almost is a must if she wants to work as an engineer. But many more different majors.
Just looking at Swarthmore it seems that their Engineering department is a monolithic one…
https://www.swarthmore.edu/engineering
That is, I don’t see, EE and ME,etc etc.
here are examples. of Envrionmental, EE, and CS type schedules https://www.swarthmore.edu/sites/default/files/assets/documents/engineering/engineering%20first%20year%20advising%20handout.pdf
You can see what Students go on to do with an Engineering degree: https://www.swarthmore.edu/sites/default/files/assets/documents/career-services/Post%20Grad%20Plans%20by%20Major.pdf
Stevens has a variety of Engineering majors.
https://www.stevens.edu/academics/undergraduate-studies/undergraduate-majors
You can see what Students go on to do with an Engineering degree:
https://www.stevens.edu/sites/stevens_edu/files/files/Career/Stevens-Class-of-2017-Outcomes-Report.pdf
What are the net costs for each?
Does she want LAC vs Techy school?
The suburbany park like setting of Swarthmore or the Urban setting of Stevens across from NYC?
50-50 Male female ratio at Swarthmore vs 70-30 at Stevens?
How is housing?
If she wants a specific Engineering major and wants to make a high salary when she gets out, think Stevens.
If she likes Engineering in general and problem solving but doesn’t have a specific area of interest yet, consider Swarthmore.
If she changes her mind about engineering (and many students do), would she still want to be at Stevens? Has she visited Hoboken?
Stevens does have non-engineering majors, though fewer than Swat.
Yes, but would employers appreciate a liberal arts degree from an engineering school?
I guess I’d like to know where else OP’s D applied to get a sense of how she wound up with two such wildly different schools. It’s hard to get a sense of what she wants.
If it is my daughter I would have her go to Swarthmore. It is a great LAC. Stevens is more of a professional school.
I really thought was coming here to say the daughter had a full ride at Stevens and couldn’t decide.
Since many students change majors and maybe even a non-stem one say, I would lean to Swarthmore. Stevens is a place where you pretty much have to know you want to be in engineering or science.
As others have said, two extremely different schools. Stevens is a technical institute where she will be trained for a job. A lot of people like that. Go in, learn a specific skill, get a high-paying job using that skill. Swat is more of a life-of-the-mind type of place. Students love focusing on intellectual pursuits and for the most part want to be educated to be better citizens of the world. Career is important, but is often thought of as something that will follow from having been educated broadly instead of from having been technically trained. Of course, as an engineering major, your student will get technical training at Swat, but she will also have the opportunity for a broader education and will be surrounded by people who are excited about living a life of the mind.
Stevens is an urban school and I personally think it is rather ugly. I know many professional people take classes there. To me it is more of a trade school.
@CountingDown & @theloniusmonk, non-engineering majors don’t have to be liberal arts. Stevens has business majors, for instance.
@oldfort, yes, and Wharton is also a trade school. So is MIT. So are most of the schools in Cornell. For some reason, people throw out “trade school” as an slur in some circles.
Regardless, what does your D list as pro’s and con’s for each?
@brantly, oldfort - Stevens is one of the oldest technological universities in the United States (the fourth oldest, in fact, founded in 1870). It is a Carnegie classified Doctoral Research University. It is as far from a “trade school” or “technical institute” as you can imagine. It is on the cutting edge of research in science and engineering in many disciplines. Stevens graduates enjoy the “life of the mind” to just as great an extent as those of Swarthmore or any other school. Stevens, as do all ABET accredited schools of engineering, requires a significant liberal arts/humanities component in addition to the core science and engineering, and discipline specific coursework. There are non-engineering majors at Stevens including a highly regarded Music Technology, Visual Arts, quantitative finance/financial engineering, and technological management/business programs as well.
In my opinion, Stevens has a beautiful campus with an eclectic mix of architectures ranging from 1800s classical to brand new ultramodern. Hoboken is a beautiful gentrified small city that has one of the highest per-capita incomes of all in New Jersey municipalities. It has become a mecca for professional people of all disciplines. Many urban universities do not even have what you can call a “campus” and are more like storefronts on city streets. Stevens is an oasis in the larger urban environment.
