My son has been accepted to Texas Tech School of Engineering to study Industrial Engineering. He is a National Merit Semi-Finalist (Finalist pending). He has a 3.96/4.40 GPA with 9 APs, 34 ACT and 1540 SAT. He has been awarded a Presidential Scholarship and a Merit Bonus Scholarship. If he achieves National Merit Finalist in February, he was earn TTU’s full-ride NMF scholarship.
We reside in the midwest, but I have traveled to Lubbock several times for work. It is a nice place but seems very remote. My son is quite conservative politically and I think he would enjoy studying in Texas.
My questions are:
How is the reputation of TTU and their engineering program?
Lubbock is very remote, do many employers recruit on campus?
Easy to find engineering internships and co-ops?
Anything to do in Lubbock?
You have a very bright son. Congratulations on his hard work! Well, being from Texas, I can tell you that your son can do much better than Texas Tech. Tech has a good basketball program, but not much else really stands out. If he wants to study in Texas and he’s sitting on a full ride scholarship, the best engineering schools are the University of TX and Texas A&M being a close second. Both engineering schools are in the national top 10.
He did not like UT Austin and TAMU due to their huge engineering enrollments. Just way too big! Their scholarship packages were also not the best. He is researching Texas Tech because of the full ride offer. He also visited SMU, TCU, Baylor, Houston, Trinity and Rice. Loved TCU and SMU. TCU didn’t have what he wants to study and SMU is very expensive (offered half-ride). Baylor offered full tuition but doesn’t have his major. Rice was just too weird and he didn’t get a good feel for Trinity or Houston.
If he loved it, did he apply to SMU? If so, he might get the full ride Presidential Scholarship. All applicants are automatically considered for it. If not, he should apply asap as applications are due January 15. There is still time. There is a lot more to do in Dallas than in Lubbock! http://www.smu.edu/academics/PS
Sounds like Texas Tech might be a good fit after all. Hard to beat a full ride scholarship.
He has been accepted at SMU with a Provost Scholarship and Cox Business Scholar Award (roughly half-ride). Hoping to be considered for Presidential Scholarship.
My D was a PS finalist last year. It is a great program. The invites came out around Valentine’s Day. He already has a full ride almost in the bag at TT. If he got the SMU one that would be icing on the cake.
OU offers a full ride for NMs and has a higher rated engineering program. May not be too late to consider that one. NMs are like royalty on that campus. I went to Houston on a full NM scholarship and our president set up the same program at OU. My wife teaches at SMU and I mentor people there. It’s a great school with specialized engineering programs. Good luck with your son’s decision.
@tristatecoog My son is now a National Merit Finialist. He has also been accepted at OU. We really liked OU during a recent visit and their NM program is awesome. However, it is not a full-ride. OU has cut the NMF scholarship back considerably. Texas Tech, Central Florida, Alabama, Baylor, and Mississippi State NMF awards are now much more generous.
Scholarships are being cut back by universities (UT Austin, Rice, etc) b/c they are finding that many NMF scholars don’t actually contribute anything of substance to the university’s community. They are simply good standardized test takers which is great but doesn’t always equate to ambitious, well-rounded, and strong college students which is really what elite universities want.
And I find it interesting how most NMF Scholars are not valedictorians or salutatorians. I know of some NMF scholars that are not even in the top 10% of their class and with zero extracurriculars.
@NuScholar Haven’t seen that at our parochial high school. We have 16 NMF in a class of 298 and they are all leaders in the school (athletics, theatre, etc.). 14 of those students scored perfect on either SAT or ACT (or both). All will graduate with 9-15 APs (4&5s) and 25-30 college credits. Most of our past NMFs have been leaders on their college campuses, with several earning Rhodes, Fulbrights, and Goldwater scholarships. Several of this year’s NMF are going to top schools -
Stanford, USC, Notre Dame, Duke, Northwestern, but we don’t have that kind of cash so we are following the scholarships. He has been accepted at a few of those top schools, but he has secured several full-rides with foreign travel stipends, laptops, honors college entrance and undergraduate research at out of state public schools. His test scores, AP scores, high GPA, etc. got him into any school he wanted and he will now have to follow it up with hard work in college!
For what is worth, Texas Tech is rated by the Wall Street Journal as one of the Top 25 Universities amongst professional recruiters. No, it isn’t the highest ranked university in USNews, but then you have to be somewhat circumspect about such rankings (read about Northeastern and its move regarding the rankings).
Texas Tech’s Electrical Engineering Pulse Power program is among the best in the world … literally. Most pulse power people working in our national labs have come out of TT’s Pulse Power program. It is considered to be the MIT of PP. Not too shabby!