Clemson vs UTK vs Va Tech for construction management? [VA resident, 4.0 GPA, 35 ACT]

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Hey all, I’m hoping for some insights. My S25 is planning to apply to Clemson, UTK, and VA Tech for construction management (or, at VT, “building construction”).

Based on his stats (4.0 unweighted GPA, 35 ACT, many honors/AP courses, Eagle Scout, four year varsity athlete) I think he has a solid chance of getting in to all of these. We are VA residents, so VT would be the cheapest for us, but all three would be within budget, even without merit aid, which he might get. (Ironically, since the building construction program at VT is part of the School of Construction, which is part of the School of Engineering… and the Engineering school is the hardest one at VT to get into, this might actually end of being the most difficult admit for him of the three, regardless of our in-state status.)

We’ve visited Clemson and VT, and hope to get to UTK this fall.

I guess what I’m looking for is some insights into the schools and, in a perfect world, if anyone had knowledge of the construction management/building construction programs at them.

The kid wants big sports and school spirit. He doesn’t seem to have a natural preference for urban/suburban/rural. He wants a warm and welcoming student body and campus that feels like community.

He loved Clemson when we visited - I think part of it was the atmosphere, it was a gorgeous day, the first day after the students got back from spring break, everyone was happy and walking around smiling and talking to each other. We were there several hours, including when classes were changing and he saw people walking around campus and it felt vibrant. Random students greeted us as we were walking around, and that made a big impression on him.

He did not love VT when we visited - but, again, environmental factors. We got up crazy early at home to drive 4+ hours to get there, it was a Friday lunch time/afternoon and not that many people were about, campus felt really large and kind of empty. He couldn’t stop commenting on how gray it looked and felt. Since we’ll essentially be driving right past VT in the fall when we visit UTK, I want to make another stop, and this time aim for a better time of day.

Any thoughts on things I should be sharing with him or asking him to think about or to look into?

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My oldest is going into his 3rd year at UTK. Not in construction or engineering though. The only thing I would say is a bummer for that campus is the lack of dorms. Freshmen are required to and guaranteed on campus housing but after that it’s very tough to be able to stay in a dorm. I think something like 20% of the dorms house upper classmen. So 75% of the student population has to duke it out for 20% of the dorms. Everyone else lives off campus and the cost of rent is easily $1200+ a month (and that is for one BEDROOM in a shared apartment).
They definitely check the box for sports and school spirit. Knoxville is a really cool town.

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I don’t suppose you can attend a VT football game? If he wants big school sports and spirit, VT football is wonderful. That might change his mind. I think you said he has a friend there? Maybe send him there for the weekend for a game?

(I’m mostly saying this because I know you wish he’d love it there for monetary reasons. And I’m an alum CE, so I’m a bit biased.)

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Has he had summer jobs in construction?

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I think your son would benefit fairly equally from any of those programs, with a slight edge to VT. Has he looked into post-grad employment stats for any of them? Where does he ultimately want to settle? I know students at all those schools, and everyone is very happy.

All three have big sports and amazing school spirit. Clemson is located in more of a rural area. I would check to see where their construction management grads job place. UTK is in a more urban area, smack in the middle of Knoxville. Great campus! There are some cool areas of Knox, but also some typical urban issues such as a considerable amount of homelessness. We were just there this past weekend and were a little shocked by the number of people sleeping and loitering near the Marketplace area. It’s not a knock on Knoxville per se, but something you’d likely see in a lot of similar-sized cities. My daughter is at VT and her boyfriend is at UTK - she frequently comments about the homeless in Knoxville vs. not having that issue in Blacksburg (or at least not seeing it in or around campus).

If cost is not an issue, it may just come down to fit/post-grad job placement.

VT is a large campus, as you saw, and most buildings are made from the Hokie stone, which is grey (and IMO, very Harry Potter-esque) Most people love the campus but on a grey day, it can look completely different. Maybe your idea of going back to see it would make a difference or maybe your son would rather try something in another state.

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Thanks everyone for the replies!

@eholl - thank you for the info about UTK dorms. It’s the school I (and he) know the least about. We don’t happen to know anyone who attends or has attended recently and it got added to his list later than the others, so it’s just not as researched. I think, for a lot of reasons, he might really like it so I’m trying to think about what to highlight to him or remind him to pay attention to before we do our eventual visit.

@ClassicMom98 - Yep, you remember correctly, he has a friend there and yes, I wish he’d love it. It just feels like it meets all of his criteria, it would be great cost wise, and I think it has the best (by a smidge) future employment in areas where he wants to live. Maybe we can swing a visit for a football weekend because, yes, that should definitely give him a boost. If not that, then at least seeing it again when he’s not exhausted might help.

