<p>Hi, My son was just admitted, he is interested in Chemical Engineering or Applied materials. How's their engineering program?</p>
<p>My personal experience with Alabama is from competing with their EE department in robotics competition and meeting students from their ME and EE programs. It’s a good engineering program IMO. As far as the south east goes. Its not up there with Georgia tech,Virginia Tech,UNC- Chapel Hill but good none-the less . UAB has a good engineering program also. UAB outclassed U of A at that competition.</p>
<p>UNC Chapel Hill does not offer engineering. NC students must go to NC State for Engineering.</p>
<p>They have CompE but i heard it was non-ABET. I was tempted to go to NC State but decided against it. South east is weird like that. There is “Georgia Tech” and everybody else. In all honesty you would think U of A would be like the U of Michigan of the south but it’s just not. Another example is South Carolina the University of South Carolina is last in it’s own state in terms of EE. The Citadel and Clemson are superior engineering schools.</p>
<p>You should ask Momof2Collegekids here on CC. She’s the friendly and very informed expert about admissions/campus life in general and all things U Alabama.</p>
<p>Meritquest, based on your name, I’m guessing merit money is a huge consideration for your family. It’s hard to beat the generous merit awards Bama makes to top students, especially the extra $2500 for engineering. (My son received their Presidential Scholarship, plus the engineering stipend, but we will wait to see what his other offers are before making a final decision.)</p>
<p>Unless money is your only consideration, it would be helpful to know what other schools your son applied to and was accepted at. </p>
<p>For what it’s worth (and many here would argue “not much”!), here are Bama’s U.S. News Rankings for 2013: </p>
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<p><a href=“http://premium.usnews.com/best-colleges/the-university-of-alabama-100751/overall-rankings[/url]”>http://premium.usnews.com/best-colleges/the-university-of-alabama-100751/overall-rankings</a></p>
<p>Mississippi State has a great program with amazing merit aid
Department of Aerospace Engineering
Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering
Dave C. Swalm School of Chemical Engineering
Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering
Department of Mechanical Engineering</p>
<p>M2CK has been in touch on another thread. I’m sure the OP is getting a lot of Bama specific information. M2CK is definitely the go to person for that! I suggested the OP post here for this question for a balanced view. It’s hard to get that posting in any schools specific forum. Any school specific forum understandably loves their school and will sing it’s praises with little to no counter opinion.</p>
<p>Honestly, I don’t know about it’s reputation in chemical engineering specifically, but it’s overall engineering reputation is rather mediocre. I wouldn’t say it’s a negative reputation, but it’s not, in general, one where you apply for a job and they feel they should give you an interview based on the fact that you come from a good program. Bama just isn’t exactly known for its academics, whether fair or not.</p>
<p>I can’t really comment on the actual quality of the education there, though, as I have no direct experience with its programs. What I’ve said is simply it’s outside perception.</p>
<p>The good news is it is ABET-accredited and therefore meets at worst the minimum standards for a solid engineering education, and it likely still does well with regional employers. I think you’ll find it’s national recruiting reach in engineering is generally not as great as some other state flagships, however.</p>
<p>I’m a senior in high school in the state of Alabama, take my opinion for what its worth (which isn’t much). </p>
<p>To me, after talking to representatives from colleges in the state of Alabama and current students and some who have graduated from various schools in Alabama, it seems both Auburn and UAH have better and more respected engineering programs. That does not mean Alabama has a bad engineering program; they actually have a pretty good program. </p>
<p>I also kinda got the feeling that they are putting forth a good effort to improve their program and to attract more engineers (the $2,500 a year scholarship for engineers reflects this). At a college fair my school went to, the U of Alabama representative was spending much more time talking to the kids that were planning to major in engineering than those who were interested in something else.</p>
<p>Another thing to consider, @Fifthinstructor is right about Mississippi State being very generous with aid; they offered my roughly $65,000 a year plus waived out of state tuition costs. This is considerably more than any other college offered me. On them being a good program, I consider them to be a little better than Alabama, but not by much. They also seemed to be fairly big on getting students into research (which is a huge plus for me). If money is your #1 issue I would look into them. </p>
<p>Personally I chose UAH, because I feel like they are the best engineering school in the state of Alabama, but Alabama is still a decent school for engineering; if it appears to be a great fit for your son and makes the best monetary sense, I would’t stop him from going.</p>
<p>$65,000 for all 4 years, my bad.</p>