@RightCoaster wrote
lol good one.
How many of you have kids that applied to one of their parent’s alma maters?
My son applied to my wife’s. He never expressed an interest in mine. He did get deferred from 1 school I got into though. I still have some legit cred in our house because of that, lol
I also have one other question. I also asked in the 2019 thread, but people in here might have more experience so I’m reposting:
Question for you people with kids that have done portfolios for schools? My son is on his HS robotics team and is in charge of all of the CAD work and the team ended up using a lot of his ideas and plans to create the finished robot.
Do you think he should save the CAD files and pictures of the robot for some sort of supplement he can use in his application? He will probably do the same thing Junior year, he likes the design aspect of robotics more than programming or actual building.
Mine applied to my alma mater and got a very nice scholarship from them as well. But she’s probably not going there.
S1 applied to my alma mater, S2 did not. I was OK with not applying to it, I just wanted him to be sure he wouldn’t regret it later.
@RightCoaster Our sons sound similar as far as enjoying the CAD design aspect. I suspect that when he takes a Solidworks class as part of his engineering program he may be correcting the teacher occasionally.
@RightCoaster Save everything! You will use it at least once - I guarantee it.
@RightCoaster - My DS also did robotics, but we never sent any portfolios since he didn’t apply for engineering. What type of robotics he is in (FTC/Vex/FRC)?
OK @STEM2017 I’ll have him save it all. Son1i9 might end up doing some sort of dual degree thing. He likes studying about engineering and math, but I think he desires to work as someone that designs consumer products. He’s always sketching up ideas or designing stuff with Solid Works. So if he goes into some sort of design program I think having the images/filesplans handy might help. I’m going to talk to hiim tonight about this.
@RightCoaster my S is applying for an FTC scholarship that wants to see a presentation about his robotics projects. So I’d save it, it can’t hurt and it could be useful.
@srk2017 He does First Robotics and Vex. I was at RPI recently and there was lots of talk about portfolios and digital portfolios/slideroom and I was clueless. They have a lot of architecture and design programs at that school so they must require portfolios from a decent amount of their applicants. I have not checked to see if engineer can or need to submit anything to the different programs. I’m just starting to figure things out for him. Keeps my mind off thinking about son17’s impending decisions!
@RightCoaster There are SOOOOO many apps for all different purposes. He’ll find a way to fit his work in.
@caroldanvers excellent point! I’d already forgotten about that scholarship. There are some seniors on his team applying for that scholarship too. Thanks for the reminder!
@RightCoaster I would think MechE would be a good foundation for a design career. As an example, the main design prof (at least for undergrads) at UCSB has that background. https://designlab.me.ucsb.edu/
Alma maters: Both my wife and I went to the same undergrad institution; D17 has never had any interest in it, or in either of the places my wife went for grad school. She used to say she wanted to go to where I went for grad school (despite my discouragement of the idea—it’s a cutthroat place for undergrads, by reputation), and was quite keen on it until she toured it and saw the zero-sum attitudes of the families that were there that day. D19, on the other hand, may well apply to all of them (except where I went for grad school), even if just for the sake of doing so.
@RightCoaster - when we were at RPI last week, they were adamant that unless it was for an architect or design course - “Do not send a portfolio - no one will look at it.” That said, I’m sure that there are other schools and or scholarships that the designs would be handy for. I know that RIT has some Engineering Design majors too.
@Motiv8tedmom23 Many Honors College applications ask for a piece of creative work in any format. I think @RightCoaster S’s work might be appropriate for that.
@RightCoaster - My DS did FTC for 2 years and other members of the team did 4 years and they are at schools like GT, UCSD etc. and none of them sent any portfolios for admissions. They all mentioned it as EC and probably wrote essays on it. Lot of schools seems to give great value for engineering admissions. My DS is a Dean’s List Finalist so he listed it in the Honors and he applied for FIRST Scholarships at couple of schools.
@RightCoaster I would definitely save everything you can. S17 used his CAD designs when applying to the Blount program (a liberal arts minor for any major) at Bama. He sounds a lot like your S19, and you never know when a specific scholarship, program or college will want to see his creative work. And, he was able to talk about it with the students working the 3D print lab when we visited – I thought he was going to try to get hired right then. So, your S19 might even want it to apply for an on-campus job later.
Applying to alma maters H and I went to the same in-state u, which doesn’t offer engineering. S applied to their tech program anyway because H had read somewhere that colleges get some kind of “credit” for having NMFs apply. Not sure if that’s a factor in rankings or what, but we figured it wouldn’t hurt anything.
Thanks guys. I just told son19 to save his files and any pertinent images he has for the project. It can’t hurt, he may or may not use them. Right now he is leaning towards ME, but at RPI and maybe RIT they have a program where you can study both ME and Design and I could see him really enjoying studying the design aspect more than ME. I’ve been told that having the ME degree and then studying design is a good way to go. He iis a funny kid. He loves soccer more than anything and is kind of jocky, but then he is on the math team and the robotics team and really enjoys hanging out with that crew. He said he would love to work for Nike, one of the snowboard companies, designing sport products. He is also interested in biomedical engineering, he thinks it might be interesting to design replacement body parts. He has time to figure it out.
Thanks for your advice!
Obviously my daughter did apply to my alma mater as a back up. She’s always thought it was beneath her so I’m lmao that she was denied/waitlisted. Obviously it’s only funny because she already has better options.