I appreciate your thoughts on Syracuse. I want to walk the talk when it comes to my kid picking an affordable school that fits him, but this decision is not what we were expecting.
He does knows he will get his butt kicked anywhere. And he’s worried about it. I did hear from an engineering graduate from Syracuse that the classes are not as hard as they are at schools like Purdue. This student called them “easy”. There’s a reason that Purdue’s graduates are well-prepared and it’s not just about networking and name recognition. Rigor has got to be part of it. Of course, ABET assures that the programs are all sufficiently rigorous for adequate training.
However, I don’t think he’s afraid of hard classes. Both his parents could help with any class he’s taken and he has never asked or even needed help. It’s more that he doesn’t want classes to be unnecessarily hard or weed-out. Purdue students have told him that’s what some classes are like there. He hates grind culture, which is one reason he didn’t apply to certain schools. He is worried about his classmates being stressed and having any competitive vibe. Think bio at a place with few vs a lot of premeds. It’s just a different culture, even if the classes are of similar difficulty. He’s also expressed that he doesn’t want to be “one person in a sea of hundreds”.
But I think he’d succeed at Purdue and would enjoy it. I’ve got to think carefully about what we’ll talk about on the train ride to Syracuse 