UMD vs CWRU vs Pitt vs WPI

This discussion was created from comments split from: Is paying 60K per year for top engineering schools a wise decision?.

Right now I am trying to weigh the premium I would pay for DD to attend Maryland - College Park over Case, Pitt and WPI because of the location. The economy around College Park seems far better than Cleveland and Pittsburgh for sure. The graduation rate for WPI students is superior to College Park though.

Well, strictly speaking Case and Pitt are in a MUCH better situation than College Park - Case’s neighborhood is fantastic (especially with the “Uptown” addition).
http://www.uptowncleveland.com/
http://www.universitycircle.org/
And Pittsburgh is thriving, with the area where Pitt is located a great college neighborhood.
Both better than College Park. Northern VA does have a lot of government contractors if that’s what you mean?
However, UMD has the upper hand for criminology, cs, and cybersecurity. Pitt for neuroscience. Case Western for engineering and all the hard sciences. For business, UMD and Case are equals.

What on earth are you talking about? You realize that College Park is in the DC metro area, right? There’s a whole heck of a lot of employment opportunity there. And of course the OP is talking about engineering; this is the engineering forum. UMD happens to have a very good engineering program. So does CWRU. I’m not sure how you are making such definitive claims about which is better.

^No need to be rude, boneh3ead…
While this is the engineering forum, the thread is about one topic, and smokinact kind of hijacked it but I replied anyway,because “location” and “economy” can be understood in many ways, not all of which are in UMD’s favor.
I’m talking about College Park itself. It’s in the DC Metro Area so yes, employment post grad and summer internships about 45mn-1h away, but College Park, seriously? Doesn’t compare with either University Circle or Oakland.

College Park itself has issues but proximity to DC is a strong draw. I think I should take this to another thread.

@texaspg - Thanks!

Okay now to better address the question. These schools are her final choices but UMD is the most expensive out of the bunch (about 6 to 10k per year.) I know after reading this board that most schools recruit locally and I wondered given the location is it worth the premium. I think the UMD program has a lot going for it in how they structure the program (key classes are run by professors paid to teach) and a freshman design project. This is unique for a large university.

Although DS didn’t attend Case, we all liked it a lot more than we thought we would. We saw CMU the same weekend, but he surprised me by not liking it (phew - no scholarships there). Case did have a placement center, but we did not research enough to learn what type/geo for recruiters.