Which School Should I Go To?

Applying to College
1

I’m a black female from a small private school in east Texas. I plan on majoring in computer engineering in college. My GPA is at a 3.8 weighted and my ACT score is a 32. I didn’t get into GA Tech–my dream school but got into the following:
SMU
UT Austin
FAMU
Spelman
Howard
GA State
TCU
LeTU

I got rejected to GA Tech, Emory, and Carnegie Mellon. I don’t care where I go but I just can’t decide

2

Spelman, Howard, and UT-Austin are very, very good schools, congrats! How are your family’s finances? You may want to talk with them about how much they can afford, that will help you narrow your choices.

3

Go to UT Austin

4

If you qualify for in-state tuition, then most definitely UT Austin, their computer engineering is ranked top 10 nationally, as good as Georgia tech. If no in-state tuition, then unless one is significantly cheaper than UT and finance is a huge burden, still UT.

5

First of all congratulations!

I’d highly recommend you attend UT Austin. I’m a little biased because I’m a electrical and computer engineering student at UT, but it is ranked top 10, and the faculty and dean are intent on working to rise higher in the ranks.

There is a great amount of clout that comes with UT engineering degree, and you can see UT ECE grads working among Ivy League grads as well as other graduates from other top ranked schools. Companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Intel, IBM, Dell, Google, and many others send recruiters often to come to career fairs here and org meetings to connect with students. After graduation, you’re going to have plenty of job opportunities and a pretty nice starting salary. 91% of UT engineers get employed or go to graduate school after they finish an undergraduate degree. Starting salaries of UT engineers averages at $72,000.

If you’ve taken a look at the curriculum, UT ECE is unique in a lot of ways, and you want to really determine if you’re a good fit:

  1. The degree plan is heavy on the engineering and very, very light on everything else (except maybe math). If you're looking to get a "well-rounded education", I don't think UT ECE really offers that. But if you're like me and just want to dive in computer engineering and not write papers on novels, you'll love it.
  2. If you're really interested in computer engineering, and just computer engineering, that's not gonna happen at UT. Electrical engineering and computer engineering are combined here, and the philosophy here is "we're gonna make sure you KNOW electrical engineering, even if you want to be computer engineer." If you want, you can exclusively take computer engineering classes for your last 2 years of school, but they will teach you to analyze a complicated circuit and use an oscilloscope. The least number of electrical engineering classes you are required to take are 3, so it's not too bad if you really hate electrical engineering.