Boston College vs Berkeley vs Haverford

Tontrmom
Tue, 12 Apr 2022 18:47:01 +0000

Hello,

My son has asked my advice and I don’t feel competent to give it. He has been admitted to the following programs:

Boston College Human Centered Engineering. It is a class of about 50 students. Last year was the inagural class with 27 enrolled students so he will be in the second graduation class. This program truly fits his personality and he really liked the campus when he visited. He is slightly nervous that the school might fail to acquire their ABET accreditation, but we think that scenario is unlikely as they just spent $150 million dollars on the new buiding as part of their $300 million commitment to the sciences.

UC Berkeley Aerospace Engineering. This is Cal’s inagural class for Aerospace Engineering majors. He is 1 of about 40 students admitted to the program. This program comes with the benefits of the Berkeley reputation and it’s collaboration with NASA. He is feeling pulled by this because he was the kid who always said he wanted to work for NASA but lost touch with it when his robotics team was defunded by the school district and began pouring himself into the humanities, which is what led him to the BC HCE program. (He will be able to avoid the first 2 years of GE requirements as he will be able to transfer all his lower division coursework from his Dual Credit coursework.) He would double major at Cal in Political Science because he’ll have the benefit of being general ed complete.

Haverford College Physics major. He applied here because he loves the small school feel, something neither BC or Cal will provide, but possible with the small size of the programs 50 and 40 students, the smaller feel will still exist. He is would pursue either the 4+1 program with Penn which would be Bachelors in Physics and Masters in Mechanical Engineering in a fast track program-earing double credit for classes taken at Penn during his undergrad, or he would pursue the 3+2 program with Cal Tech earining him a Bachelors in Physics at Haverford and a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering at Cal Tech (Both these programs are by application, so not a guarantee. He would finish his Physics degree at Haverford if he did not get one of these other programs and then apply independently to MA or PhD programs.)

Boston College HCE will be equal in cost to UC Berkeley. BC and Berkeley will be double the cost of Haverford though both are manageable for us. He is thinking into the future and wants to select the program that will set him up for the best future. I am pushing him to think about the overall college experience because I see these 4 years as a time for an amazing experience being the most important deciding factor.

Perhaps you yourself are navigating between choosing between these schools? If so, how are you making the decision? Please share your experience and/or outcomes with these programs. Perhaps you have advice from the viewpoint of a professional in the engineering field and can say that he would or wouldn’t have a significant advantage based on the program he chooses??

Thanks in advance for all responses!