Tear the list apart...

<p>Cal Poly is located in a really great and laid back place, which a lot of people prefer, so you might want to check that out!</p>

<p>Yes, no doubt RPI is intense. At the campus applicant orientation we attended, one of the deans made a sort of lame joke about the rigor of the program, saying “We don’t mess around here.” Didn’t see one smile in the assembled crowd.</p>

<p>Thanks everyone!</p>

<p>I question the hardcore rigor, “in depth” approach. Stress and intensity don’t seem like they’d correlate too well with retained knowledge, rather just with making a grade. I’ve learned many things in my studies that I’ve never used again, all in the name of depth, but what in reality was depth in a very obscure area. As one of my partners likes to say, “I knew that, but then I took a shower and it was gone.”</p>

<p>It sounds like RPI really is the antithesis of WPI and Cal Poly. If he wanted boot camp, he would have chosen a military academy. He didn’t apply to Cal Tech or Harvey Mudd for that very reason.</p>

<p>I do get the feeling that, ratings aside, WPI grads are well respected in the work force. Thoughts?</p>

<p>I’ll put it this way.</p>

<p>I’ve taken two kinds of engineering courses. The first is the weeder course that separates the real engineers from people who thought they would just try it. You’re kept up to unreasonable hours at least 2-3 nights a week hacking through the massive homework assignments. And just when you think you’ve finished you realize you’re still taking four other classes. At the end of the course, though, you’re glad that you did it. You get a much stronger sense of having actually learned the material. It had just the right balance of scope and depth, such that you feel you covered the necessary complexities of each chapter and you did enough work to actually remember the concepts. 2-3 projects are spread out through the semester so you get applied experience with each exam material and learn how to solve problems in a more general method. Sure you probably spent a few nights in the lab laughing and crying at the same time, but it was worth it. And when it happens again (read: senior design while you still have lectures), you’ll remember how awful it once was, and you might even adjust your time management skills accordingly.</p>

<p>The second type of course is much more superficial. Lectures come directly from the book, and so do HW assignments. It’s often easy to find a solutions manual online, and everyone uses so it’s not like you really have a choice. You don’t really spend much time on the course except for the 2-3 nights before the exam when you try to cram as much material as possible. As soon as you walk out of the exam you forget pretty much everything and wonder how you managed the grade you did.</p>

<p>I feel like putting two design projects into the curriculum is conducive to the second kind of lecture class dominating. You’re so preoccupied with design that your other classes suffer heavily. Maybe you would have forgotten those concepts in a few years anyways. Maybe your design project gets you a job with some company that was brought in to see it. Then again maybe that makes you more of a technologist and less of an engineer. Most engineering jobs don’t actually have you constructing what you’ve designed. You can’t forget the scientific part of engineering, because then it’s not engineering. And that’s what most of the design projects before senior year feel like. How do you design this circuit? Well this is my first circuits class so what do you expect I’ll do? Make a rough guess and then spend countless hours switching out resistors and capacitors until it works. You need those large chunks of time junior-senior year to learn how to design your project. Before then you’re really just pretending.</p>

<p>Well then let’s put it to the CC engineering jury. Are WPI (and Cal Poly if we’re critiquing the teaching/learning style) engineers respected and widely hired in the engineering community?</p>

<p>I have worked with a few WPI engineers in a design/development/testing environment. I found them to have an excellent grasp of the fundamentals and comfortable with dealing with hardware, which isn’t always the case coming out of undergrad. Just a few data points, but I have a very positive impression.</p>

<p>Taciturn - There is something in between a class where you need to be doing homework at 3AM on a regular basis, and a class where you don’t need to think much about it until a few days before the class. I disagree that the first case is necessary to achieve rigor and depth. And I don’t consider this an important measure of what defines an excellent engineering education.</p>

<p>eyemgh, there are a lot of WPI grads at my Boston area company. Some are very good. Some not so much. </p>

<p>You and your S have clearly decided that for him, the kinder gentler approach is more appealing. I commend you for having the gumption to look beyond the rankings. For some there is no point in going to a top school if you’re going to be weeded out, miserable, and end up hating the field. It takes a certain mindset to succeed at a hardcore school like RPI. </p>

