Can anyone share their experience with the Product Design and Innovation program?

joedoe · February 13, 2017, 2:51am

I am not personally a part of the program but my roommate has taken some courses in the sequence. I’ll answer these questions part by part.

Opinion: He seemed to generally enjoy the program and found it helped him a lot in his major.
Projects: The point of the program is that it is entirely project based. There have been very interesting startup companies and design projects that have come out of RPI's DIS program. I know several people that got internships or co-ops simply because of their experiences in DIS.
Ratio: The ratio is actually 68-32 and has been slowly getting better. From what I'm aware, the major is slightly better than average but is still predominantly male (probably like 60-40). I know this can be a concern for many people but it's usually not as bad once you're a student as it actually seems. Many college campuses are predominantly female and there seems to be no reputation regarding that.
Double major: Please note that double majoring is called 'dual' majoring at RPI. It's literally the same thing as at any other school except 'double' majoring literally means getting a second degree while dual is what it normally is. As far as the workload, it depends on the student and how hard they're willing to work. Personally, I couldn't do it since without free electives to take easy courses that I can do well in then my GPA would take a hit since it's very difficult to just take all engineering courses and not have any filler every once in a while.

Also for additional info on admissions that I found helpful when making my decision: