<p>This is a really good article that explains WPI’s approach:
[Peer</a> Review | Spring 2012 | Designing the Liberally Educated Engineer](<a href=“http://www.aacu.org/peerreview/pr-sp12/Vaz.cfm]Peer”>http://www.aacu.org/peerreview/pr-sp12/Vaz.cfm)</p>
<p>BTG - interesting article. Thanks for posting!</p>
<p>Thanks BTG!</p>
<p>Thanks for your insight too VMT.</p>
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<p>I’m not going to argue with you. You are correct on every point and seem to have your mind made up. I don’t have any evidence of anything. </p>
<p>I agree that if you and your son don’t see any value in the extremely hard work and sacrifice that goes into developing the study skills necessary to handle the intensity and excel in the hardcore programs, then he shouldn’t attend them. I wish him the best. </p>
<p>Caveat emptor. It doesn’t mean I’m wrong.</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>It depends up on the rigor of the engineering program. Engineers often carry a lot of credits, with few if any “easy” courses (where you can just go to lecture, read the book, and take exams). There are typically a lot of problems sets and projects. At the tougher schools, the assignments are harder and take more time. </p>
<p>DS does stay up late. Then again, there are no classes prior to 9am. That helps.</p>
<p>As far as needing to stay up late at night to complete engineering assignments: I was a physics undergrad, then went to Marine Corps OCS and spent 3 years on active duty, then went back to graduate school for electrical engineering. I needed to take a number of undergrad EE courses on the way to my masters. What I noticed was that my time management and self-discipline were much stronger than the undergraduate’s (and when I was an undergraduate - thank you USMC), and I had no trouble completing everything and getting strong grades without any late nights, whereas I heard the undergrads regularly complain about it. And then I would see the way they would waste time in different ways, large and small, and how they would spend their study time inefficiently. I’m convinced that most of the “boot camp” type engineering programs can be managed with the proper approach to time management and studying without any 3 AM study time. And if someone has the right study skills and disciplined time management, and still finds himself up at 3 AM… well, it’s probably time to find a new major. But I’m skeptical that is actually the case for many people.</p>
<p>RPI’s got a 93% freshman retention rate and 84% graduation rate after 6 years (i’m guessing the delays are due to things like co-op). This doesn’t sound like a school that is using a bootcamp weed-out process for engineers. I suspect RPI would vigorously dispute that they do anything like that. The weed-out approach is an old attitude that most schools got away from a long time ago. They’ve realized they are in the business of helping their students to succeed, not to fail. Doesn’t mean it is easy, though…</p>
<p>I agree. I think a couple of posters were a little misleading, albeit likely unintentionally. I don’t think RPI falls into the classic boot camp/grind category.</p>
<p>CRD, nothing wrong with hard work and sacrifice. I just haven’t seen any evidence that grads from the programs that border on abusive are ANY better off than those from the “hands on” schools.</p>
<p>BTW, Lehigh was a late add to the list. Good Engineering. Good Mandarin.</p>
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<p>There are two sides to this too. People think of GaTech as a classic brutal grind school, and no doubt it is. </p>
<p>However, it’s a godsend for a late bloomer that has grown to have sufficient maturity to want to handle an MIT-like intensity (the benefit of which would have to be taken on faith). In a sense schools like GaTech and Purdue give students who perhaps didn’t excel in high school a “second chance” to excel at the highest level. Unfortunately they admit a lot of people who aren’t sufficiently prepared and who do poorly. </p>
<p>There really is a lot to this idea of finding the right fit. </p>
<p>Lehigh is an excellent addition by the way. We visited with my D and I got the sense that while it’s still a hard school, it’s much more personal than the big publics and there is a lot of support to help students through rough patches.</p>
<p>CRD,</p>
<p>I was a Lehigh undergrad from 1981-83 and left after my sophomore year, and later graduated from a state school with a physics degree. At that time, Lehigh was a bootcamp/grind type place where the two things students did was drink and study. As a D2 athletic school, it had the added bonus of the a**hole jock factor (football players tore the pay phone off the wall in my freshman hall). I didn’t know many students who were actually happy there, but many thought it was worth it to stick it out for the valuable degree you earned. Since then I’ve learned that things have changed significantly at Lehigh, and at most other schools. It was only a matter of time before schools realized it is in their best interests to see that their customers (students) are both happy and successful. The fraternity I was in at Lehigh was later kicked out and has since returned, a very different organization than what it was when I was there, and I think that captures the transformation of the school as a whole. I’d love to be a student there now. I think RPI went through a similar transformation (my fraternity had a chapter at RPI and the brothers there communicated the same type of dismal attitude we had at Lehigh).</p>
<p>And that’s happened everywhere… it just makes more sense to set students up to succeed rather than to fail.</p>
<p>I think of engineering weed-out as a more common thing at universities, where students can switch to a non-STEM major. Certainly we had a some students drop out for academic reason (failing and/or bad fit) at my engineering college. Others had to leave because GPA dipped too low (and did not recover) and they lost their scholarship. That scenario was sad. </p>
<p>Interesting. I did a web search, and minimum GPA for general scholarship at Clarkson is lower now: "Are grants and scholarships renewable for all four years? …
Yes, if students remain eligible. Need-based awards depend on the FAFSA information you must file each year, and students must be in good academic standing (2.0 GPA). Some scholarships have higher GPA requirements.