@ucbalumnus - nope, no summer jobs in construction. That was the plan for this summer, then we ran into a logistical problem (my older son needed to take our second car to his summer job in Albany. Leaving us with one car for three people for the summer. Since younger son couldn’t find any kind of construction gig that he could either bike/bus/metro to, that pretty much killed that). It’s not the same, but he’s done a fair amount of building with his and others Eagle projects, and he’s done a fair bit of research into construction management as a career. Nevertheless, it’s pretty niche. Part of why I prefer VT for him over Clemson is because if he ends up not liking it, he can switch to either Geography or Geoscience, both of which also interest him. At Clemson, there isn’t as good an alternative, maybe Geology. UTK has geography, which is his other love.

@CollegeNerd67 - it seems like post-grad employment is very strong for construction management programs, regardless of which of the schools, so that’s an equal bonus. I don’t think he ultimately wants to settle in SC, which should be a negative for Clemson, but he just seems to not focus on that. He loves the mountains - Appalachians and Smoky Mountains, and I could see him settling happily in Western VA, Western NC, Eastern Kentucky. We’re from a DC suburb, and he spends a fair amount of time in the city, so he’s not particularly bothered by your typical urban issues.

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My daughter is a rising senior at Clemson. It’s warm and welcoming with school spirit on steroids. I’ve had kids at 6 different schools, none come close to how special Clemson is (and all of my kids loved their experiences, but visited their sister at Clemson twice so far). It’s hard to get housing after freshman year (but they are adding dorms) but there is plenty of off campus student housing, from very inexpensive simple lodging, to properties with pools, hot tubs, free specialty coffee, kayaks and boat yoga. My daughter is in honors and gets $10,000 a year in merit (3.95 33 act, I think $12,000 is the max), but she gets a few smaller scholarships every semester, I think for having a 4.0 (there is a president’s reception every semester for those on the presidents list). She was overwhelmed (in a good way) with how friendly everyone is, has a great internship this summer, had a ton of interviews. The weather is great.

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VT has similar dorm issues after freshman year. They can join an LLC and stay in the dorm for 2 years or become an RA, but otherwise there is little dorm availability after freshman year. They are building a new residential village but I don’t know what the timeline is on that.

I think many large universities are struggling with the dorm availability issue.

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I will send you a PM.

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Thank you for the details and it’s great to hear that your daughter is having such a good experience. I’m really hoping that (a) he gets in (b) he gets into the honors college and (c) that he gets some merit money. I’m a little nervous that he’s the kind of kid who could have TOO much social fun, so I’m hoping that if he gets into honors and then lives in the honors dorm, that at least will give some more peer pressure to get work done. He was so favorably impressed with how welcoming everyone was, so I’m glad to hear that your daughter has had a similar experience with the friendly people.

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I think I’m accepting the housing issues as a matter of course. Wherever he goes I’d rather he be able to find off campus housing without too much anxiety (where my younger son goes to school there aren’t many options for off campus housing, so competition is fierce for well located housing). If S25 ends up at VT, then we have told him we can afford to buy him a car - which we can’t do with any of the other schools unless some significant merit aid or scholarships happen. So if he has to live off campus at VT in the future, it shouldn’t be too bad as he’ll have the ability to be a little more selective as to location/price (my older kid picked the expensive school, so his housing has to be within walking distance).

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That Clemson’s construction department is situated in the same college as its school of architecture could be a plus. Construction and architecture are so interdependent (though often adversarial) that the more synergy and understanding between the two the better.

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All 3 were on our list for an engineering major. We live in TN and spouse and I are both Clemson alums with friends in the area, and my sibling worked at VT for several years. All are great schools with very loyal, enthusiastic students and graduates. The settings are different. UTK is definitely a more downtown vibe, which is why our kid isn’t there even though it’s the least expensive for TN residents. Our kid thought VT was the prettiest campus, but also for OOS was the most expensive and gave the least merit money, so, in kid’s words, you don’t pay an extra $20K/year for buildings.

Clemson and VT both require freshmen who don’t live at home to live on campus. Both have limited housing after that, but, from what we can tell, it is easier to find student housing in Clemson than Knoxville. Clemson has built complexes for students that are on the bus line or run shuttles (or of course students can drive as commuters), while in Knoxville we hear about students having to go further out to find somewhere to live, and parking is a problem for commuters. But, parking is a problem on lots of campuses so I’m not sure if it’s worse or if we just hear about it because we know several kids who live at home.

