Dartmouth vs Middlebury vs Bowdoin

monydad
Fri, 08 Dec 2017 20:55:06 +0000

FWIW, I am not a fan of those programs that require switching colleges .My understanding is few people complete them, and I am not surprised. . There is nobody at your first college who knows anything about engineering. No faculty, no engineering students, no lectures or activities on campus- so you will learn nothing to give you any meaningful guidance for when you get to the subsequent college. My understanding is financial aid doesn’t track to the second school. Your social life is uprooted. Social integration at the second school is difficult, because you are like a temporary transfer student and are taking like a zillion tough engineering credits there. And there is no career I’m aware of that you need two bachelor’s degrees for.

In most cases, at the point you are at an LAC and decide you really want to be an engineer instead, you are better off just transferring at that point to an engineering school to get your engineering degree, without going back to your LAC subsequently. IMO. Or instead you might finish off your BA in physics and then apply to a Master of Engineering program someplace. (Which is what I actually did). Depending on what you want out of a liberal arts education, it may be the case that you can continue learning what you want to learn outside of school, and forever, without getting a bachelor of arts degree.

If for some reason you really want the “five year program”, the ones that don’t force you to uproot yourself socially seem more feasible to me. Like the Dartmouth one, as described. Or the 3-2 with Barnard-Columbia.