Purdue and Michigan are also hard to get into, Michigan OOS very, and there is a recent thread about someone with good stats getting a Engineering no from Purdue.
Anything over 2 hours will make frequent visits impractical IMHO. Anything over 10 hours would make even breaks difficult, since you are talking several days of driving for a one week visit. Availability of cheap SWA type airfares can also shrink distances if you have say $150-300 to spare and plan ahead.
If you seriously are considering small or not highly ranked programs, I would make a visit mandatory so you can see what the program really entails and if the school supports it well or just has a building with those weird engineers on campus and a few grants from their few good professors supporting some grad students. Also, I think having a grad engineering department would enhance your ability to see current work. But personalities and staff engagement are key as the staff shrinks. Similarly a dynamic faculty and environment means the program will flourish and so will your child.
Someone mentioned grade inflation and teaching to the AP tests and I think they may be on to something. Also, the speed and number of hard classes in a freshman engineer’s schedule make study habits, focus, control of urge to be out at all hours because there is beer and girls, critical. There just are no weeks you can nurse a hangover, especially if you don’t have a great high school background (and to make it worse, many people actually do and they will get the easy As instead of you).
I like what I have read about the academic culture at U of Tulsa. I would also point out that South Dakota School of Mines & Technology is a reasonable plane flight from Texas. I am surprised that Eyemgh hasn’t mentioned U of Utah Engineering.
I was going to, but I figured getting some non-academic decisions out of the way might make narrowing the list a little easier.
So, here’s my pitch.
Utah is frequently overlooked because of the fear of the LDS influence, so let’s get that out of the way first. Certainly there are lots of Mormons in Utah, but SLC is less than 50% and a very progressive town. You can really live, in comfort, regardless of your religious views. There are great microbreweries and restaurants. The outdoor opportunities are amazing, biking, hiking, camping, hunting, fishing and did I mention, skiing!?! It’s a Delta hub so getting there is easy.
Now to the U. The student body is roughly 30,000, but because quite a few students are commuters, it feels much smaller than that. Those who live on campus are a tight knit group. The dorms are awesome, built to house athletes during the Olympics. They are super passionate about athletics, not only supporting football and basketball, but women’s gymnastics typically has the highest attendance numbers of any women’s sport in the whole nation. They are also generous to those with good academic records. Our son was offered one year tuition free followed by three years instate. Four years tuition free are not uncommon.
Lastly, engineering. Our son wanted a program like Cal Poly or WPI where they are known for getting students involved with more than just bulletproof book work as freshmen. The mechanical engineering department has the Spiral Curriculum that was very intriguing. The whole college is well funded with great facilities. They are very vested in the success of their students.
Actually Purdue is quite harsh that many students dropped of after freshmen year. For UMich, there are some helps available. Also, the sophomore return rate is high.
TAMU is a good school, highly ranked for engineering, would be in-state and she likes big schools. I might just go there. If she has a good HS background in math and science, ideally including some AP classes in calc and sciences, she will do fine as long as she works hard and keeps up with her classes on a weekly level.
UT is also a good school …
Not sure you are getting a bump of any kind in a similar OOS school like Purdue. Small private schools have a different vibe. Weedout is just a matter of inadequate preparation and work ethic freshman year. It can be a cultural thing, but if you are doing well, you can just kind of ignore it and chose friends and study partners who are likely to stay for 4 years …
Will put Utah on DS list since it sounds like a great place to visit a few times a year. Yellowstone is an easy 8 hour drive too … We did see some enormous Mormon families in station wagons without seat belts … but lots of nice people and a typical dry sunny high altitude town (snow stays in the mountains where it belongs).
Hello all. I needed a few days to let this soak in, and I’ve re-read the whole thread again. Thanks for all the input.
In the meantime, D did one of those “career planning” things, with mixed reviews, which we expected going into it. We can throw out some suggestions (test pilot? Yikes!) The highest matches right now (I know, I know, this is according to these surveys, we can take them or leave them, etc.) point her toward “Engineering and Architecture” as the highest, next is “Construction and Extraction”, then “Business and Finance” and “Production.” The rest of the categories rank much lower. Nothing new, but possibly reassuring her that engineering might be the place for her.
To complete our “casting the net,” we still would like personal input regarding schools closer to TX folks-- Baylor? University of Oklahoma? UT Dallas? D agrees with the post about SMU-- D can’t get past the country club reputation, so she won’t consider it.
Next in the application queue are schools that have engineering, but aren’t known for it: WashU, Vanderbilt, Rice?
