Just wondering what you think, any suggestions?
University of Notre Dame
Case Western
Northeastern
Lehigh
Rose-Hulman
@reformedman Oh you poor guy. So sure you’ll get rejected. Ok, who am I kidding, so am I. LOL.
- I don't like Notre Dame for engineering. Visited, decent campus but wasn't feeling a strong CoE program. Still semi-tough to get in.
- Lehigh, also visited, great engineering program, pretty campus, crappy surrounding town. I don't want to live in Bethlehem, PA (no offense to anyone reading this).
- Rose-Hulman, mostly for guys so it might work for you, kind of a nerdy vibe but great engineering, Terre Haute, IN is AWFUL. I'm a girl but I know these things because my mom went to Indiana State (same town).
- Northeastern, I LOVE! Engineering is decent, not world-class, but their coop and study abroad programs are the absolute best, pretty much guaranteed a good job after graduation - its what they are known for, plus its a very cool, modern campus right in downtown Boston. No car required. I applied there early action. Expensive though. Maybe even more than Cornell.
- Case Westen - no clue.
Another suiggestion - Virginia Tech. Great college town, similar ro Ithaca without the gorges. Great sports, giant college but a small feel, very friendly, top notch engineering program. I applied there as my #2 when I’m rejected.
Another suggestion I applied to and was already accepted - Colorado School of Mines - just outside Denver. Really liked it, but it’s 70/30 boys to girls which makes me a little nervous.
Finally, Georgia Tech. Rated very highly for a non-reach school. Some lists have it #5 for engineering only slightly behind schools like MIT. I would have applied there but I didn’t want to live in Atlanta. Not a fan of that city. But that’s me.
If CSOM is similar to another male-heavy engineering school my DD visited, our female tour guide said something like "yeah, there’s a lot more guys here, but so many of them spend all of their time in their room playing computer games that the ratio feels more equal than you’d think when you’re just walking around campus. " :))
How about this list?
http://college.usatoday.com/2016/11/18/top-engineering-colleges/
That ranking is ludicrous!
In my day, there were a number of schools with similar admissions difficulty, but given the “crapshoot” that was college admissions somebody might get into one but not another. So people I knew would have gone to one of those others that they got into if they had been denied at Cornell. So for example, of my two best friends there, one chose Cornell COE over Penn COE, another over Brown. Choice dictated by strength of engineering program. There are lots of schools in the “fellow crapshoot” category,most with at least somewhat less-renowned engineering programs but no slouches in admissions difficulty anyway. Including maybe Northwestern,. Tufts, Johns Hopkins, Rice, Washington U, Vanderbilt. Then there are hard-core engineering schools like, thinking regionally, Carnegie-Mellon and Cooper Union.
With the largest student body contingent coming from the Northeast, probably other Northeast colleges are the most common other choices. Three schools that might have a lot of cross-applicants with Cornell COE but might be a bit easier to get into are : RPI (an engineering powerhouse, btw) , U Rochester ,and, as previously mentioned, Lehigh. Case would fit here too. Smaller “quality” privates with engineering programs include Bucknell, Union College (NY), and Trinity College (CT).
My guess is most people who are targeting engineering also include the best program in their home state university system. And perhaps other state universities too. From New York there are probably lots of Stony Brook cross-applicants, as well as Buffalo and Binghamton. Form neighboring states you have Penn State and Rutgers. Further afield there is probably a decent sized cross-applicant pool with U Michigan, and maybe Georgia Tech to a lesser extent.
@TomSrOfBoston I agree, as with most click-bait type lists (I saw it on my Facebook feed last night just before reading this post), the ranking is odd. I should have put a comment on my post last night, but I was on my phone and just copied the link.
While the ranking is unusual, there are some excellent schools in the list. Their methodology is what makes the list odd. The focus on percent of students at the college studying in the major or “related majors” and average salary outcomes is going to bias the list to lots of schools with “Tech” in the name.
I’ll throw in Lafayette (another good alternative for the OP to consider). Lafayette would never have a chance to make this list because their excellent engineering program exists within a traditional LAC that would kill it for the USA Today list based on their methodology.
Mainly for the OP, there were some good alternatives to Cornell CoE to consider on the list.
This list/ranking has been very helpful for my son. I don’t put heavy emphasis on the rankings, but the list is very comprehensive and can be sorted by engineering discipline or by state…
http://best-engineering-colleges.com/
Good luck.
@reformedman I forgot to mention one other. Yes, I visited A LOT of schools in my Junior and Senior years. It’s the only way to really know if it’s a good fit.
Clemson is great for engineering. Not sure if you are trying to stay in the north, but Clemson is pure southern charm. If you are a good student (and I know you are), they are very generous with scholarships. They have one that automatically gives in state tuition if you score a 32 or better on the ACT for example.
I would have applied there except for two reasons: 1) I wanted to go north not south. I already live in the south so I didn’t want to be geographically below the Raleigh area of NC. And 2) their obsession with the football team. I like sports too, but even in the offseason people fly their Clemson football flags and talk about football. I thought Duke basketball fandom was bad, but Clemson takes it to another level. If you want great engineering and school spirit, you can’t do much better than Clemson though.
