WPI v. RPI v. Rose-Hulman v. Stevens Institute. CS major 2024

DS was fortunate to be accepted to WPI, RPI, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, and Stevens Institute. He’s currently planning to major in CS and enter fall 2024. He’s visited all, but was planning on those final Accepted Students Days to help finalize his decision…with Covid-19, that’s not an option. He received 2 scholarships from each school, so they are comparable in cost. Appreciate any feedback.

You can’t go too wrong with that list. He has visited all of these schools, does he have any take-back from those visits?

Look into both the major and minor selection processes for all universities because they can and often do differ even among ABET engineering programs. Most students do not graduate in the major they anticipated as a secondary school student because they learn about related fields, job placement, grad school fit, etc.

Breadth is not reflected by listing of majors, but by ability to design/alter your program… at least in the first year… do students have a thorough, personalized planning process?

I liked the location of Stevens, just across the river from Manhattan. I wanted to like RPI because my dad went there, but it’s a two hour train ride from anywhere. We have a friend at Rose who loves it. For my child, however, the 80-20 gender ratio was a non-starter.

For the record, there has been a study growth in female population at WPI over the past few years. The entering class in the Fall of 2020 was over 40% women. As a group, their interests tend to focus on the life sciences and Biomedical Engineering where they are in the majority.

As a student there in the late 60’s, there were about 20 women on the entire campus. Women are still not too excited about ME and EE.