If you are interested in the honors college, that might also be a decision maker since admission seems a bit unpredictable. My very high stats kid didn’t get into honors at VT, although there was some glitch with his SRAR that caused admissions to be emailing us about it the day before the early admission decision came out so it might not have been processed in time to review it. A friend who is attending Vandy on a scholarship wasn’t accepted to the UTK honors program - when asked the AO said that they couldn’t figure out how they decided who to admit. It’s not a huge deal, but if it’s important to your student then you might let that be a deciding factor. I’m guessing that if your kid thinks he could be happy at any of them then the choice might become more clear once he applies and sees the combination of cost and honors and some other factors (size, distance from home, etc) that he notices once he’s seen them all.

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@momrath - oooh, good point re: cohabiting with the architecture program, and one I hadn’t thought of. At UTK the construction science and management program is in the Biosystems Engineering and Soil Science Department, within the Institute of Agriculture, and at VT the Building Construction program is within the School of Construction within the College of Engineering - so those maybe have more of a sciency-STEMy home base.

@Clemsondana - thank you for the compare and contrast of the three schools! I think, all else being equal, my son would prefer a location more like a UVA (not on his list anymore) - a school adjacent or in a nice small town. He’s not averse to a city (he’s also applying to Pitt for urban planning/geography, and didn’t dislike it’s location in Pittsburgh) but I think he really prefers something that feels like it has a campus. I think he is interested in the honors college, but I’m also struggling a little to separate how much is that he knows I’m interested in the honors college for him. :slight_smile: He knows that my preference for him would’ve been a SLAC - I think he does better when he’s got a smaller cohort around him, and a little more attention. But (a) the program he most wants can’t be found at a SLAC and (b) he REALLY wants big time sports. I think you’re also right, that things will become more clear as we go along. I am really hoping he’ll like and be excited by UTK - his list is so small that I’m just worried that he won’t have choices he’s really excited about at the end of this. It’s got a reasonable number of schools that he should get in to, so I’m not worried about it being small in that regard, just that most of them feel like schools that he’s added “if I don’t get into A or B top choice, then that would be fine”. And I’d like him to have more than “fine”.

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Keep in mind that with many honors programs, just because they don’t get the offer initially, doesn’t mean they can’t join the honors program after they are there (and meet the gpa requirement for the program). My D did not get the initial invite to VT honors (they don’t seem to have a rhyme or reason as to who gets the initial invite) but she was invited to join after her first semester freshman year because she met their gpa requirement.

I get a little twitchy at the notion that a student may turn down a college just because they didn’t get an initial honors invite. Also, honors programs all have pluses and minuses that may benefit certain majors more than others.

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If urban planning becomes an area of focus, your son might look at Cornell’s BS in Urban and Regional Studies program. It’s a small cohort within a powerhouse organization with infinite resources.

Cornell is of course super selective but my understanding is that URS admissions seeks to assemble a class of students who demonstrate enthusiasm across the broad and complex network of related disciplines.

For example “urban planning, policy and design, city sustainability and climate change, urban data science, real estate and urban development, and on issues of city life and inequality.”

Ithaca is a lively small town with plenty of opportunities for outdoorsy activities as well as big time Cornell sports.

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Oh, we love Cornell. It would’ve been my older son’s first choice. But it’s not in the cards finances wise. We don’t qualify for any need based aid and we aren’t willing to pay that much. Our goal is to stay under about $55k (inclusive of any merit aid he might receive). But thank you for the thought!

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Yeah, I don’t think invite to the honors program would be the make-or-break of the decision process for us, but it’s a thumb on the scale. As you noted, the programs can be very different - I’m not certain that there would be huge bang for the (time spent) buck in every case. But - one of my concerns is that my son will struggle to stay focused on academics when everything else in college is just so fun. And I want him to have fun, but I also want him to go to class and study. And the idea of living in an honors dorm where there would be, assumedly, slightly more peer pressure / group think encouraging class attendance and good study skills, really appeals.

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I would suggest also looking into the LLC’s at each university. That environment would be similar to an honors dorm environment where your son could live among peers with similar academic interests & goals.

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My daughter didn’t apply to honors when she applied to Clemson (super plant minute application). She was in the business llc instead (applied to honors first semester) which she said was worth it. From what I’ve read, the honors dorm is very nice and quieter. Honors us an extra $1000 a year (as are llc’s), she says it’s worth it (not all honors colleges are).

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