Which ECE Program/School: UD honors, UMass honors, UW, MD College Scholars, UVA

College Search & Selection
1

My son has been accepted and narrowed down his choices to:
UD honors
UMass honors
UW Madison
MD (College Scholars Program)
UVA

He is electrical engineering major and is jazz saxophonist, looking to hopefully play in school. Loves UD campus. We are heading to UW this week and then UVA. Was put into his 3rd choice for College Scholars Program at Maryland so not thrilled about that. Live in South Jersey. Think it may come down to UD or UW. Any input or your experiences would be greatly appreciated! Thank you.

2

UVA > UW > MD (I assume this is College Park) > UMass > UD. If I were in your shoes I’d pick UVA, assuming cost is not a factor.

3

Thanks. Just curious, is this from personal experience or knowing someone in ECE at UVA or just from what you’ve heard in general?

4

I’ve posted this before, but I’ll put it here again in this thread. The short answer is among the schools you list the choice isn’t going to make a difference for ECE.

EE programs are acredited by ABET so the content is going to be much the same at any college. The reputation of engineering colleges is much flatter than that of liberal arts programs. There are a few elite schools such as MIT and Caltech, then a broad middle which engineering employers view as pretty much the same. At the lower end would be schools with weaker students where the curriculum might be softened a bit. That doesn’t seem to apply to any of the schools you list.

What is going to matter for the future of EE student is what they do. Did they work hard to earn good grades? Did they take part in coop or internships? Doing well is pretty much an automatic offer from the employer, and other employers love to see students that know what they’re signing up for. To some extent club & project participation in college also helps.

Another consideration worth be thinking about – what happens if the student decides against EE? Are they still at the right college? Nationwide about 1/2 of all students starting college as engineers switch to something else. www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/what-prevents-many-ee-students-from-making-it-to-professional-careers is an example link, the percentage has been like this for years. The rate likely is lower the more qualified the entering students. EE undergrad is heavily theory-based and is built on pretty much 4 years of more and more difficult calculus. For a variety of reasons people decide EE isn’t for them.

5

The short answer is among the schools you list the choice isn’t going to make a difference for ECE. EE programs are acredited by ABET so the content is going to be much the same at any college.

I am going to disagree with this. Sure, ABET-accredited schools offer a similar curriculum, but there are many factors that will impact a student’s education beyond that. To mention a few: 1) quality of the professors; 2) quality of their peer students; 3) experiential learning; 4) strength of the outside-ECE courses; 5) alumni network; 6) employer reputation. Yes, doing well is pretty much an automatic offer waiting for you, but you can certainly shoot higher than just getting a job.

Another consideration worth be thinking about – what happens if the student decides against EE? Are they still at the right college?

Indeed, this is an important consideration, and it’s partly behind the ranking I gave in my response.

6

Thank you for providing good food for thought. I will definitely check out the link you provided, and obviously show my son. He actually loves calculus and is currently taking multi-variable calculus honors, equivalent to what kids take in their sophomore year in college.

7

Great points to be considered, thanks. Never really took into consideration possibility he would want to switch majors. Obviously, should be part of conversation.

8

Sax at UMass

9

Thanks! UMass definitely has a great jazz program. Very impressed with it.

10

I know you say your son loves the UD campus, but have you gone on the EE specific tour? If so, ignore what I’m about to say…

My DS is also going for electrical engineering, and we are from NJ as well. He is very hands-on and always working on some form of engineering project at home. When we toured colleges, he was looking for great facilities, makerspaces, labs, equipment. We managed to tour: NJIT, Lafayette, Drexel, Rowan, TCNJ, and U Delaware before corona hit. I think Delaware may have been the last school we went to. Signed up for the EE specific tour, then the regular campus tour. We turned out to be the only ones on the EE tour, so had a student just show us around the EE building. It was underwhelming to say the least. A small central area for gathering that had some workbenches and some equipment. The room where soldering was taught was cramped and smelled horribly like solder. There was one other room with a decent amount of equipment in it. The student was very nice, but when he described their sohpomore year design project, it was something that my son had already done years ago. The student also said that the IEEE chapter didn’t really do much. He also said there was no other space on campus to work on projects. This all turned my DS off completely, and we left before doing the campus-wide tour.

