Looking for advice on engineering for University of Maryland, Virginia Tech or Embry Riddle. Accepted for Aerospace at UMD and ER, General engineering VT (all students are general to start).
Looking to participate in Competition clubs and sport of rowing. Looking for typical fun college experience but with serious students. Would like nice and welcoming atmosphere, not competitive or snobby. Only could walk around UMD and VT, not many students around and no tour when we went.
I think for your clubs and rowing, EmbryRiddle would be the best. It’s Div 2 for rowing but probably has a club too. It’s IN Daytona Beach, the very definition of Spring Break and fun for college students.
Virginia Tech has club rowing. They have a website and Facebook page. vtcrew.org
Beautiful campus, friendly students, Division 1 sports, good food, excellent Engineering Expo (career fair).
Embry Riddle seems like it would be quite different than the other two large, public universities. What is your budget , costs involved for each, home state?
Hi, they are all about the same cost due to a good scholarship at Embry Riddle. We are in NJ so Maryland is the closest. Friendly kids, not too much focus on partying and frats (but fun to be had) and a decent crew team are important. Worried that Embry Riddle could be too focused on aeronautics, he is thinking mechanical too. Also worried that most kids will fly planes, which he does not. Other choices right now are Drexel and Rutgers.
A much lower percentage of kids fly than you’d think - it’s very expensive. My daughter went to Florida Tech, a similar school just down the road a little and very few were pilots as it cost about $15k a year more. The pilots tend to live at a housing complex owned by the university about 4 miles south of campus and the airport is about 5 miles north of campus, so yes, they hang out with the other pilots. A lot of the engineering majors have their projects and the students tend to group around their interests, like building the concrete canoes, building lunar vehicles, computer challenges. The pilots have their groups, the sports teams have their groups, Greeks have housing together (with the pilots) and of course many students belong to more than one group. I don’t think everyone will be a pilot.
Florida Tech has a lot of astronauts hanging around and guest lecturing, as I’m sure ERAU does too. FIT posted a photo of the launch from this morning ‘as seen from campus.’
It’s fun to be around all that space stuff. It’s not necessary to get a good job after graduation, just fun to be around it while in school. My nephew went to CU, majored in MechE and not aerospace but has a job at Northrup on one of the space projects.