@cotopaxi your writeup have been totally helpful. He doesn’t want to go south either, more preferably within 600 miles of joisy where he’s from. He said that Northeastern was his close 2nd, but your perspective on Vtech made me add it back to our list. We originally removed it because there were too many reviews saying that it was overpriced. My S had a classmate 1 year above his grade graduate with very similar grades and financial background that is attending Georgiatech and he says that his net price is in the 40ks. That’s definitely not something we can do so Gtech is out of the question for us. School of Mines sounded very interesting but it’s right on the border of distance so without knowing enough about it, we’re going to skip it.
Looks like Northeastern and CaseWestern for us. We visited RPI and it was an utter yawnfest. The tour was absolutely boring and was far too institutional. I’ve listened to about 3 hours worth of speeches by the current principal and I see her vision but the greatest criticism everyone mentions about RPI seems to be that it is extremely overpriced.
He was offered a full ride to NJIT Honors but that will be the safety because it doesn’t carry much of a name and the other choices seem to be good for that. Lehigh is the campus feel I’d really like for him but in the end, it’s up to him. I’m acting as secretary of research and report back to him any good stuff I find 
Thanks all!!
@reformedman I thought you were the student. I gotcha. Northeastern is a great school but my parents say it’s really expensive. When they did the cost calculator it came out above Cornell because their grant/assist was only about $16K, the rest was up to us at more than $40K and room and board is super expensive because…downtown Boston.
I like Lehigh, but Bethlehem was depressing to me and that giant casino sent the wrong message - at least when we were there.
By RPI do you mean Rensselaer? The absolutely worst tour, experience and overall vibe I had in the last two years. I actually won the medal scholarship thingy which knocks $25K off each year so I had to go see it for myself. Not only was the campus ugly (broken sidewalks, no landscaping, dorms lost power), but they were having a full on student protest that day about the student union and we didn’t get to go into a single building. Plus, our female tour guide said under her breath to just me, that if she had to do it over again she would have gone somewhere else.
My 2 cents.
@cotopaxi hahaha she would have gone somewhere else, that’s great.
Yep that’s the same vibe we got when we got there. S said he’d do it if he had to, but with how expensive it is, nope, he doesn’t have to.
I’m disheartened hearing that Northeastern came out that far up in cost, we are going to drop 80 bucks at them in hopes that I get a different result but yeah, we can’t afford anymore than in the 20k’s.
I didn’t know there was a casino nearby to Lehigh. We were planning on visiting Lehigh after the Cornell results, I hope it isn’t too close. He’s not very out-going but Lehigh would be great because it’s only a 1.5/2 hr drive home if he ever wants to chill or go out in the places he’s already familiar with.
Back to Northeaster, I wouldn’t trust the NPC too much, actual prices have been way off with the netprice calculators of many colleges. For example, Gtech shows an NPC price of 35,072 while collegeraptor shows 49,568 which is closer to the 45,000 that our friend with similar stats as us is actually paying.
NPC can be much higher or much lower. Ivy league’s are usually the most accurate because they use a 3 range set depending on family income which is super-straightforward. Less than 65k. Between 65k-120k. More than 120k
Just some more input: my D did get into Cornell but her acceptances to Northeastern and Case Western (just mentioning those since they were brought up) included $25k/ year merit scholarships.
@Renomamma Thanks for the info. That’s a relief to know. Hopefully I’ll qualify for one of those merit scholarships when I hear back from NE.
@cotopaxi @reformedman OMG I FELT THE SAME WAY ABOUT RPI. Literally everything is gray over there and it’s so depressing. The tour guide was totally disengaged, the campus is so dead, and even the dorms we went into looked hella run-down and ugly. Honestly I’d only go there if I got nice scholarship.
@roboticsnerd33 absolutely agree. It’s great academically but everything else is a prison feel. Have you ever heard of a male jail where the prisoners are forced to do 4 years and pay 45k per year? Over at their reddit, and students complain about the penny pinching that the school does in charging for this and for that and for every small thing.
So today’s the day we find out.
And here’s the list I’m looking at on my other screen.
Princeton stab in the dark.
Tufts MA. reach
U of Notre Dame IN. reach
Carnegie Mellon PA. match
Trinity CT. match
Case Western OH. match
NorthEastern MA. match
Lehigh PA. match
RPI NY. match
RoseHulman IN. match
NJIT(honors) NJ. safety
I’m going to suggest that my S remove Carnegie as they are known for being far more rigorous than they need to be. I’m hoping for NorthEastern.
The determining factor will be the financial offers for all schools and my son’s preference. Probably 70% cost, 30% son’s preference.
I was a Cornell COE reject a few years ago (currently checking the Cornell board because my younger sister finds out her results today) and I’m currently at Georgia Tech. The other schools I personally considered (after hearing back everywhere) were Northeastern, Carnegie Mellon, Purdue, and University of Michigan. Were I do to my applications all over again, I would have also applied to Penn State. One of the biggest things I’ve learned through interning with people from a variety of schools is that as long as you’re in a decent ABET-accredited program and taking initiative/getting involved/doing well in your classes, you’ll be a competitive job candidate regardless of which university you attend.
Good luck with your Cornell responses today, and hope this helps!
Seconding Purdue, UMich, and Penn State.
Penn State, while a great school, is bad for OOS merit aid. We went to a college fair, and the Penn State rep basically said to my daughter: “With your stats, you’ll end up somewhere else because we won’t give you enough merit money to be competitive.”