Trade-off between big U with top-notch facilities and small college with more access to profs (EE)

College Majors Engineering Majors
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I have more questions, oh wise engineers of this forum!

My HS senior D wants to major in EE with a focus on renewable energy and this has been her goal since she did a solar energy project in HS freshman engineering class. She wants a school that fits overall, while being optimally prepared for a career in her field. So…

How important are fancy, expensive facilities for EE students? On our college tours, even engineering-specific tours, schools almost never show EE facilities. Instead it’s impressive looking materials labs, futuristic bio-engineering labs, and the cool student-built competition car/s. If you ask about EE facilities, the tour guide just mutters something about “circuit boards…ohmeters…boring.” It’s pretty frustrating. Some of these same schools brag about state-of-the-art renewable energy labs, but I’m not sure they really exist.

Overall D prefers a small school, but finances may point toward bigger U’s. Assuming she has choices, how much weight should she put on research and facilities? Is UG research as widely available as 100% of tour guides claim, or does a school with few/no engineering grads give UG’s an otherwise unattainable opportunity? On a slightly different note, is there a reason to prefer small tech schools over small LAC’s? Lastly, can you tell how stressed I am about my D ending up at a school that will be right for her?!

Hopefully this isn’t bad form here, but just in case anyone has specific opinions I’m including the list of schools she is applying to.

Public universities:
Colorado State U
CU-Boulder
Western Washington U
Virginia Tech
Oregon State U
U Vermont

Private research U’s:
U Rochester
Case Western

Private tech schools:
RIT
WPI
Clarkson
Rose-Hulman
Michigan Tech

Private LAC’s:
Smith
Gonzaga

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Generally, at large programs, undergraduate research opportunities are exactly as available as a given student wants them to be. Those programs won’t typically go out of their way to push undergraduates into research positions, but if a given student wants to go out looking for opportunities, they are typically there for the taking. How important such experiences are will depend on the student and his or her career goals. If the goal is to head into graduate school (or if she is unsure) then it is immensely helpful to get some undergraduate research experience. In addition to the potential educational benefits, this looks great on graduate school applications and exposes the student to an academic research lab and helps them make an informed decision about whether or not to pursue graduate school.

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This may sound like splitting hairs, but “lab space” is not what you are looking for. As already pointed out, undergrads wont have much access. What would be more interesting to see is the spaces dedicated (if any) to senior design projects. I know NC State has a significant amount of space, Virginia Tech had a little last time I was on campus (3-4 years ago). These are the spaces that would really show the types of stuff the undergrads are doing. The stuff the students design/build in 3-4 months can be impressive on its own.

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I do think having dedicated space for senior design type projects is important (or design courses in general), but I really don’t think you can or should discount the potential value of high-quality research labs. Sure, the average undergraduate doesn’t have access to any particular research lab in their department, but that is only because the average student isn’t likely to seek out a position in that lab. The existence of such a lab does mean that there is a chance to work in it for undergraduates who are interested and seek out the opportunity. Most professors that I know are more than happy to take on undergraduate students in their labs provided they have the funding, so it really isn’t fair to say that undergraduates can’t benefit from those facilities.

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As a grad student, I had undergraduate students helping me with my research at UT-Austin. When my son attended UT, he worked in the biomedical engineering lab as a freshman.

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@boneh3ad “Generally, at large programs, undergraduate research opportunities are exactly as available as a given student wants them to be. Those programs won’t typically go out of their way to push undergraduates into research positions, but if a given student wants to go out looking for opportunities, they are typically there for the taking.”

My D is a Chem E. at a large state school. She wanted to do research. She went on line somewhere to see which professors were doing research in areas she might be interested in (I don’t know where or how she got the information to contact them, she found it and told us what she was doing later). In the end she found 13 different people to contact. I believe she contacted 4 and was offered opportunities at 3, and chose from them. Her university is one that I am quite sure you could go to class, get your degree and kind of disappear if you chose. No one is going to walk you through the process whether it be research, co-ops, study abroad, internships, volunteer opportunities, professional organizations, mentoring, help in classes, help with resumes, interviews etc… However, it is all there and in abundance.

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@boneh3ad, @DecideSomeHow, @MaineLonghorn, @lvvcsf, thanks so much for the input!

I’m glad to hear the tour guides aren’t over-promising when they say how easy it is to get into UG research. My D will gladly go out looking for opportunities, so that isn’t an issue.

Reading these answers makes me wonder if she needs to do some more thinking even now about whether she wants to go to grad school. She definitely wants to do co-op (preferred where available) or multiple internships. But she isn’t sure about grad school. She’s leaning towards going straight to a job and possibly graduate school later. But she hasn’t put too much thought into grad school.

It sounds like if she wants to go to grad school (right away or later), those big U research opportunities will give her a big advantage not attainable at the smaller schools. But if she’s pretty sure she’ll end with a BS (BE?) maybe she ought to consider the many things she likes about small schools and not worry about the research.

