He’s pretty much set on the civil part – I don’t think environmental would be up his alley.
“@northwesty I thought about Gonzaga but figured the price would be too high.”
Average out of state price for Colorado State is $34k. Average price at Gonzaga is $37k. 78% of Gonzaga students get merit aid fyi.
But the only price that matters is the exact price that you will pay for your kid…
Colorado State is part of WUE, so he’d be at 1.5x in-state – about $9500 in tuition and fees at the average 15 credits per semester.
The University of Idaho campus, in Moscow, is only about 8 miles east of Pullman. Idaho also has ABET-accredited civil engineering, test scores seem comparable to WSU, and the WUE tuition rate appears to be unusually low at $7,743.
http://wiche.edu/info/wue/WUEsavingsChart.pdf
About professors leaving schools…I received a big warning from someone about my other daughter’s school. Sky is falling, the school is crumbling, run for the hills. D2 is at a private STEM school (not Wyoming). I really am not worried. She gets the courses she needs, her FA hasn’t been reduced. There is a lot of rumbling that the faculty doesn’t like the new President because of course he’s tightening the belt and they are getting squished. Do I think they are going to lay off Buzz Aldrin? No. Will some professors retire or go to private industry? Sure. Another friend who works for a SUNY says they receive these letters of doom every year and then the governor cuts the budget. And she stays because there just aren’t that many professorships with better pay or benefits out there.
Wyoming, and many public schools, are dependent on state budgets. My friend works on the budget for a Colorado public school. He’s always telling me that Wyoming funds the university at $14,xxx/per student (and he quotes down to the dollar) while Colorado only funds $5xxx per student. He is quite jealous that the Wyoming budget guy has so much to work with and he has so little. Instate tuition and fees at Wyoming is $5000, at the Colorado school $8400. Schools are about the same size. The financial aid for incoming freshmen doubled two years ago (after my D1 started of course, so she keeps her lower amount).
But as I said, I’d got for Utah or Western Washington. Beautiful.
Having visited both Pullman and Moscow and the respective campuses, I couldn’t see myself in Pullman for four (probably five) years but Moscow seemed much more inviting. It’s also smaller and cheaper.
A co-worker’s daughter is doing civil at University of Portland which is a bit smaller than Gonzaga and also Catholic. While they’ve been satisfied with it, I’ve never asked him about cost.
I’ve been wanting to play with IPEDS data for awhile and this was the impetus. There are sixty one colleges and universities in the west that offer degrees in civil engineering (NB: the IPEDS data says nothing about ABET accreditation) and I’ve listed the number of degrees granted in 2015.
Institution Total Bachelors Total Male Total Female Type
University of Alaska Anchorage 25 18 7 CE General
University of Alaska Fairbanks 21 16 5 CE General
Arizona State University-Tempe 105 79 26 CE General
University of Arizona 32 22 10 CE General
Northern Arizona University 44 31 13 CE General
California Baptist University 18 14 4 CE General
California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo 164 122 42 CE General
California State Polytechnic University-Pomona 164 127 37 CE General
California State University-Chico 62 51 11 CE General
California State University-Fresno 64 50 14 CE General
California State University-Fullerton 87 76 11 CE General
California State University-Long Beach 106 79 27 CE General
California State University-Los Angeles 67 55 12 CE General
California State University-Los Angeles 2 2 0 CE General
California State University-Northridge 84 72 12 CE General
California State University-Sacramento 93 70 23 CE General
University of California-Berkeley 68 46 22 CE General
University of California-Davis 136 100 36 CE General
University of California-Irvine 89 62 27 CE General
University of California-Los Angeles 78 56 22 CE General
Colorado State University-Fort Collins 71 55 16 CE General
Loyola Marymount University 11 7 4 CE General
University of the Pacific 30 23 7 CE General
San Diego State University 91 70 21 CE General
San Francisco State University 64 49 15 CE General
San Jose State University 113 88 25 CE General
Santa Clara University 40 23 17 CE General
University of Southern California 22 18 4 CE General
Carroll College 7 5 2 CE General
Montana State University 65 49 16 CE General
University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus 30 27 3 CE General
University of Colorado Boulder 58 53 5 CE General
Colorado School of Mines 45 28 17 CE General
