William & Mary or Va Tech?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>I never made it to college, but My daughter will. As of now, she wants to take up Engineering. She is very good in math and art. She was accepted to Va Tech and that is her safety school. She also applied to William and Mary and was "wait listed".</p>

<p>I know Tech has a very good engineering program, and the tuition will be roughly 18k a year.</p>

<p>The nice thing about W&M is that it is 15 miles from our home. So if she lived at home, the yearly tuition would be about half or even less. I dont know what type of engineering program they have though.</p>

<p>She will be taking out student loans, and I will try to reimburse her back for any "A"s. I understand she'll have some debt, but I dont want her to be really burdened with it, or me for that matter. Having said that, it is most important to me that she can earn a living wage upon graduation. So if Va Tech would have better job opportunities upon graduation I will suggest she pay the extra and go there. I have heard there are not many women in Engineering so it might not make a difference. The other thing is I would be really proud if she was able to go to the W&M law school. Not sure if it helps getting into their law program if you have an undergrad from them. </p>

<p>Any help on how I should advise my daughter?</p>

2

<p>William and Mary doesn’t have an engineering school. Instead, they have a 3-2 program where you spend 3 years at William and Mary taking the prereq courses for the program and then for the final 2 years she’ll go to Columbia University(NY). The actual engineering school itself is at Columbia so she would get her B.S of Engineering from there. She would also be able to most likely have enough credits to get a B.A. in something at William and Mary. As per my understanding, most people get something like Engineering from Columbia and BS in Math from William and Mary.</p>

<p>That’s 5 years so that will be extra tuition plus the extra cost of living at Columbia for 2 years because of its location. There aren’t as many women as there are men in engineering but in the job market it’s about even because of the wide variety of choices engineers have (consulting, research, etc). Engineering is a major with a really high average LSAT score due to the logical way of thinking most engineers have</p>

3

<p>V TECH i think is the right choice for engineering</p>

4

<p>Go to W&M. If she changes her mind, ( which has been known to happen to college kids :)) she will be in a much better school for other options.</p>