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<p>So what does it mean for a school to be “easy”? Easy to get good grades? Easy to learn and retain? If it’s the latter, that’s how it should be. If the former, I would guess it’s pretty tough to be a poseur in engineering.</p>
<p>I think grade inflation needs to be put to the side in this discussion. I’m not asking is a 3.25 RPI engineer better or worse than a 3.25 WPI engineer, but rather, in general, do they produce effective, respected engineers within the industry.</p>
<p>From what I gather, the answer is yes for all the schools on his list.</p>
<p>yes, it’s true for all the schools on the list. The discussion is only in the margin. Both RPI and WPI grads are heavily recruited by industry. (I work for a large defense contractor in Massachusetts and that is certainly true here).</p>
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<p>I think it’s important to realize that both RPI and Lehigh are private and have the resources to pay a lot more attention to each student than big publics. At MIT, TAs sought me out when it was clear I was struggling. That did not happen to a relative of mine who took 6 years to make it through Rutgers. </p>
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<p>In terms of easy to learn and retain, it’s certainly more uplifting that way, but it’s certainly possible to learn how to learn and retain even if it’s hard, and doing so can result in learning and retaining more and graduating with more capability. It can also make one unhappy if one isn’t able to “figure it out”. </p>
<p>Learning how to learn something really hard is very valuable and I’m not sure if it’s something that the easier schools provide as much of. It doesn’t mean that their engineers aren’t respected. There are a lot of things that engineers do day in and day out that isn’t that hard. But doing something hard requires a certain fearlessness that I’ve seen more of in the successful graduates of the hardcore schools. </p>
<p>I remember doing interviews for a position about 3 years ago when we interviewed 3 good students, one from Tufts, one from Michigan and one from Penn State Honors. They each presented their senior projects. The one from Tufts was pretty mediocre. Not the work, but the project. It just wasn’t that hard and paled in comparison to the project that the other two took on. These latter two clearly put their heart and soul into these risky projects and the guy from Penn State was able to defend it like a PhD dissertation. The one from Michigan also had a really clever and hard project that was successful that he was able to go into great detail on all aspects of it, theory and practice. </p>
<p>OP, I think that because you see no evidence that the hardcore way results in a better engineer, then you are making the leap that it doesn’t. My experience suggests that it sometimes can. I can’t present that to you as anything other than my experience which you call bias.</p>
<p>CRD - As a Penn Stater, I really like that story :-)</p>
<p>I agree that learning how to learn is hard, but probably the most valuable take away from undergrad. It is satisfying to go through a difficult class and come out the other end feeling accomplished. It can give a student a lot of confidence going forward.</p>
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OP, I think that because you see no evidence that the hardcore way results in a better engineer, then you are making the leap that it doesn’t. My experience suggests that it sometimes can. I can’t present that to you as anything other than my experience which you call bias.[\quote]</p>
<p>I’m not saying that it can’t work. I’m pushing back at any notion that it is the only way or even that it is always the superior way.</p>
<p>On an interesting side note, something tangentially related, I have family members with undergraduate and graduate degrees from MIT and Stanford plus to acquaintances who were Cal Tech faculty. All four strongly supported their graduate programs and suggested avoiding their respective institutions for undergrad. They said the reputations were based on the graduate programs and to focus on institutions known for the quality of their undergraduate instruction. Cal Poly was an example given.</p>
<p>OP - I just looked back at your original post, since this topic has traveled far 
and how come there are only 4 schools under consideration?</p>
<p>I think it devolved into an RPI (hard) vs. WPI (easy) discussion. The list actually just grew by one up to ten. They are, from west to east:</p>
<p>Oregon State
Stanford
Cal Poly
Utah
Colorado State
Rice
Case Western
RPI
WPI
Lehigh</p>
<p>OSU is the instate engineering option. Utah and CSU are good academic/financial safeties since they are WUE schools and he’ll be competitive. Utah has the added bonus of having a good Mandarin department.</p>
<p>The rest made the list because of their focus on undergraduate education and their reputation for good engineering. And then there’s Stanford, because, well, it’s Stanford. I don’t think it’s even his top choice, but he felt inclined to play the lottery, I guess for the fun of it.</p>
<p>So, of the list, I’m guessing his favorites will be the original four mentioned plus Lehigh. He might very well pick a WUE school though, who knows.</p>
<p>I doubt Rice will get the nod if he gets in, as Houston isn’t a great fit for his non-academic interests (outdoors stuff). Not sure what he’d do if he got into Stanford. The odds are stacked against anyone applying who isn’t a legacy even if they are fully qualified.</p>