I have been admitted to the following schools: Purdue, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Penn State, Ohio State, and Clemson. Which school is considered the top in engineering? I would like a well rounded college experience, football-sports, education. Fun college town. Any suggestions?
I think any of those schools would be great for you. All the big 10 schools (I have no knowledge of Clemson) have good engineering in good college towns. Go to the school you like best. You should be able to find a job in the automotive industry from any of these schools. No bad choices, only good.
Is there a price differential you should be considering? All of these are public universities. Are you instate for one of them?
To be honest, they all fulfill your wish list. There is no “best” amongst this list. They are all ABET accredited, and have the other things you want.
Take at look at what each school offers beyond ABET accreditation. Are they research focused or hands on? How strong is their co-op program? How strong is the job placement center? What courses are required outside of the core engineering program? Is the program purely technical or is it more well rounded? What are your options if you decide to change majors to non-engineering? What relationships do they have with the automotive industry? Do they have design/research projects in the area of your interest?
Some of these questions will not apply since you are looking at large state schools but while ABET accredited schools cover the same material (although the depth and rigor will vary considerably) they are not all the same.
One other consideration is where do you want to work? While the schools you list will all attract recruiters from all over the country, each one will attract far more from the geographic region where they are located. So in your case, if you want to work in the southeast, you might have better odds at Clemson then UW-Madison. However from what I know, none of these schools would be a bad choice.
Also…just in case. Think about what the school has to offer you just in case you decide engineering is not right for you.
Cost is not an issue?
Thank you for all the information. Currently, I live on the West Coast and has not thought about that. Plan to visit Purdue, Butler and the University of Wisconsin in March. Have already seen Clemson’s beautiful campus.
http://uanews.ua.edu/2014/09/exchange-program-to-give-ua-students-international-experience/
Add Alabama to your list.
There are all about the same price.
Butler is a private school, thank you for the information.
Yes, Butler is a private school. But that wasn’t listed on your original list in the first post.
Make sure you consider things like travel costs, and the like…as well as ease of traveling. Some of these schools have closer accessibility to major airports than others…and that can make a difference when it’s time to travel during busy college travel times.
Also, do you want to be in a city or in a more rural area. Penn State is in a very rural area relatively speaking. Wisconsin and OSU are in the cities…and Purdue is too…but not a major city.
Butler is the outlier here. It is a much smaller school than the other major flagship universities you have posted.
Thank you for your post. Your right, I omitted to include Butler. I think top choice are Wisconsin, Clemson and Purdue at the moment.
Since you live on the west coast, I would have applied to Cal Poly and WWU.
http://www.wwu.edu/vri/
But since you didn’t and I’m assuming cost is not a factor, I’d lean toward Purdue.
For automotive, I’d choose Purdue - but you have no “bad” choices in your original list.
do you have a 2nd choice?
My husband the engineer also says…Purdue (you know…the boilermakers). He says Clemson would be his second choice, but that all the others sound fine. He isn’t so sure about Butler.
LOl, I’ve known several kids that went to Butler and I worked in a huge firm that hired hundreds and hundreds of engineers and didn’t know Butler even had engineering…the original list the poster listed makes the most sense.
Think about how easy it will be to get in and out of each place. Columbus is a large city and should be easy to fly out of. Purdue, you will need to get to Indianapolis which I hear will be easy to get a ride to. Are there any direct flights to your home city?
My neice goes to school in Washington DC and lives in the Cleveland area. She can fly for $59 each way. My D went to school in a small east coast city and we live in Michigan. She paid close to $500 to come home for Christmas and that was typical for flights between the two cities. It’s so much easier for my neice to jump on a direct cheap flight than my D with an expensive connecting flight. It was something we didn’t think about that became more of a big deal.
What about Wisconsin? We are still waiting on the University of Michigan, University of Texas-Austin, The University of Illinois-Urbana. Which college would open more doors?
All good advice. I’d add: 1. Do a LinkedIn search of automotive engineers working in the big auto manufacturing plants and see if certain universities turn up in their profiles. 2. Poke around your admitted schools’ career sites to see what kind of recruiters come to campus. 3. Find out if there are automotive plants in the states where you’ve been admitted; companies often hire locally.