New Mexico State University-Main Campus 47 31 16 CE General
United States Air Force Academy 40 33 7 CE General
United States Air Force Academy 1 1 0 CE General
University of Hawaii at Manoa 96 71 25 CE General
Boise State University 35 31 4 CE General
Idaho State University 14 13 1 CE General
University of Idaho 25 22 3 CE General
Brigham Young University-Idaho 17 15 2 CE General
Gonzaga University 43 34 9 CE General
Saint Martin's University 14 9 5 CE General
New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology 8 6 2 CE General
University of New Mexico-Main Campus 30 22 8 CE General
University of Washington-Seattle Campus 109 82 27 CE General
University of Wyoming 27 21 6 CE General
Oregon Institute of Technology 15 13 2 CE General
Oregon State University 102 76 26 CE General
Portland State University 60 48 12 CE General
University of Portland 43 30 13 CE General
Brigham Young University-Provo 85 73 12 CE General
Utah State University 59 54 5 CE General
University of Utah 56 44 12 CE General
Seattle University 20 13 7 CE General
Washington State University 137 111 26 CE General
Stanford University 13 8 5 CE General
University of Southern California 13 9 4 Structural
University of California-San Diego 137 108 29 Structural
University of New Mexico-Main Campus 1 1 0 Other
University of Southern California 7 4 3 Other
Many thanks to the author of the R IPEDS package whose work made this tenable.
I would be very surprised if any of these schools lacked ABET accreditation for civil engineering. There are some engineering fields where you can get away without ABET, but it’s pretty much a “must-have” in civil due to the importance of state licensure.
Am updating because he just got his SAT scores back. First time taking the test, scored 1410 (750E/660M).
Unweighted 9-11 GPA is 3.83, weighted 4.12, UC weighted and capped GPA is 4.02.
Cal Poly still out of reach, or does this get him in the ballpark?
I think he’ll take the SAT again in August after spending some time on Khan Academy this summer. He ran out of time on the test and left a few questions unanswered. The hard truth though is that he’s not the speediest at test taking and tends to make silly errors, so I’m not sure how much he can bump it up by. Would be good if he got to 700 on the math though.
https://admissions.calpoly.edu/prospective/profile.html is the CPSLO frosh profile. It indicates that his GPA and SAT scores are both slightly below the engineering averages, but it does not break out the various engineering majors separately. The GPA listed here is presumably the CPSLO version, which is from 9th-11th grades (versus 10th-11th grades for normal CSU/UC GPA calculation), with up to 8 semesters’ worth of honors +1 points.
SLO has a projected 34% acceptance rate for Civil Engineering which is pretty good since many of their other Engineering majors are below 10%. One FYI about SLO is that they underestimated their yield this year and have an additional 1200 more students attending. What this will mean for next year admission cycle is that they will accept less students but definitely worth an application.
SLO also admits by an MCA point score system. A 4700+ MCA points can be competitive for many Engineering majors.
Here is a link on how the MCA points are calculated see post #52: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/cal-poly-san-luis-obispo/1694769-confused-about-mca-score-p4.html
Possibly a combination of negative perceptions from past cyclical downturns in the field(A few uncles are Civil Engineers and a few experienced this firsthand) and perceptions CivE isn’t as “elite” in the engineering/STEM pecking order.
From what I’ve gathered from engineering/STEM majors, CivE has been ranked just a step or to above Industrial Engineering.
The overall pecking order as far as I’ve gathered from them are:
Math/Physics
EE/CE
Bio-Med(Depending on who you talk to…can be grouped with EE/CE or CS/Aerospace)
CS/Aerospace
MechE
Various engineering majors like Marine engineering or ChemE
Civ E
Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
(Widely regarded by the engineering/STEM majors I know as the engineering school’s equivalent of an Econ/Business major which itself isn’t well-regarded by them as both are considered fallback majors for STEM/engineering majors who found they couldn’t/weren’t willing to deal with the rigors/workload of the STEM/engineering major.)
Econ
Business
I’d run the NPC for Gonzaga and U of P. Both can be very generous with merit. Seattle U as well but that’s very urban.
From a job and internship standpoint both WSU and CSU will provide great options and recruitment. I would choose both over OSU based on price but college Tien wise, OSU is a good option.
Of these, CSU is the most Cal Poly like, it was our D14’s second choice (she’s at SLO)