<p>Generally, I think WPI grads who are really good will be respected, those that aren’t won’t be. I see a lot of WPI grads doing more routine engineering like digital design and such. Some don’t have great backgrounds some do. I don’t know many PhDs who did their undergrad at WPI, though I’m sure that it happens. We have one guy in my research department and he’s really talented. We never would have been able to identify him coming right out of school though. He transferred in. The problem I have with WPI is that there is so much grade inflation that it’s really hard to tell the good from the great. That’s my problem though, I don’t think it’s a problem with the school. </p>

<p>Tell your son that I do think learning theory is very important for a 40 year career. It might not impact your first job, but it will definitely help you think bigger picture. Many project schools are a little weak in this area, but if your S is aware he can probably compensate.</p>

<p>He can absolutely hack the rigor. The question is, to what end? It seems like a student sacrifices a lot (general college experience, non-academic endeavors, even happiness) in the pursuit of something that is purportedly better. Yet, I see no evidence to solidly back that up. </p>

<p>He was only able to visit RPI during Spring Break and was underwhelmed, but that was primarily because the campus was a ghost town. He wasn’t going to apply there, but once he was awarded the Rensselaer Medal, he figured he would. He’ll visit if he’s admitted.</p>

<p>Who knows, maybe he’ll love it. Thus far though he’s avoided schools like Cal Tech and Colorado School of Mines that are well known as grinds with relatively stressed and unhappy student bodies.</p>

<p>As for staying up until wee hours of the morning, I’m guessing that has as much to do with time management as it does with rigor.</p>

<p>RPI is a great school. We spent a lot of time there throughout the recruiting process with our son. Would never argue with the amazing grad/placement/earning stats that they boast but, like at almost every school with an extensive sports program…at least 50% (even higher I think…the stat they gave us was 65%) of students are spending at least one, sometimes two seasons - 20+ hours a week <em>not</em> studying. So I don’t really buy the constant nose to the grindstone “boot camp” notion. At least not any more or less than any other program.</p>

<p>Well that’s good to hear. As I said, he hasn’t done an official visit yet. He didn’t think it was that way or it wouldn’t have made his list in the first place. It’s just that there’s been some suggestions on this thread, and maybe with long past historical precedence, that it was a grind. I’m sure he’ll visit. He might love it. Thanks for the first hand balance.</p>

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<p>Well the benefit of the rigor is that you learn more and it can get you into graduate schools or companies or peer groups with higher achieving people and do cutting edge work. You basically have 4 years to learn as much as you can. You can work at a more deliberate pace and have a well balanced life and find a job which you are “qualified” for, or you can, with great sacrifices in other aspects of your life, try to maximize what you learn and get into a situation where you are breaking new ground and can do great things. Like anything else in life that’s hard to do and requires some sacrifice, it can be very exciting. You have to have that kind of mindset though. </p>

<p>Surely it’s possible that being pushed really hard in a hardcore program can lead one to develop more capabilities. The average person however, will just be average. Nothing wrong if that’s the balance your S seeks. But frankly, believing that there is no benefit to the rigor is putting your head in the sand.</p>

<p>CRD, the problem is, that other than your highly biased point of view, you have NO evidence to back up your assertion. There’s just nothing to support your point that burning the midnight oil and surviving torturous bulk equates to guaranteed quality.</p>

<p>If there is, I’d love to see it. </p>

<p>There just seems to be a cadre of folks that believe that if you aren’t miserable during your undergrad that it wasn’t “good” enough. I find this metric odd.</p>

<p>A guy I knew went to WPI. Got a great job at a large firm in Boston immediately upon graduation, moved up the ladder a couple rungs before we lost touch. Probably still doing well?</p>

<p>Don’t have much more to add to that, except knowingly attending a school with a 50% drop rate (or anywhere in that neighborhood) seems like a dumb idea to me.</p>

<p>It’s important to separate the issue of rigor with the issue of 2AM homework on a regular basis. I am a believer in theory and rigor. It is true that much of what I learned in undergrad, I don’t use today. However, without that knowledge, I would not have been able to get to the next level. So, I suppose, indirectly I use much of what I learned. I don’t need to know everything about the theory of plasticity. But, if I am discussing which failure criteria to use for a certain material, it brings me back to that class.</p>

<p>I don’t subscribe to the idea that rigor and theory necessitates 2AM homework, regularly. Maybe if a student is an athlete, has a job, is involved in several clubs, etc. Everyone pulls all nighters sometimes. My objection is to the idea that if you aren’t awake in the wee hours of the morning doing homework, you must not be in a rigorous program. I was up late sometimes, but mostly due to my own procrastination.</p>

