Tufts, Penn State or Illinois for engineering?

DS cannot figure it out and money will not be an issue.

Has he visited all three? What does he want in a college?

I’ve studied at 2 of the 3, but like @bodangles I would need more information before I could proffer an opinion.

He visited Tufts and really liked it. He did not visit Illinois or Penn State, but he’s open to going to both. His only criteria seemed to be “good engineering school with smart people around, a real campus feel, and not too far from the northeast.” He doesn’t care about football. He’s pretty social, althletic, and entrepreneurial. I think the issue might be that the undergraduate engineering programs for Illinois and Penn State are ranked so much higher than Tufts in the USWR rankings.

BTW, he visited UT (Texas) as well and liked it as well
–if that helps with the “big school” “smaller school” question.

“good engineering school with smart people around, a real campus feel, and not too far from the northeast.”

I believe Penn State would check off all four of those (especially if he applied to Schreyer? But engineering has a high concentration of very bright students regardless). I would visit the schools if at all possible. I wouldn’t want to commit to spending four years somewhere without stepping foot on campus.

Yes, he has a trip planned to Penn State. No, he didn’t apply to Schreyer.
Does Tufts just not cut the mustard?
By the way, thank you for your replies.

I’m only familiar with Penn State, will let others address Tufts and Illinois.

Illinois has an excellent engineering program. It is a very large campus much like Penn State and it is in a small town where the university is the major thing. I grew up there and got my B.S. there as well in physics (the engineering college version of the degree).

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is cream of the crop when it comes to engineering. Great reputation in the industry. This is reflected in the rankings.

I personally would not pick Tufts to study engineering, as they are really known for research or STEM.

We visited Tufts, where I think about 15% of the students were engineeris. It would be a good school if he wanted an engineering education within a small school with a lot of non-engineers. DS wanted a more intense STEM school. We had visited MIT the same day, and I saw pros/cons to both. In your case, the other option is large universities - there are also pros/cons. There is no right answer that fits all students.

Something to consider at each school is whether he has direct admission to his desired engineering major; if not, he needs to consider how difficult it will be to get into his desired engineering major.

If he is unsure of what kind of engineering he wants to study, he should check how difficult it will be to change to a different engineering major.

Our whole family, especially my son, liked Tufts. After visiting schools with stronger engineering programs though, he felt it didn’t stack up, and that paying a quarter of a million dollars for a lesser school didn’t make much sense.

Well, both UIUC and PSU are good engineering schools with smart people around. I’m not sure what “a real campus feel” means, and distance is easy to figure out, so I’m going to ignore those.

Illinois is harder and more theoretical, in my experience. It is also more entrepreneurial, it seems every year people are starting businesses right out of undergrad. But these are relatively small differences, you can get a great education at PSU with lots of theory and entrepreneurs.

Both are huge campuses with distinct identities. PSU is a huge football school, UIUC is more about basketball. Both have a LOT of partying. PSU is typically a top-25ish program in most rankings, UIUC is typically a top-5ish program, which can matter when dealing with people unqualified to directly ascertain your expertise.

There’s been a fair amount of discussion in the past 20 years (or more) on how to do a better job with undergraduate engineering. The traditional building block approach has students take foundational math and science classes during the first two yeas, then integrate that learning into engineering classes the last 2 years. This often creates a soul-destroying slog the first 2 years. which are devoid of the things like design and innovation that inspired the kids to pursue engineering in the first place. The result is burnout and high transfer rates to non-engineering majors.

UIUC has made a concerted effort to “re-engineer” engineering education, including adopting some of the courses and methodologies at Olin College. I learned about UIUC’s efforts through my daughter’s interest in Olin, so I’m no expert, but It’s worth checking out how each of the schools is approaching this.

@cosmicfish–“real campus feel” means not Boston University or NYU.

I personally think he would do better in a place that was more hands-on early on. I also like the fact that Tufts has a negative attrition rate for its engineering program. I want his school (no matter how much or little we pay) to make sure he doesn’t fall through the cracks. On the other hand, he likes the big toys at the big schools.

Ugggghhhhh. We all just want the best for our kids, right? It’s so hard to competently advise him on this. Engineering is way way way out of our experience.

What you may want to do is look at the recommended four year schedule plans for his major at each school.

Pay attention to when engineering design type of courses are placed in the curriculum. The more traditional organization starts with math and natural science, then engineering science, with engineering design course coming last, due to having prerequisites in math, natural science, and engineering science. While this is arguably an “efficient” way to organize the curriculum, it may be not be as effective at keeping students most interested in the design aspect engaged. Some schools introduce engineering design earlier, despite the prerequisite limitations; this type of organization may help keep some students more engaged. However, overall workload may be higher, since engineering design projects tend to increase the workload in the courses.

There is plenty of “hands on” in most engineering programs as long as the student seeks it out. Attrition in engineering programs is generally higher than some other majors simply because lots of students start by thinking they want to be engineers (because of the obvious job prospects) but they they run into the realities that it is a challenging major and maybe they realize that it is not the profession they had thought it would be. For this reason, I would not worry about the specific attrition rate. However, I agree that big schools like PSU and UIUC that have strong engineering reputations (which are primarily based on their research and graduate programs), have a lot of opportunities.

The attrition is higher at many state schools because their job is to educate the students of their state. That means admitting students in who might not be ready for the rigors of engineering. The fact that your son got into Tufts is an indication that he probably has the horsepower and drive to get through any of them. None will be easy.

As for wanting the best for him, letting him decide what feels best, is what’s best. Need some reassurance that we all probably fret this more than we need to? Read this http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/1960412-is-choosing-a-tippy-top-engineering-school-of-vital-importance.html