My older son is a sophomore at WPI now and loves it. He was also accepted at RPI and didn’t apply to RIT. He didn’t want to go to RPI, just really didn’t like the campus/Troy when he visited, nothing specific was wrong, it just wasn’t right for him. He didn’t apply to RIT largely because he thought Rochester would get too much snow and he didn’t feel like it would be a better choice than the other schools he did apply to. We also, as it happens, are from N.Va., and I hear you on the challenge to get into UVA and VT from these schools.
Things my guy loved about WPI - the vibe. It feels like a campus, even though it’s on the outer edge of the city - it’s sort of similar to how American is situated off the main part of DC, but the campus itself feels really contained, with a nice quad, nice buildings etc. The town of Worcester is surprisingly large, and there are several other colleges in the city (Holy Cross, Clark, and more) but he doesn’t go into town often. There are nice restaurants, a decent size arena, and sporting events in Worcester if that’s your thing, and it’s a short an inexpensive commuter train ride to get into Boston (he’s done that more than he’s hung out in Worcester).
The kids were all very friendly and outgoing. He loved that the school also has an emphasis on music - he’s not a music person, but there’s a surprisingly robust group of bands. He loved the idea of the Jr. Year project - the school year is four seven week terms, not two semesters. In each term you take three classes, instead of a regular five in a semester. Jr. year one full term is spent doing the IQP project. Most of the IQP projects are abroad - he’s placed into one for next year in Greece (the other places on his preference list were Venice, Copenhagen, Rabat, and Prague - there are also locations all over Asia, some in Africa, S. America and Australia/NZ). The opportunity to spend a term doing a project - it’s not classes, it’s a real project that each location develops with local organizational input - was one that doesn’t come up often for engineers given all the classes they have to take, but WPI really makes it work. (He’s a double major - MechE, CivE with a Writing minor).
Social life has been good - there are definitely more men then women. When he applied it was a little more balanced, I think it was 55% men, 45% women then, but the last two classes have skewed more towards the men. There are fraternities and sororities, but they don’t seem to be like what I think of as normal greek life, it’s social, yes, but they really also do a lot to support academics and job searching. He’s not a gamer and while some of his friends are, most are not. What originally caught his eye about WPI is that he rows crew, and he was able to row on their team. He’s got a decent number of friends who are athletes. There are a lot of clubs, he’s not into robotics, but robotics is huge at WPI. He was briefly on the high powered rocketry club, which seems pretty popular and also really fun.
WPI gives good merit aid money, and gossip is that women get better money then men. I don’t know if that’s true, but it would make sense to try and build the female membership of their classes.
As a parent, one of the things I liked when visiting, and still find true, a year and a half in, is that the kids all seemed happy and like they wanted to be there. They were enjoying their experience and making good friends. It’s not a super competitive campus, and the students seem eager to share their knowledge and help their colleagues. Of course things are not always great (no one really likes the food, it’s not awful, but it gets some thumbs down) but in general, it seems like a good little environment for more sociable tech-y kids to learn and have fun.
. It’s a great campus, fairly close to downtown.