<p>I’m not sure why then there’s an assumption that schools like Cal Poly, WPI and Olin don’t get theory. This isn’t unique to this thread, but frequently parroted throughout this forum.</p>

<p>When we met with the chair of the ME department at Poly, he told a story about exchange students from Germany who repeated Vibrations. Preparing to apologize for the programmed redundancy, they were ebullient about the experience saying “In Germany, Vibrations is basically just a math class. Here we learned the theory but actually got to see it work and test it in the lab.”</p>

<p>There are certain schools that are classically known as grinds, with long study hours, massive stress, and a high level of unhappiness. Cal Tech and Colorado School of Mines are the prototypes, but there are others. Based on what I read from your post and backed up, by CRD, it seemed that RPI might be that way too. I’ve yet to figure that out.</p>

<p>What I don’t accept on face value it that the grind approach is superior at producing effective, competent engineers. There are certainly some advantages to living through difficult situations. Resilience is important. I’m sure people who have survived cancer or homelessness have strengths the rest of us never will, but the question is at what cost?</p>

<p>As it was so eloquently put in a previous post, why would anyone intentionally put themselves in that situation? I’ll add, particularly in light of the fact that there’s no evidence based support for that approach’s superiority.</p>

<p>Whether or not RPI really is that way or not (and I had no indication until this thread to believe it was) remains to be seen.</p>

<p>I also reject the notion that schools that take a “hands on approach” offer inferior instruction in theory.</p>

<p>I do believe there is something to be said for the overall quality and preparedness of a student body when it comes to pace. I don’t doubt that RPI will cover more in a semester than Podunk U, maybe even Middle of the Road U. That can be tested simply by viewing the course outlines.</p>

<p>Honestly, you can’t go wrong with RPI, WPI or Case Western. They are all great engineering/science schools. They do have slightly different approaches and atmospheres, so I think your son might want to do more visiting once he has acceptances and FA/merit offers in hand.
My son liked Case a lot but felt it was a little too competitive/cut-throat. This impression was reinforced by some alumni we talked to at a reception in Boston for accepted students. He got a nice merit scholarship from them though, though WPI matched it and RPI offered a little less.
RPI was also on his list, but he just didn’t like the academic program and philosophy as much as WPI which was really his favorite from his first visit there. He also just liked the students he met at WPI; though nerdy they seemed happier. Of course, he had more time to visit WPI than the others since it is close to home. He is a junior now and really loves his school. There’s a real collaborative and supportive environment that he really enjoys. I have no doubt that he would have adapted to RPI or Case and been happy there too, so the same would probably hold true for the majority of students. RPI and WPI seem to compete for the same students. WPI students are well respected in the engineering environments where I or my husband have worked. RPI and Case probably has better name recognition on a national level though.</p>

<p>Just saw your last post. I think people get too distracted by the role of projects in schools that integrate them into their curriculum. WPI’s founding motto is “Lehr und Kunst” (German for “Theory and Practice”). They do get plenty of theory! and they do homework, and problem sets, and write papers and take tests just like students at other engineering schools.</p>

<p>Thanks BTG!</p>

<p>My son has followed up with several of his friends after their freshman year in engineering. He always specifically asks how the engineering classes were. A surprising number have replied, “I don’t know. I didn’t take any.” My son’s looking to avoid that experience no matter how trivial the actual “engineering” might be when analyzed in hindsight.</p>

<p>RPI and WPI have different philosophies though I think both can get an excellent student to the same place. My personal experience with the graduate school at RPI was positive. I had mostly excellent professors and there is a lot of innovative and interdiscipinary resarch going on there. The undergrad cirriculum isn’t particularly innovative, but the course catalogue is impressive. One can go in a lot of different directions there. I was not an undergrad there, though my sense was that is wasn’t all drudgery, and there was hands-on work. </p>

<p>My undergrad (not RPI) was also very traditional. But, most are. All the BIG 10 schools, which are some of the best engineering schools in the country, do it the same way. Lots of math, physics and chem before you get into the meat of the engineering. It doesn’t make it “the best way” just because everyone does it this way. But, most of the engineers in this country learned and trained in this environment. As you mentioned, eyemgh, the WPI approach is probably more engaging at an earlier stage which would help with retention.</p>