It’s REALLY hard to pick a school not being able to go inside of labs, classrooms, and makerspaces due to corona. It just sucks. So I just wanted to share our observations, in case you hadn’t done the tour yet.

Good luck with your decision!

11

Thank you so much for your descriptive reply! We did not get to go on tour to see anything inside and this absolutely changes things my son said. He is incredibly hands-on, just as you described your son. Lots of projects under his belt already, room filled with wires, components, different type of boards, etc. He did a maker profile of his projects for schools that accepted them. ECE he loves and he loves robotics. Has your son made his decision? We did get to Lafayette before covid and liked the campus though I don’t recall specifically their makerspace. My son is concerned school is too small for him and will feel too much like he is still in high school. I know they have a good program and pretty campus, but I was also concerned how employers would feel about an engineering degree from a liberal arts college. This is really hard and does suck as you said. He was admitted to 11 schools. Included with what I already named is Stevens, Drexel, Northeastern, Syracuse, Bucknell, Rowan. Again, thank you! Maker space is a definite make or break for him.

12

Oh wow, our kids sound so similar!

You didn’t get to do any tours besides Lafayette? That is tough. Yeah, Lafayette didn’t show us inside any of the engineering buildings, either. DS thought it was too ‘liberal arts’ for him.

You can sometimes find great videos on youTube of college’s engineering facilities, but often, especially if they aren’t new or flashy, it’s hard to find anything.

So far, my DS is considering offers from:

  • Georgia Tech - amazing but sooo expensive and far away
  • University of Michigan - amazing but soo expensive and far away
  • Northeastern - haven’t visited, but have heard great things about the campus, the program, and Boston. From what we’ve seen, the facilities look great. We really like the idea of the co-ops to get experience. They have connections with a TON of companies which is a big positive. However, still would cost over $40k/year for us.
  • Rutgers Honors College - tempting, but the actual EE facilites look dated, and they are runnig out of space for engineering. Busch campus seemed pretty depressing.
  • NJIT Honors - gave DS a full ride (minus food), but he’s hesitant. Not sure why. They have an absolutely amazing 10,000 sq ft maker space.
  • Rowan - I see this is on your list. Have you visited? If not, I think you might be able to take a tour and actually get into their engineering building. It is brand new and extremely impressive. Their program is very hands on - lots of opportunities for to get involved, great projects, cool equipment, and engineering-focused activities. Great pipeline into Lockheed Martin for jobs/internships/co-op. The Dean of Electrical & Computer Engineering is a really amazing guy - he’s been holding info sessions on Friday evenings with admitted students, and offering to answer their questions. For the price, this is a top contender for my DS.

DS was also admitted to Stevens, which I hear has amazing labs/facilities/makerspaces, but it’s just too expensive to justify for what it is.

We did tour Drexel, on your list, as well, and really liked it. Big engineering school, tons of labs, research, competition teams, a lot of great spaces. Also has the co-op program. Obviously you’d have to be ok with being right in the city. DS ultimately decided not to apply because we didn’t think we’d be able to get the cost low enough, compared to in-state schools.

One angle we’ve taken to try and evaluate these schools is to go on LinkedIn, find the school, click on Alumni, search for ‘electrical’ from 2000-2020, and see where their electrical engineering alumni work. It’s fascinating. You can really get a sense of where students end up, and who actually recruits there. If you’re looking for high tech, look for Google, Amazon, Intel, Microsoft, to be high on the list. For defense, look for Lockheed, Northrop Grumman, Boeing. For more traditional industry, look for Verizon, PSE&G, Con Ed, etc. But what we ulitimately found is that, besides the super-elite schools, most schools send their kids to local companies. So if you go to school in Jersey, you’ll end up at Lockheed. If you go to school in Maryland, you’ll end up at Northrop Grumman, etc.

One last note - my DS didn’t apply to Maryland because we didn’t think they gave any merit money to OOS. However, if price wasn’t an issue, it would be super high on our list. They have it all - nice campus, amazing facilities, research, programs etc… I wish we had gotten the chance to tour it.

I think that’s it for now! If I think of anything else, I’ll come back and let you know :slight_smile:
Good luck!

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