Visit Results from Food Science Tour

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Delaware
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Hello everyone! I thought it might be helpful to post a few thoughts about my tour at UD at the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources (CANR) for Food Science because it is a small major, and it is hard to find people within the program to gain perspective. Hopefully it helps people looking into this major. Notes will only be on the Food Science tour which is a separate, personal tour apart from the main tour at UD. If you want one of these tours, just go to CANR page and request a tour by filling out a form. They will email you and work with your availability.

First–overall score: We loved it, and UD is a top contender for food science for our family! The CANR school felt very laid back, go at your own pace, have no worries. This felt different than Rutgers, for example, which does have the fast-paced feel that tri-state area people are used to. My D loved this laid-back feel, which is the main reason why it is a contender, since (as you’ll read), the curriculum for IFT certified programs are the same at every school. She did love Rutgers also, though!

For perspective:

-We looked at the following schools’ regular tours: Rutgers, Purdue U, Penn State U.
-We did go to Rutgers additional Food Science tour. Loved it and encourage anyone interested in Food Science to attend any extra tours schools have to offer.
-Will be applying but have not yet visited: Vtech, UMass, UMaryland College Park (most likely). D does not have stats for Cornell but saving for graduate work.
-There are many other great schools for Food Science such as UFlorida, UCDavis, Oregon U, Clemson, etc. to look into, but D wanted to focus in the general NE area.

UD specifics:

AREA
-CANR classes are located near the ice rink, stadium, etc. There is a shuttle bus that takes you to this campus, so no problem getting to class…although I believe buses stop at 6 pm (not positive).
-CANR area is nice, although academic buildings seemed a bit old. However, they were very clean and maintained. Quiet (when games are not played I am sure), and the people were VERY NICE. Staff member stopped us in parking lot to help us get to where we need to go, students all talk to you. Check-in person was very nice. Students seem very happy to be there.

  • Study areas in building were not overcrowded and were quiet; good for carving out a space to study.
  • There is the ice cream shop there which had amazing flavors, and pleasant students running it; willing to talk and answer questions. The Food Science/Animal Science/Plant Science, etc. students can acquire internships to work there and develop flavors. And their flavors were amazing and innovative. They use their own dairy cows to make the ice cream.
  • As a Food Science interest, we mainly went through only food science buildings of study. There was a lot of area with farm, plant growing area, etc. that tour guide was willing to show us if we wanted, but we declined as he said food science students dont spend a lot of time there.

PROGRAM

  • We met with a head professor that gave us general info and asked us if we had questions. We learned that all the IFT certified schools follow the same curriculum, so it really comes down to your child’s fit and feel…where you see yourself attending.
  • Program is about 40 students total and growing. (This is about right for most of the schools offering Food Science that we looked at…program is usually between 30-60 students. UFlorida has a larger group of about 200.) Tour guide said that they are a close knit group and watch out for each other. He said your junior/senior classes will be nice and small…some are 10 people. Some classes overlap with animal/plant science, so it wont only be just food science people.
  • The program is general food science, but there is another program that focuses on management. You can also minor in business or other options if you would like to round out your education.
  • Our tour guide is the pres of the Food Science Club. There are a lot of opportunities to get involved in stuff. They compete with other schools at IFT events and also attend IFT stuff. They have network events
  • They do a senior project which requires them to develop a food start to finish, including labeling,etc. We really liked this.
  • INTERNSHIPS - They encourage internships and they seem to be available, however, they do not require them to do an internship as part of the curriculum (With Rutgers, it is built into the program…they have to do an internship to graduate.)
  • Study Abroad - The Food Science group goes to New Zealand (cool!). Not sure if this is something they have done in the past or are working on to implement within this year/future. It was unclear in our tour. However, they do have opportunities to go to Germany and Japan, which is what my D was interested in. I am sure they have lots of other places to go if want.

Hopefully this helps anyone interested in Food Science. Enjoy!

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Hi Cakeisgreat. My daughter is also interested in Food Science. It is nice to find someone else on CC who is looking into the major. We have been looking into possibilities for universities for food science majors too. We also concluded Cornell was too expensive for undergrad. She is looking at UMN, Ohio State, Purdue, possibly U Georgia, UW Madison, possibly Penn State.

Thanks for the information on UD. We did a similar visit at Ohio State in Columbus and came away very impressed too. It is a huge university but the agricultural campus and the food science major is small so you sort of get the best of both worlds. We were told that typically the starting class in Food Science is small but grows over the years so that the graduating class is about 70 (if I recall correctly). The visit was very well run by the school. We met with a guidance counselor with our daughter and she explained the application process and how merit aid and financial aid is handled, how credits for ap etc work and answered general questions about the programs available (such as honors and scholars). From there we split up and our daughter went off with a student and sat in on a class, toured her dorm, and ate lunch with the student. We went on a tour with a differnt student then had lunch with one of the people running the travel abroad program. (Of note, they have a program where you can go to Antartica.) Then we met back up with our daughter and the professor whose class our daughter sat in on took us around the food science labs and showed us where the grad students worked and answered questions we had as we went along. She also would just stop people along the way and introduce them to us and have them tell us what they were working on, where they were from etc. From there we went to the Honors/Scholars house and met with a student there who told us about those programs and answered questions. We then were invited back to the Ag campus the next day for a reception because the Ag school was opening a new student study center (really a nice space - well thought out) Oh I should add that we stayed at the Blackwell hotel which is right on campus so it was really easy to get around. They have a free town car service that will take you around with in about a 3-5 mile radius of the hotel, which was a nice service that we made good use of.

Have you given any consideration or heard any pro/cons of not going to a school that specifically offers Food science as a major (in terms of getting into grad schools /getting a job in the field) ?