Also on the grad school issue, my H has mentioned several times how appealing the 4+1 masters look at some of the schools where she’s applying. To me it obviously sounds good, but any opinion on how much “weight” to give that possibility if she decides she is leaning toward grad school?

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@snoozn – Has your daughter looked at Northeastern (we went but could not see labs; great co-op program) or RPI? I think WPI is very hands on and has good facilities – we hope to go for the open house next Friday. Case has pretty good facilities I believe (such as Sally & Larry Sears Undergraduate Design Laboratory) and a great maker space (Thinkbox).

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That looks like a good list. If you are out of state, those public universities will not be cheap. Case has good merit scholarships for top students (at least it did in 2009). My son’s offer made Case about the same cost as CU Boulder in-state costs.

I graduated from Clarkson in 1984 and thought it was a great school. Per my reading since then, there is lots more research going on now. Potsdam is a quiet college town (which I loved). It’s quite cold in the winter, but now that the campus is more consolidated it’s probably not a big deal for students that are accustomed to winter weather.

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Smith and W. WA don’t have ABET accredited EE.

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@CA1543, she did have Northeastern and RPI on the list for quite a while and we did visit those. Both are reaches for her and came off when I insisted on fewer reaches. NEU was tough (especially due to the great co-op program), but I’m not sure she’s ready to live right in Boston. She really likes WPI and Case is high-interest even though we haven’t visited. From the stats and NPC’s those both seem like they could be doable with some good luck.

@colorado_mom, we’re in-state for CO. Most of the OOS schools look okay on the NPC (not in-state level, but not too bad). I’d love to get Case at CU-Boulder price, but I don’t think that’s happening. I’m glad to hear from a Clarkson grad even if it was “back in the day!” It felt like a nice fit for her when we visited.

@eyemgh, well, where is a headdesk emoji when you need one? Actually we do know about Smith not having EE. She really loves Smith, so it’s the one school where she’s willing to do non-EE engineering (and that program is ABET). But WWU somehow slipped through. I guess they’re moving from an accredited Electronics engineering program to an EE program in the process of being accredited. There was another big issue with their program anyway. She’s already applied, so I guess we’ll see if they’re accredited between now and April before looking further into the other issue. Thanks for the pertinent info!

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Note that travel logistics CO --> Clarkson would be tough. We did send one of our kids to Boston for college (easy flights, usually nonstop), and that worked OK. But Potsdam would have been tough, especially for winter travel. It’s interesting that she likes Clarkson and Smith. That may mean that she’s flexible and will find things to like about all the choices… ie pick the most affordable option.

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WWU’s programs are ABET accredited, but they are all tech programs, not full fledged engineering.

Wyoming frequently gets overlooked, but it’s a screamin’ deal and with WUE should be substantially less than CU. They have an interesting program, Energy Systems Engineering, the first to be ABET accredited in the nation, and still only one of two (I think Oregon State is now accredited too).

Utah is also worth a look. It’s big, but acts small. There are roughly 10,000 students on campus and the culture is to stay in the dorms all 4 years. They have GREAT school spirit. Airport access is easy. They have a very solid engineering program and should net WUE at worst. They are even more generous with high stats students.

We are big fans of WPI and Case. They will both be very expensive though, even with merit. It’s worth it to see what you get, but even after $100k merit at Case and $80k at WPI, they netted out to $35k and $40k per year respectively.

If she has the stats to get in, Cal Poly is worth a look. It’s less than 20,000 students, but has small class sizes, top notch facilities (more than 80 labs in the college of engineering alone), good school spirit and is in a great location. They give virtually no merit, but it still nets out to about $35k per year. It’s a solid deal from OOS.

Lastly, I’m a fan of Lehigh.

As for who has research, the bigger picture is more important. I’m throwing a great school under the bus, but it’s a good example. Berkeley is one of the best research institutions on the planet, but their reputation for the undergraduate experience is not that great. Intro to CS has over 1000 students. It’s the biggest class in the nation. I once heard a student say “It’s like going to school at the DMV.” The secret is to find the right balance.

Good luck.

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@eyemgh, we did look at Wyo, which sounds great in terms of program and affordability. Unfortunately Laramie doesn’t offer her (off-campus) sport which is very important to her. D decided she’d rather go to CSU which is an affordable safety. Do you have an opinion on CSU?

She’s a lefty atheist LGBT activist, so I’m not seeing her at Utah. I checked out their website and they do have an LGBT resource center, but the “farewell speeches” of the graduating seniors were not really reassuring.

D has very high interest in WPI and Case. But the NPC’s are a bit above yours which is higher than I’d like. I hold out faint hope for a STEM-girl bump.

Honestly I’d not even considered Cal Poly because all the CA schools seem like such a bad deal for OOS students. I had no idea their COA was so (relatively) low. From looking at their stats it seems she’d have an excellent chance to get in. Or are the standards much higher for OOS?

