Name recognition helps, but it is not as important as having a school be a good fit. All universities are different, and she should choose the one that she thinks she will be happiest at and get a solid education in her chosen discipline.
Some of the top-rated schools are not necessarily the best for undergrads. I went to a university with a lot of grad students and the undergrads were pretty neglected. But it forced us to be more independent so in some ways it was a good thing.
Engineering grad from a small school circa 1975, grad student from RPI, current faculty member at a small undergrad engineering school checking in; The kid needs to visit schools and find one that fits her style.
As others have said if you are planning on grad school where you do your undergrad doesn’t make a bit of difference. Get excellent grades at an ABET accredited school, do a couple of internships and you’re golden for grad school or a real job even. Many of my students have gone on to MIT, Stanford and Cal Tech.
The bigger research U’s tend to ignore undergrads. Even master’s degree students are considered fodder for the machine.
Given a choice between RH and Harvey Mudd I would choose Mudd for my kid in an instant if I didn’t have to pay for it. If your not from Indiana, Terra Haute is beyond grim. Check out what Santo posted above. NM has a real nice location, lots of outdoor activities and it’s cheap.
Expensive=/Best.
Hey Dewey, when were you at RPI? I was there in the 80’s and remember all the undergrads complaining about failing in and getting the tute screw.
Well, although it’s always good to be aware of one’s options, it’s probably about three years premature to be having this discussion. However, let me lay down some thoughts:
Speaking in general, the applicability of grad school doesn’t depend on the industry you’re focusing on, but rather what you want to do in that industry. A goal of “engineering child safety seats” sounds rather specific, but there are various ways to do that.
Does she want to design the buckle mechanism, specify how the attachment points are constructed, and design the plastic outer shell, all conforming to the specified code? That would probably require an undergrad degree. A Master’s degree with some degree of specialization might put her in a better position to land a particular job, however (and, as ultrafilter says, the Master’s degree is seldom wasted).
Or, contrastedly, does she want to determine what type of restraints are the most effective, explore if different kinds of webbing work better or worse, and find the optimum position for the child to be in to minimize injuries in a crash? That’s research-oriented, and sounds like a doctoral-level degree with some medical knowledge thrown in would be appropriate.
I was in the Class of 1988 and was a freshman when we won the national championship. (George Low died the summer before I started there, and Dan Berg was fired when I was a junior.)
There are two big benefits to going to a top school with a good graduate program. The first is that you can get involved with research as an undergrad, which both of my kids have, though not in engineering. The second is that with a bit of gumption you can get involved with a professor who is doing exciting work. I don’t think any high school senior knows whether she is going to like research or not. I caught the bug as an undergrad, and today you get a lot more involved in real stuff than in my day.
I’ve personally benefited several times from going to a good school. And companies do recruit at name schools more heavily.
BTW, UofI is a great school. I’m biased, because I got one of my degrees there, and would have gotten a PhD there if my adviser hadn’t died on me. </matchmaker>
As the owner of a Civil Engineering business, I’d much rather hire a good solid C-student than some of these flash-in-the-pan A’s.
As I said before, and as others have said, IMO it’s more important for the student to be a good ‘fit’ with the school’s program than it is to go to some big-name university. Companies care about quality and production. If a kid is a graduate of some Ag school, who cares, if his design work is solid and done in a timely manner.
…known as the “MIT of the South”. IMO it is the best engineering school in the South.
Perhaps NinetyWt would agree with me in saying that a C average in college in no way indicates that a person’s work performance will be mediocre. What an engineer learns in school is not how to engineer but how to start thinking about design and where to look to get information. So much of what we do nowadays is computer modelling, and that is barely touched on in school. Yes, you are exposed to software, but the complexity of problems never even approaches what you see in your first year in industry.
Also, the more I think about it, the more I am sure that there are a very few colleges that would make hiring managers on the national scale take notice: MIT, Stanford, GA Tech, CalTech, and maybe a few others. It’s not like business school where you make all kinds of contacts. First of all, engineers are geeky and don’t schmooze very well. Second of all, schooling is so broad for the career path that one winds up in that you would be lucky to have classmates wind up in the same field. I believe that I had 75 people in my graduating class, of which about eight were geotechnical-centered and I am the only one in dams. Most of my class probably wound up in niches just like I did - through exposure in industry.
