Does anyone know if there is a good way/place to compare colleges besides combing through their websites and looking at the stats in Naviance and USNews rankings?
We are trying to compare UIUC, RIT, UMNTC for the CS and physics programs. Are there any obvious advantages to either one on the academics and opportunities(connections, undergrad research, etc.) part?
Also (less important but still curious) is S’s standing for them:
GPA: 3.7UW/4.1W
SAT: 2090 (will try ACT in Oct)
top 40% of the class (very competitive public HS)
EC: not much, just regular things (robotics club (US First), judo (till sophomore year), about 100 hrs volunteering, Russian lit classes, various programming projects on his own)
The SuperMatch feature over to the left of this page will lead to a bunch of info if you click on the Why? underneath each matched college and then the “more info” button on the following page. This will take you to collegeview.com.
Compare the course offerings for the major at each school and are all of them offered every year? Look up the faculty research to see if anyone is doing topics of interest to your kid. Any EC’s related to his or her area’s of academic interest? How many grad students does the dept. have and what’s the focus? Check on line data to see how many kids graduate with that major. Visiting so you can check out the facilities and talk to kids majoring in the subject - and what happens to them after they graduate. (Jobs? Phd?)
Agree that visiting is the best option but some other ideas would be…
-There are some excellent college guide books which try to give a flavor of each school. You can try Princeton Review, Fiske, Insiders Guide to name a a few. They may be available at your guidance department, your library, (or large bookstores sometimes let you sit and read for a while) if you don’t want to buy them.
-Look at the curriculum available in major and any core requirements for each school online.
-Consider what size school and what location might be preferable.
-Think about other things you want in a college (ex. Greek Life/sports/etc.) and see if each school offers it.
-Run net price calculator for each to see if there is a decided cost advantage at any school or if one gets knocked down on your list due to price.
-Perhaps RIT offers alumni interviews near you if you are interested. (likely the state schools do not but you can check).
Other than that apply and see how things fall out. No need to make a decision now.
Lots of very good suggestions - will try them out this weekend. There are some obvious things like size, location (of course, NY and MN look better as S wants cold snowy winters) or costs (hard to beat UMNTC). Unfortunately, visiting is out of question at this point - the school year started and we are in CA. On the other hand, I found that visiting is only helpful for the “external feel” of the place. We weren’t able to get any specific academics-related info on any college tours so far. And this is academics we are most interested in. For example, UIUC is pretty well-known - are RIT and UMNTC really in the same league? - We will look through the curriculum and course offerings.
Anyway, S is excited, especially so since UMNTC doesn’t require an essay
Though CS grads from all 3 will do well.
And UIUC CS faculty outpace UMinny faculty and blow away RIT faculty in research.
However, that doesn’t mean that 1 of the other schools isn’t better for your particular kid.
In any case, there’s no decision to be made now. Apply to all 3. I would apply to UC’s as well.
BTW, the whole Midwest gets snow in the winter. You won’t be able to escape it. Also, living in the snow and freezing cold is different from visiting it.
@PurpleTitan, thank you! That’s exactly the answer I was looking for.
S already has his college list (with most UCs, UIUC and others) - he just came upon UMNTC and got excited and thus the research to see if it’s worth applying. Seems like a nice safety so far so I agree that it doesn’t hurt to apply (easy and free app anyway and we like their COA ).
As for the winter - yes, we know (grew up in Russia), he - not so much but badly wants to try. He did taste a bit of it - we usually take 1or 2 skiing trips to the mountains in winter. Not the same as living, obviously. Anyway, we thought what a better time to try some non-CA-weather than in a college?
Tell him not to expect too much real snow in Champaign-Urbana. Lots of ice, sleet, and slush, but not a lot of the fluffy, pristine snow you might find in the mountains. It’s sort of the worst of all worlds when it comes to weather.
Yes, we are aware that Urbana-Champaign will be “the worst of all worlds” as for the weather and location but it seems very advanced academically while still being in his stats’ range. For those reasons (weather, lack of outdoor opportunities) we didn’t even consider anything in IL for his initial list but he went to a presentation from UIUC and liked their program very much. And we are aware of the cost of UIUC - ouch!
He is not exactly “high stats” (I listed them in the original post - definitely not in the top-25 area) but quite ambitious in terms of the level of technical education. He is the type who would rather get Cs in the harder class than As in the easier one and that “harder” part is what he wants to see in the college. And xc-skiing, too
Note that CS in engineering at UIUC is very hard to get in to. UIUC admits by major and CS in engineering there has an admit rate that is a small fraction of the overall UIUC admit rate. Average UIUC engineering ACT is 32. Average UIUC CS ACT is 34.
Engineering as OOS at Minny may not be a shoo-in either.
That’s what I suspected. Ha-ha - he’ll will not need to endure “sleet and slush” and we will not end up with a huge bill (we still may end up paying too much elsewhere, though ).
I will try to “sell” him UW-Madison but I am not sure he will agree - 2(!) extra essays which don’t even remotely resemble those he’s working on. He hates essays and is universally bad at them :-(.
CS is very hard to get into anywhere - we usually see at least .2 higher GPA and +50 SAT scores as averages.
His plan is if all else fails, to go with physics major (he is applying to physics as alternative or second major) and take some extra CS courses as he goes. Employers and Grad Schools usually don’t care (in our experience) as long as he is competent.
That’s what we hope for in almost any college he is applying to. He is not that much interested in anything on your list - maybe astronomy as a part of physics. Math - he likes it but mostly as some tool to use in CS and Physics and not so much by itself. He did start to like math more recently, though, with higher-level courses, so who knows, maybe he will end up liking it enough to study it in depth in college.
Thank you anyway - that’s a lot of help and support!
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