By Nycneedhelp (Nycneedhelp) on Monday, April 12, 2004 - 01:24 am: Edit </p>
<p>Anyways, to add on to my above post, I have decided to go to Carnegie Mellon instead. This letter by a Cooper student is the main reason why. He writes: </p>
<p>" Let me tell you a little bit about Cooper Union. Congrats first of all, and secondly, it really depends on where you live, and how much you want to devote your life to study electrical engineering. If your goal is to come to Cooper with a strong background in Electrical Engineering, then Cooper is good. I’m at Cooper because I don’t care about social life and clubs and sports. I just want to get my Chemical Engineering degree, and go to grad school. Companies recognize Cooper Union…at least companies in the NYC area. They know it’s tough, and they’re more inclined to keep an open mind, against someone from like NYU with a higher GPA. I took BC Calculus as a junior and Vector Calculus and Differential Equations as a senior in HS…and I’m still not the best at Cooper. Judging on your high school background, you’ll definitely struggle at Cooper. Freshmen year is supposed to be the easy year, and you don’t even have the classes in high school. Actually, I first wanted to go to Carnegie Mellon, and not Cooper Union. My mother didn’t let me. I live at home. So doesn’t want me to move away, so she made me apply Early Decision to Cooper and I’m bound to it. I’ve come to accept it. </p>
<p>Well at Cooper, you have to really want to go, if you are truly in love with electrical engineering, and willing to struggle through four years then you should come to Cooper Union. It’s very hard here. By graduation, Electrical Engineers have an average GPA of around 3, Chemical Engineers have around 2.7, Mechanical Engineers have around 3.4, and Civil Engineers have around 3.6 The hardest majors are Electrical Engineers and Chemical Engineers. If you come, look forward to no sleep and constant studying. After a bachelors, starting salary ranges from 52K to 57K. Business wise, there is a small group of career fair participants at Cooper. Most of the companies that are looking for interns are in the Civil Engineering field. Chemical Engineers are hard to find, and once in a while, there is an Electrical Engineering company. Only the colleges with bigger names, such as Stanford, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and Cal Tech, have many more companies attending their career fairs. Their companies span farther outwards, while Cooper only attracts companies from the NYC area, since that is the only area that knows of Cooper well. </p>
<p>Grade inflation wise…there is none. Actually, there is grade deflation. I remember a NJIT grad school recruiting officer said that usually, they will consider seniors with a 3.0+ GPA for their grad school. He would see all the jaws of the seniors drop, because no one has that high. And then he would say, “Oh, but from Cooper, we would probably accept 2.8+” </p>
<p>Social life - There isn’t any, or there is a pathetic attempt at a social life, but it’s pretty pathetic. We don’t’ have a campus, and when people hang out, its usually studying together. If you’re going to Cooper, you must be a nerd. If you’re not, you may not fit in. The non-nerds…they’re like…an extremely small minority and they usually get kicked out because their grades are too low. As an Electrical Engineer, you have to study at least 6 hours a day to keep up with the workload. Cooper’s curriculum is a little more demanding than other engineering schools. You typically have 25 hours of classes a week, and expect 30 hours of studying a week. There aren’t any good sports teams at cooper. Like I said, there are attempts at a social life. Cooper’s basketball team plays other nerd schools like Polytech and schools like that, because nerd schools suck at sports. Polytech beats us too. Cooper has a running club. Another pathetic attempt. I see the running club run around the school on Tuesdays. There are two fraternities. One is called the nerd frat, and the other is just the normal frat. Normal frat guys are on the verge of being kicked out, and the nerd frat guys spend their Thursday nights playing N64. </p>
<p>Money - Cooper is free…tuition. There are other fees. And the books you have to buy, they’re very expensive, and there are some wacko professors who require you to buy books that don’t even print anymore, so you have to buy them used and you have to find someone who has a book from 1960. If you live at home, it’s about $5,000. Dorming costs money. At least $9,000 for the first year, and then they kick you out. So you have to find a place for yourself. And sometimes your roommates force you out. I know some guy, he was so dirty and smelly, that his roommate couldn’t take it anymore and left. </p>
<p>Also, I feel that Cooper’s reputation is on the decline, because in the past two years, many very reputable professors have left to teach at better schools, such as Stanford and MIT. This is because Cooper’s financial crisis has led to many professors not being paid enough. So they are hiring new, very inexperienced professors. Even though they have a financial problem they will not raise tuition. They are devoted to free tuition. They just keep raising “student fees”. When I started Cooper, it was only $325 a semester. Now, it’s $700 a semester.
Since Cooper is so poor, the facilities are very ancient. For example, registration for classes at other colleges is done online. Very convenient, fast, and fair. Registration at Cooper is like a race. It’s an early camp out at the registrar’s office. Next week, I’m going to be waking up at 3AM, and getting to school at 6AM, to sit in front of the registrar’s office, so I can get into the classes I want and need. You hand in a registration card. Cooper is very old. They don’t have new technology. Even my high school had online registration for classes. I remember when I went to the open house; I saw something leaking from a pipe in a chemistry laboratory. That wasn’t so great. In 2007, Cooper will build a new building…If they beg hard enough for a couple billion dollars. </p>
<p>Workload - Cooper is a small school, with a lot of competition within your own classes. Some professors use the bell curve, in the Electrical Engineering major. Most of the professors won’t give D’s. If you fall in the D range, they just fail you, and you fail that class. Then, you pretty much get kicked out, since you can’t continue with the curriculum. Freshman year, I remember taking some Electrical Engineering classes. I didn’t sleep for several days, working on some projects. I went to school 7 days a week to do schoolwork. Now, I go to school 6 days a week to do schoolwork and I go to work 1 day a week. People who try to lead a fun or sociable life at Cooper often find themselves on the verge of being kicked out. </p>
<p>At Cooper, there is hard work and a lot of it .You can expect exams weekly, since you have 8 or 9 different classes a week. Some professors’ homework assignments are ridiculous. I remember last semester, my professor said, “Homework this week, Chapters 1 and 2, all questions.” I look in the book, and it’s over 200 questions for the week. And throughout the whole semester, he assigned EVERY single problem in the book. And many people didn’t do it. I tried. I stayed up four days straight doing them, and I still didn’t finish them. I got really sick, because I was taking a lot of caffeine to stay awake. Finally, by the end of the semester, he gave us a final exam. He had three questions on it, and no one finished in two hours. And he said, “See, If you did every question in the book, then you would know how to do them.”, because he took the three questions straight from the book. But because they were like the 100th problem from different chapters, no one got up to it. </p>
<p>This semester, I have a professor who teaches thermodynamics, but his exams aren’t on thermodynamics. People have complained, but you can’t do anything about it, because he is the head of the department. I’ve heard of a professor, who gives quizzes, on the lesson that day. You don’t even have time to study it at home or after class. He just gives you a pop quiz on that lesson, in the last half hour of class. They will not answer your questions if you don’t understand. They just degrade you. Anyway, good luck with whatever college you choose. I have to go and study…I have too many exams. Adios."