If your student wants to be an engineer, he or she will do no better than Stevens. Engineering at all schools is by nature a professional course of study with many required courses in a specific sequence, as are medicine and law for example (do you consider those as “trade school” courses too - they are vocational in nature as well). That is true at Swarthmore as well. Swarthmore, or any other liberal arts college with engineering added to the liberal arts curriculum, cannot match the breadth and depth of offerings in engineering of a technological university such as Stevens. Stevens was the first technological university to have a dedicated humanities/liberal arts curriculum, which today is codified in its College of Arts and Letters. There is nothing stopping a Stevens student from taking more than the required humanities/liberal arts courses of course (though as in any engineering program, the workload and course credit load is high, as compared to liberal arts-only programs).
Engineering follows from professional engineering training. You cannot effectively become an engineer having gone to liberal arts school and “learning on the job” as one might be able to in non-technical professions. It requires discipline specific training since specific skills are required and the base of scientific foundation is required.
Engineering at any school is best approached with a purposeful mindset that one wants to be an engineer. The workload in engineering is such that it does not lend itself to “finding oneself” as one may be able to in a liberal arts curriculum. My advice is to be sure you want to study engineering before enrolling in any engineering major, whether at Stevens, Swarthmore, or anywhere else.
Swarthmore is ABET accredited only for general engineering, whereas a university such as Stevens is accredited in the specific engineering disciplines (e.g., EE, ME, CE, ChemE, etc.). The depth of professional training one gets in the discipline specific school is far greater than in a general curriculum, and is far more valuable to employers.
Stevens by the way has been at the avant-garde of broad-based education from its inception, both in the broad scientific and technical foundation of the engineering and science programs, and the liberal arts component of the curriculum. You do not necessarily have to attend a liberal arts college to get a great liberal arts education.
One of my children attended Stevens over several schools he could have, two of which were liberal arts colleges with general engineering programs. He was not unhappy he did so.
As a hiring manager at a major aerospace manufacturer, I can tell you an engineering degree from Stevens, RPI, MIT, Cooper Union, et al would likely carry considerably more weight than one from Swarthmore.
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@PurpleTitan - You said that far better and more succinctly than I did. Agree completely.
Stevens by the way has humanities, history, literature, art, music, technology and society, and social science majors as well, and one can also obtain a BA degree in one of them concurrently with his or her BE or BS degree, or minor in them.
Stevens students - and engineers in general - are also educated to be better citizens of the world (to reference Mr./Ms. Brantly) as well. In fact, I would posit they are in a more advantageous position to be so than the vast majority of liberal arts types since they are equipped with the tools needed to solve the most challenging problems that face the world today. As I tell people all the time, “engineers create the world”.
My daughter went to a Tech School for engineering with the 70/30 male/female split, with fewer liberal arts courses (although the school has a big and very good psychology program). Even if she had decided against engineering (she didn’t), she would have switched to another STEM major like chemistry or math so the Tech school still would have been fine for her. It was kind of flipped at her school with the humanities majors all going on for MA or PhDs and the engineers going directly to work.
She’d also looked at Smith and didn’t like the thought that she’d have to take all those liberal arts classes. The horror! She was really a STEM kid and had little interest in other subjects.
@PurpleTitan - easy there, what nerve did I hit? My kids went to Cornell and they were in CAS. D1 was considering going to business school and I discouraged it - even if it was Wharton. I am a big supporter of liberal arts education for UG.
@oldfort, no nerve. I don’t have a dog in this fight and majored in a liberal art, but I’m not a fan of sneering at trade schools or more practical majors nor do I put liberal art majors on a pedestal.
Hoboken’s vibe, easy access to everything NYC and the panoramic view overlooking the Hudson make a wonderful environment. That being said, Stevens is going through growing pains and does not have enough campus housing. After freshman year students are scattered through Hoboken. It can be expensive and some may want more of a campus life.
I smirk at the ‘trade and preprofessional comments’ because the BE instead of a BS was designed to expose a student to all disciplines of engineering. Used to be 150 credits or the equivalent of 5 years of classes compressed into 4 for most students. The load is very different than a traditional 4 course per semester liberal arts load. Think of it as a liberal arts science and engineering degree.
Stevens Students not learn a job or trade, but very refined critical thinking skills that allow you to problem solve especially as technology changes. I remember lots of ‘C’ curves with difficult problem sets and exams. Tomorrow’s problems need new skills, learned on the job, combined with those honed critical thinking skills.
I do think we need more trade schools in this country, and there is no sneering from my part.