<p>Son admitted to RPI, WPI, Villanova honors, UCONN honors. Any personal feedback/opinion/experience on how they compare (other than published rankings, etc.) for undergrad engineering in general and electrical engineering as a possibility would be much appreciated. Anyone faced/facing somewhat similar choices among them and what was decision?</p>
<p>Of the schools mentioned above, my son was accepted to UCONN, WPI and waitlisted at RPI. My feeling is that engineering programs at RPI and WPI have a better reputation than that of UCONN. There are probably more opportunities for undergraduate research at WPI or RPI than at UCONN if that is something that your son is interested in. Although UCONN is a much bigger overall school, I believe that the School of Engineering has a similar number of students to those within the engineering disciplines of RPI and WPI. </p>
<p>My son ultimately chose UCONN over WPI, Northeastern’s NU in program, and Purdue (decided it was too far from home). We are in state and ultimately it came down to the fact that we didn’t feel that a WPI education was worth 2 times the cost. He would have chosen Northeastern but did not want to spend his first semester overseas.</p>
<p>The other factor will be what type of campus would you son like to be at. Obviously UCONN provides the large D1 school with a lot of diversity of students. WPI and RPI are much smaller campuses, are primarily D3 schools (other than RPI hockey). I know nothing regarding Villanova as it was not one of the schools that my son looked at. </p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>Just FYI from a student who was accepted to all (minus Villanova, didn’t apply) for engineering, RPI has the best engineering reputation, and UConn and WPI are a ways behind at basically equal levels. Without considering cost/college life, RPI is the best choice. There aren’t many graduate students, so undergraduates get a better shot at working in faculty labs, and the program and its faculty are consistently well ranked for engineering (top 30 or so).</p>
<p>That being said, that doesn’t mean you can’t do things at UConn that you can do at RPI. You might have to look a little harder and advertise yourself a bit more, but the same opportunities are generally still there. Might add some more on to this later/answer more specific questions, but right now I have an EE exam tomorrow and labs and things due.</p>
<p>Thank you tommc and TT for your thoughtful and helpful feedback!</p>