Bristol Bay

My son is a h.s. sophomore interested in majoring in chemical engineerring in college. PSAT 233, NHS, class rank #2, GPA 4.05, etc.; i.e. looks like good stats developing.......
Looking for undergrad chem engineering programs with good merit scholarship opps. We are middle class, therefore will be squeezed..........Any suggestions? Thanks!

Tboonepickens

The tippy top schools like MIT, Stanford offer some good aid even if you are middle class. If you are talking about full ride, or cheaper options, I got a 5k/year scholarship to the University of Minnesota this year putting the total cost of the school at about 18k/year. Uminn is a great chemE school. Also the colorado school of mines is a good school too. Apply to your state flagship because that is where the big bucks usually come from.

Bristol Bay

Thanks, Tboone!

Our state doesn't actually have a flagship U (!), so I appreciate your thoughts....

G.P.Burdell

Georgia Tech offers full-rides to a decent number of students each year on a merit-basis.

Georgia Institute of Technology :: President's Scholarship Program :: Home

Not bad for a Top 5 program.

G.P.Burdell

Also, I know that many states without specific programs have reciprocity agreements with other states for students to go out of state and still pay in-state tuition. For example, South Carolina does not have a public Aerospace Engineering program, so many students from South Carolina go to Georgia Tech and pay in-state tuition for that major.

You might want to check to see if AK has a program like that since AK-Fairbanks doesn't have a ChE program.

danmam

I second Minnesota-Twin Cities as a great school to consider. It's consistently ranked in the top 3 in chemical engineering, plus gives out great merit aid. I'm probably going into chemical engineering this year, and they're offering me $11,500 a year to go there. They're very generous with their merit aid.

EDIT: Also, if you live in a state that border Minnesota, you can go there for in-state tuition.

moneymatters

He can go to the University of Oklahoma for free if he performs at the same level on the PSAT junior year. With those sort of stats, he's likely to be eligible for additional outside scholarships - meaning that in the end, he'll likely be paid to go to college.

My dad went to OU for his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering, and has done fine. If he's interested in working in oil, a University of Oklahoma chemical engineering is second to none. OU graduates have a great reputation with Exxon, Shell, etc. OU will not be as competitive as a Stanford or MIT degree for obtaining a biotech job. Of course, if he graduates from OU with a 3.6-3.7 or better in ChemE, he'll be able to get into a top graduate school anyway.

As with any big state school engineering program, the first two years won't be nearly as personal or intimate as studying ChemE at a place like Rose-Hulman, MIT, etc. Freshman and sophomore classes in physics, organic chemistry, and the introductory maths such as calculus 3 and differential equations will be in large lecture halls with 200+ students. These "weeder" courses serve to remove the pretenders from the engineering program before junior year. Once junior level courses start, class sizes and quality won't be much different from the top privates.

Naturally, if your son is still doing very well by the end of his junior year, he should apply to all the big names like Stanford, MIT, Princeton, etc. However, with the way endowments at these large privates have been destroyed recently, I don't anticipate financial aid for the middle class being extremely generous in a couple of years. If the economy is still doing really poorly in a couple of years (likely), it would be unwise to turn down a free eduation.

RonPaul_2012

I would highly recommend the University of Minnesota and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, although Minnesota gives out better aid from what I have heard. Both have great ChemE programs.

Also look into Georgia Tech, and if he wants to go into the oil industry, UT Austin, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, and Stanford are the best bets.

Japher

Every ChemE will take a course, and curse it later, in which they will use the book "Transport Phenomena" written by Bird, Stewart, and Lightfoot. They were profs at Wisconsin-Madison, Lightfoot is still there.

danmam

I've heard that all ChemE's have nightmares about that class. What's so bad about it?

lockn

The University of Delaware has a great chemical engineering program and awards many merit scholarships. The college isn't that hard to get into, so I bet your son would be near the top of the applicant pool.

G.P.Burdell

What's your point? First, many programs don't use that book (mine didn't), and second, every program has faculty who have written books. For example, the best selling chemical engineering book is by Felder and Rousseau, and Rousseau is the department chair at Georgia Tech (not that it matters)

Bristol Bay

Thanks for your thoughts, everyone.....very helpful.

We were just looking at U of Delaware and at U of Minnesota web sites. Had not considered U of Wisconsin/Madison as it is notoriously $$ for out-of-staters.

And now another question--
I've heard that some schools, like Grinnell, offer a combined chemistry and chemical engineering major in concert with another institution; e.g. undergrad chem major combined with a fifth year at another institution that produces a chem engineering degree.
Does anyone know anything about this, or about schools that have such an arrangement?

lockn

It's called a 3-2 program. You spend three years at a liberal arts college, then two at a major university if your is GPA decent (3.00 or 3.25 is usually the requirement). Many LAC's participate, most often with Columbia, Dartmoth, and WashU. You get a bachelor's degree from the university you transfer to.