D is definitely not going to a school with DMV-style lectures. Horrifying! We always ask about the size of intro calc/physics/chem classes to make sure this is not an issue. D really likes to get to know her teachers. I guess we won’t be adding Berkeley to the list! :))

Thanks for your help!

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Don’t automatically rule out a school with big classes . Many of my freshman classes (calc, physics, chem) at Clarkson were a few hundreds students. I think that is typical for a lot of STEM schools. And honestly, it was fine. Of course we had some excellent professors teaching them. (One just died recently - he was an renowned researcher who still loved teaching freshman chem - http://www.clarkson.edu/news/2016/news-release_2016-07-20-4.html). Also, there were weekly recitation sessions with small groups of about 15 students.

Many STEM schools offer freshman free tutor sessions , sometimes conveniently in the dorms. There are lots of ways for learning in smaller settings to augment large freshman lectures. The upperclassmen lectures are typically smaller.

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My favorite class at UT-Austin was American History. There were over 300 kids in the class. If I had avoided taking the class because of its size, I would have missed out learning from an incredible professor, George Forgie, who is still at UT! He tried to convince me to switch from engineering to history, but I declined. :wink:

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CSU and Utah were both safeties for my son. After the visit and a good scholarship offer, Utah (along with WPI) became one of his final three choices. He ended up at Cal Poly. He’s OOS, from Oregon.

Utah is heavily Mormon, but SLC is less than 50%. The mayor is a lesbian Democrat, having served several terms in the state congress prior. Being a woman is more difficult anywhere than it is for a man. Add in sexual preference and gender identification and I’m sure the deck is even more stacked. I’d guess SLC would be a little tougher than average, but it’s a vibrant very diverse town. I’d certainly say it’s worth a visit.

Cal Poly’s admission statistics are misleading because they admit competitively to every major. MEs are only ranked against MEs, EEs with EEs, etc. The median ACT for 2016 was 33, SAT 1450, GPA 4.17 (CSU weighted which gives a bonus for up to 8 AP/IB semesters and maxes out at about 4.3ish). With that said, that includes Industrial, General and Manufacturing Engineering, none of which are very selective. The most selective majors are CS, BME and ME. At 35% EE is about in the middle. Environmental is 19%. These numbers are based on their projections and don’t reveal two things. First, yield per major, which certainly varies. The numbers use the CENG average of 37%. Second, admission rate only tells part of the story. Pools are selective to certain types of applicants. For instance, it’s probably much harder to get into Aerospace which hovers around 20% than it is to get into Psychology which admits only about 12%. Aerospace attracts a stronger applicant pool.

As for class size, there’s a big difference between 200 and 600. My son has had two classes of 200, Materials I and II. They are required for most engineering majors, hence the big section, and were taught in the only large lecture hall on campus. His labs and discussions were taught by the professor though. Big isn’t de facto bad, it’s just harder to develop a relationship with the prof and labs and discussions are usually taught by graduate students. My comment was more about the approach to education than the lecture size per se.

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@colorado_mom and @MaineLonghorn, yes, she’s not too worried about “big” lectures, just “huge” lectures. We actually sat in on a chem lecture at Clarkson (I was invited to sit in too - woot!) and it was great. I estimated about 150 students which did not feel big at all for a lecture compared to my U (GA Tech). The prof was great at teaching (better than mine) and he really engaged with the students. During clicker questions he would walk up and down the aisles and talk to students. More than 300 students would be overwhelming I think.

That’s a great story of the beloved prof still teaching into his 90’s. He must be sorely missed.

As far as classes like history, I can see where the class size almost wouldn’t matter if you are listening to a great speaker.

@eyemgh, huh, so SLC has a lesbian democratic mayor – shows what I know about Utah. I’ll have to talk to her about it. I did convince her to visit Gonzaga even though she’d insisted on no religious schools. And she really liked it. Actually, that’s one of the reasons I was asking about research versus small classes and access to profs. Their biggest intro classes are about 130 and more importantly they emphasize getting to know profs. But of course they are a very small department, without fancy facilities.

The stats for Cal Poly are higher than I saw on the Princeton Review site, which must be pretty outdated. They showed the 25-75% ACT as 26-31. From your stats, it would definitely be a far reach. She’s wt GPA 4.4, ACT 30, SAT 1400.

After my oldest D’s experience I’m very hesitant to have her apply to schools where she’s less than 50%. That’s one reason URochester is off the list now, which I’ve been pushing for awhile. I don’t mind a couple of reaches “just to see,” but honestly I’d like another safety or two rather than adding a reach. Especially with WWU out of the picture now.

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It seems like you’re doing a good job of looking for fit rather than hype.

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If she liked Gonzaga, she might want to take a look at Santa Clara U. It has been a while, but my biggest classes were in the 60-80 range. The engineering programs are quite strong and in a great location for internships.