Rose-Hulman is not rated as the best undergraduate engineering program in the U.S. by U.S. News and World Report. It’s rated as the best undergraduate engineering program for a college that doesn’t have a Ph.D. engineering program:
There are lots of top-notch engineering programs. She should apply to several of them. How well off is her family? At many of the most highly rated colleges in the U.S. these days, if her family makes less than, say $60,000 a year (for a family of four), then she will get financial aid paying for absolutely everything. Even if the family makes, say, $120,000 a year, she will get financial aid for most of her expenses. In general, getting financial aid at a some top college isn’t that hard if the prospective student is good enough.
You know your own daughter best, of course, but it’s my experience that very smart and accomplished young people often have more of a problem with excessive humility than arrogance. (It’s even possible to have both of those things at the same time.)
Yes, but I’ve been thinking about my comment and I wanted to add that I’m in no way disparaging the student in question or her good grades.
You bring up a good point about the compter modeling. I went to one of two public engineering schools in my home state; I got my bachelor’s degree back in 1987. That was about the time of the dawning of the personal computer - we had two or three in a ‘lab’ at school, and were assigned some homework consisting of writing small Fortran programs. Anyway, the other state school did not start using PCs until a few years later - and boy, does it show now. So, I would add that being up-to-date on emerging technology is important. Sounds like a no-brainer, but look at all the engineers my age who went to the wrong school here and now can’t even fix up a simple spreadsheet.
Is undergrad research important? It seems like it could open some doors plain education could not. Not every school offers it and it may be something to consider. University of Arizona*, MIT, and I think Carnegie Mellon certainly do.
*Top 50 in engineering AFAIK, I only know about the undergrad research because I go there, they don’t advertise it well but something like 76% of all undergrads do research for 2 semesters or more with a little over 50% getting paid for it. And a good deal of them had their findings published in the research (that is, had published academic papers they could present to their graduate schools of choice) so it at least gets you some allies in the field, some cash, and at the best of things a shiny peer reviewed paper to show whatever the hell grad school you want.
I don’t know if I can really speak to the question of how important the particular undergrad school is (I didn’t pursue grad school), but I’m a recent Harvey Mudd graduate and I can’t say enough good things about the place. Motivated and smart students, a lot of amazing professors, a great sense of community, etc.
Hum. That might work for a product-design oriented career. If she wants a research oriented career, amybe an ME undergrad and a biomedical graduate degree.
StGermain, if your niece is interested in another opinion, she might try writing to the NHTSA folks who regulate child seat safety and ask what kind of background they think is important. I would think she’d get a thoughtful response from someone who’s involved in the industry, but with a larger perspective.
Hummuna-hummuna!
Tell her folks that 2 goats and a camel will be sufficient to seal this deal! Here’s me and the boy. They’ll make me some beautiful grandkids.
BTW - exactly what degree is she aiming at - a BA or an MRS? And before you direct her to this thread, you might want to warn her that her uncle has been pimping her on the net!
I remembered when my nephew was interested in studying accounting, he asked my BIL - a partner at one of the biggest accy firms - what schools they interviewed at and hired from. And he was able to provide a pretty short list. So if someone graduating from college with a degree in accy wanted a chance of being hired by that firm, he had better attend one of those schools. Don’t know if she would be able to get that kind of info from car/carseat manufacturers.
I think, however, we are doubtless reading too much into this interest in carseats. One charismatic prof in some other discipline could point her in a completely different direction.
Wow, Dins - you look like Joss Whedon. Humina yourself! Your paintball gun looks outer-spacey with the reflection. And I’m the aunt pimping her out, not the uncle. Which seems slightly less oogy to me.
I think she expects to go past a BA, but at this point she doesn’t know how much schooling she’ll need. The carseat thing has been a long-time interest, but it could always be supplanted by something else.
Your niece should have applied to a bunch of good engineering schools. If her family is well off, they can afford the applications. She should have done research a year ago to discover whether she likes the academic environment at each of the schools she applied to. She should have applied for any possible financial aid at each of the schools she applied to. This way, when she gets acceptance offers and financial aid offers from the colleges, she could look them over and decide what would be the combination of school and financial aid offer. In general, a better rated school is a better place to go, but don’t take the U.S. News ratings too seriously. They aren’t scientifically generated. If she gets no financial aid from the school rated #1 and a full ride from the school rated #2, of course she should go to the school rated #2. Incidentally, some schools will offer a large amount of financial aid to a student whose family is so well off that they don’t need it if the college considers the student to be extremely good.
A college education is an investment. Getting a degree from a better rated school will probably somewhat increase her future earnings, but it’s hard to say if it will increase it enough if it also costs a whole lot more. There’s a trade-off between the cost of college and the amount of extra earnings.
But your niece should have done all this a year ago, not now only a couple of months before the acceptance and financial aid letters arrive.
