<p>I think that Olin is just a fantastic place for engineering and for the college life itself. Yet I want to be balanced for viewing Olin. I know a lot of strong points that Olin has. So I want to hear from Olin students that is there any disadvantage or regret you have gotten since you became an Olin student.
(like unestablished schedule or not good for pre-grad school)
I would appreciate your sincere answer.</p>
<p>That is a good question. We should have asked our student guide about her regrets, if any. We visited Olin sometime back. </p>
<p>I do not know how to judge Olin because it is so much different from all the Universities we visited. My dad said he saw both advantages and disadvantages because of Olin being so small. The main advantage he saw was that more personal attention is given to each student by the faculty and staff. The main disdvantage he saw was that it will take quite a bit of time for all the curriculum experiments to be finished and the syllabus put on a solid footing. Plus, he thought that it will take quite a bit of time to have all the technical equipment and infrastructure comparable to top-flight engineering schools to be in place.</p>
<p>I’ve never had any regrets about coming to Olin because there was never any other college that I wanted to attend. From the first time I visited I knew that Olin was where I wanted to be, so I never had any difficult choices about that.</p>
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<p>Olin has a goal of continuous improvement. What that means is that there will never come a day when the way we teach engineering is set in stone and the curriculum is no longer in flux. I think that’s good. After all, our school will never be perfect, which means that we can always make it better, so why should we at some point declare our work in progress done?</p>
<p>As the parent of an Olin student, I will try to address some of your concerns.
The class of 2006 seemed to have no problems getting into some pretty impressive graduate schools and employment opportunities. Two of the graduates received Fullbright Scholarships and four received National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships. Three of the graduates are attending M.I.T. and three are at Stanford. Other graduate schools that the class of 2006 attend include: Oxford University (UK), Cornell, Harvard Business School, Rice, Berkeley, UC Irvine, Penn State, Michigan, and Tufts School of Medicine. They are employed at companies such as: Boston Scientific, IBM Almaden Research Center, iRobot, and Raytheon. There are four graduates who are interning at the United States Antarctic Program. All in all I think this shows that their degrees from Olin were well respected. </p>
<p>In response to your concern that Olin does not have the “technical equipment and infrastructure comparable to top-flight engineering schools,” I think that this not necessarily true. Their facilities are state of the art. In fact Olin just received an NSF grant of nearly $500,000. to purchase a confocal microscope. The grant is a vote of confidence by the NSF, that Olin is providing state of the art education to their students. </p>
<p>Remember that Olin is an undergraduate college only. Most colleges that you describe as “top-flight” only allow graduate students to do advanced research. At Olin, most students do graduate level research or internships at major corporations during their summer breaks. This past summer four Olin Sophomores participated in the 2006 Vehicle Design Summit using facilities at M.I.T. and the Rindge School of Technical Arts. Other research opportunities have included: Brown University, Cornell University Material Science and Engineering, Harvard Bauer Center, Stanford University National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network, UCLA Department of Physics and Astronomy, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and many more. Olin students have interned at: Boeing, Genentech, IBM, iRobot, SolidWorks, NASA JPL, Central Intelligence Agency, & Intel, and other notable corporations.</p>
<p>In addition, Olin was just named one of the “New Ivies” by Kaplan/Newsweek. I would say the school has received amazing recognition for an institution that is only five years old and is unaccredited. The accreditation is only a matter of formality, and I think you will see in the next few months that Olin receives both the ABET and NEAS&C accreditation.</p>
<p>beck & conundrum, thanks.</p>
<p>Thank you, I appreciate all your answers</p>
<p>The first few weeks have been interesting. The professors want to get us all up to speed, but it is still really tough. If you want to have less stress, you need to manage your time at least a little. So far, though, I’ve enjoyed being here a lot. The atmosphere is wonderful, and the people are great. We do weird, nerdy things (or just weird things) that work wonderfully as breaks. I saw a pirate/ninja duel the other day. I’m very glad I came here.</p>
<p>My son is an Olin sophomore, and I keep asking if there’s anything he doesn’t like, but so far all he says is everything is “awesome.” It is very intense and challenging, but he loves that. He still has time for drama, music, dance and socializing. But I don’t think he gets much sleep! At a regional get-together of Olin students over the summer, they all seemed very excited and anxious to get back to school, and they’re already lamenting the day their 4 years will be over.</p>