Anyway… I know many kids from Iowa State as stated prior that had at least 2 job offers going into senior year let alone in senior year.
You make the school, the school doesn’t make you…
Even though my sons at Michigan, I made him seriously look at other programs and not look at ranking. His counselor was pushing Cal Poly since he just visited it (this was 2 years ago) and loved it. He gave our family a look of his slides from his visit. Besides going over the great program there he kept showing pictures of mountains… He would say… “look at the great labs here” then switch a picture to “look at these mountains”… Lol… For a Midwest kid, mountains are a big deal.
Anyway… I made my kid research and apply to schools in the top ten but also 12-20,22-30 and so on. I told him the only criteria is the program not anything else like rank. This is when we found out there are many great programs out there. We visited Rose Hulman so he could get an idea of what a small school felt like etc etc.
Plus the lower ranked schools gave much better merit etc.
He was at worldwide known companies for about 6 months. The mentors were new engineers. Besides being a great program for kids to learn about engineering and how everyone works together there were like 25 mentors for like 30 kids per group x like 6 teams x 5 days a week. They were from all the name brand colleges like Michigan, Illinois, Purdue, Georgia Tech, etc etc and many small podunk colleges. All hired by the same firm working side by side and all making around the same wage…
@lostaccount, first, Cal Poly is completely different than the rest. Engineering only accounts for 25% of the student body. They have D1 athletics. By any measure, CP would fall into the “typical college” caregory, just like Illinois or Wisconcin would. They all just happen to have good engineering programs.
For the rest, that is a valid question, but one my son came to the same conclusion as other posters who group, that RPI and WPI would be more “typical” than MIT, Caltech or HMC. Why? Because at the time the latter three all had reputations as grinds, where the experience had the potential to be all engineering all of the time, where the students attracted to those programs would be absolutely content with that. That could have been completely wrong, but it was not a feeling any of us got when visiting RPI, and especially WPI.
@iulianc
Was just looking at latest admission data from the current WPI freshman class. They admitted 53% of the women applicants compared to 38% for men. They clearly are interested in raising the number of women on campus. In the class of '22, 41.7% were women.
Posting for some advice: my CA daughter (1340 sat, 3.9 UWGPA, 4 years band, leadership in band) has been admitted to U of Utah (Mech Engineering, WUE), Embry-Riddle Prescott (Mech Engineering, 22k renewable annual scholarship), and my favorite, so far: Texas A&M, Gen. Engineering. She is visiting A&M tomorrow, second time.
Although she applied to 6 in-state Cal states (accepted only at SDSU so far), the only one she is really interested in at this point is SLO. I looked at her naviance for her high school and it is a toss up on whether she will get in, but it looks unlikely.
Is Cal Poly SLO really that much better than TAMU, Utah or Embry Riddle, for Mechanical Eng.? The waiting process is tough as I’d like her to be able to move on at this point and start getting ready for the spring visits/band tryouts that are likely ahead of her.
Thank you for any advice!!!
@rockmom21
What is “Gen. Engineering” at Texas A&M? I could not find it on website. It does not sound the same as ME. You want to know more about some program details. They are not all the same. You want program descriptions and not just a name. Wherever you go, stick with ABET accredited programs as employment/salary protection.
“Is Cal Poly SLO really that much better than TAMU, Utah or Embry Riddle, for Mechanical Eng.?”
This depends completely on what she values in a program. She will get a reasonable education at all of them.
Cal Poly puts a huge emphasis on labs and small classes. Instead of upper level classes like vibrations only being applied math classes, they have labs too. This is where the Learn By Doing concept comes from. Classes mostly all taught by instructors with terminal degrees.
What Cal Poly lacks is world class research. It’s hard to do that without a doctoral program. Having said research tends to allow the best faculty to concentrate on that and not undergraduate instruction, but results in cool projects UGs can get involved with.
You’d have to look at the advantages that other schools offer and see how they align with her desires.
She should also consider where she want to live after she graduates, as recruiting tends to be pretty regional.
@retiredfarmer she will be enrolled in Engineering as a freshman and will apply into the major of her choice as early as second semester freshman year; if she has a 3.5 then it is guaranteed and if it is lower then she can apply later (I’m not sure when) once she has a certain amount of credits to her top three. So ME is not guaranteed per se.
What TAMU has that other schools do not have is a Visualization minor that she would love to add on. And she can be in Corps of cadets and join the Aggie band (Most of the cadets are engineering majors)
OK, I dug deeper. This is really undecided engineering. After doing a semester or two you can switch to another major. I would examine what the requirements are to do that and make sure it’s feasible to do. Some of these will be weed out classes.
Saying that both great schools. Both with great programs.
@rockmom21, note that admission to the desired major at A&M is only automatic if a student has a 3.5 or higher. Otherwise, it’s competitive. A 3.5 may seem like it is no big deal given the GPAs our students all tend to achieve in HS, but it is not an easy mark to hit as an engineering student. At Cal Poly for example, the average graduating GPA for MEs is around 2.7. I can’t speak to grade inflation or deflation at TAMU, but any time there’s a hurdle AFTER admission, you always want to dig deeper.
She is visiting A&M tomorrow with her dad, and I will definitely have them speak with the admissions counselors about this! Thank you.
Since you are a smart bunch, what do you know about ME at SDSU? She was accepted and it’s only 1.5 hours away, but I haven’t heard much about the program.
Also once a freshman student is accepted into ME at SLO, what is the rate of graduation? What are the requirements to remain in the program, to graduate (GPA)?
Have her ask tomorrow to get a feel about what they say. As stated 3.5 is hard to achieve in engineering especially the first semester. That is where I see the problem. That is the difference of being accepted into engineering program VS not. If she doesn’t get the 3.5 and can’t get into engineering does she see herself still going there for another field?
@rockmom21, we are completely off topic now of the original post. So the OP doesn’t keep getting notifications regarding replies that turn out to be irrelevant to their question, you’d be best to start a new thread.
I was looking up something for a poster on the engineering forum, and while I was there, I decided to check CP’s latest USNWR rankings. It reminded me of how stupid that ranking system is.
For schools that do not offer doctorates, CP ranks #1 for Aero, Comp E, and IE, #2 for EE and ME and #3 for Civil. Yet, it ranks #8 overall.
Who is #1? Harvey Mudd. Where do its constituent pieces rank? EE #4, Civil and Comp E #5, ME #8.
@iulianc, USNWR does not use that methodology for engineering. It only uses institutional reputation and specialty reputation as ranked by the deans (or whatever employee gets assigned the task). Especially curious, and further evidence of the speciousness of the activity, Harvey Mudd was ranked in 4 specialty areas, but it offers none of those majors.
Wow @eyemgh , that feels like a very weak and biased methodology. In all honesty, I am not sure what methodology I would use instead, if I had to chose a methodology that would withstand scrutiny.
I would think one based on outcome would be the only one that would really matter. Some combination of placement (industry or graduate programs), starting salary and total cost, but somehow adjusted for socio-economic background. The Economist did one in 2015, but they did not repeat - and unfortunately it is behind a paywall now.
I also recognize it would be so much harder to actually get data for something like this though. So, in the meantime, it feels the next best thing is to compare schools using the government provided data here: https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/compare/
The problem here though is that it does not break down income post graduation by major and there could be wide diversity even within engineering majors.