Something you need to think about is that the time period between acceptances and the final decision is pretty short for many of these schools; if they send decisions in last March and she needs to decide by May 1, it is tough to do many visits to accepted student days during that short window. Spring is busy with ECs in senior year, sometimes the visit dates overlap, and it can be tough for students to miss much class and parents to miss much work if a lot of visiting is left for that window. If she is pretty sure of admission at some schools on the list she ends up with, you might consider doing some visits between the application and acceptance dates, especially those not too far from home.
I am sure someone else can speak to the engineering quality, but WashU really likes to see interest. They are the safety for a lot of Ivy quality students, and are really trying to protect their yield. So if she can’t visit, she should sign up for mailings on their website, see if they are having any events in your area to attend, and make sure she expresses interest that shows some serious research about the school in her application.
My daughter applied to baylor last year and she loved it. My dad was totally against it for engineering. He said TCU over Baylor. In any event my d is at ga tech which by the way also has a very good business program. GT also has the number one engineering school for industrial engineering which is a mix of engineering and business. Football is big and although it is a grind the kids seem to be happy while they moan about work. Its in the city with abundant restaurants, events going on, and tons of internship opportunities. However it still feels like a contained campus offset from city while in the city. Most kids walk everywhere.
All 3 are really difficult to get into and accept only top students, so while there may not be a weedout culture like a big state school that accepts people that are marginal, it will be very difficult to stand out and get As. The weedout culture is not that brutal for an A student, maybe not brutal at all, since your Ds superior high school prep and likely academics skills will keep her in the top part of the class (until the lower half weeds out …).
Good that engineering came up in the career search … that used to be fairly rare for women … so go for it. With a good math background, she will do fine, can see if she has the interest in designing things …
Feel free to PM me if you have specific TAMU question. My son is an upper junior in Civil. He entered the program as a good student but not the superstar it sounds like your daughter is. He is a hard worker but has had time to be involved in life on campus . He has a really positive attitude and loves the friendly “chill” atmosphere. He has sometimes studied with a study group, early on he enrolled in private tutoring classes for physics. There is free tutoring on campus but he never used this, the tutoring he used was excellent and no pricier than some textbooks. Freshman year he lived in the engineering dorm and quickly made friends to work with but never utilized the tutoring. At this point he has had a 4.0 in engineering. The school is probably not as nurturing as a smaller school especially an LAC but if she is driven and has good study habits she will do well. Honestly my son would be seriously ill in a pressure cooker environment. TAMU is not that. I can’t compare it to any other school but if she takes care of business she will do well.
Va Tech. Have not read this who;e thread but havent seen VT where I have looked. Not necessarily warm and fuzzy and nurturing but dont feel they are in the business of weeding out.
We’ve been going through similar discussions. I brought D17 to visit UCLA and Mudd without S16 who keeps saying small schools are bad (they are very different people though). D17 LOVED Mudd as I expected and realized that UCLA really required being more of an extrovert than she is to make full use of their resources. She is currently planning on using Purdue as her safety but thinks Mudd, MIT, or Rose would be her preferences if she gets in. Princeton and UVA both felt like easier more supportive engineering schools on our visits–that it was more about getting in than out like GA Tech. It’s hard to find a small to mid-size semi well known, rigorous, engineering school that doesn’t cost a freaking fortune though.
@ucbalumnus: “If by “never made a B”, you mean that she is a straight A student (as opposed to a straight C student), then she has a high probability of graduating with an engineering degree at any school that is a decent fit and has her major.” :-*
I guess it depends on how you define fortune in thus day and age since everything with books, room and board is expensive these days, but Poly’s full cost of attendance OOS is $36k/year. They are best known for CS, ME and Aero.
^Except that Cal Poly’s engineering program is pretty darn big at 5,700 undergrads. That makes it bigger than Berkeley and the same size as Michigan. I also tended to feel that supportive environments correlated with smaller programs, but maybe that isn’t the case?
Families should remember to run NPC estimators. Even if not eligible for need based FA with one student in college, there may be help available in the overlap years. @dcplanner - if your kids are a year apart, you’d likely have 3 overlap years.
My kids both did not care for Cal Poly though I loved it and hope D17 will reconsider. South Dakota and New Mexico are far from home and too far away from the major cities D17 prefers.
Yes @colorado_mom that is very true with 3 years of overlap I think we’ll be fine even if both kids go to $60K schools but the 2 non-overlap years will be rough. Until I see the numbers on paper it’s hard to believe.
