Great idea!!!
United Launch Alliance, Ball, Sierra Nevada and Boom Supersonic are but a few aerospace companies that have a presence in the Denver area. Start trying to find connections early through family and friends and then through professors. Landing an internship is highly dependent on who you know as much as what you know.
More like, the number of students admitted to the school or engineering division will produce more students who want a specific major than the department has capacity for, even though the school or engineering division has enough capacity overall. So schools either admit by major initially or have a secondary admission process later.
I am the original poster of this thread and wanted to add that my son just got accepted into Virginia Tech Engineering this past week. Now we have to add that to the decision. Any thoughts or advice on VT versus PSU. We had to eliminate the other schools due to cost. We are instate for PSU. VT could be within our budget but still a difference of ~13k/year. Is it worth the extra 40k?
@eyemgh @katliamom @boneh3ad @mommdc @ucbalumnus Your thoughts?? Thank you so much!
You may want to check http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/2174743-first-year-engineering-programs-secondary-admission-to-major-criteria.html
Thanks! We are aware of the ETM requirements for engineering. It certainly puts a lot of pressure on the students but they can’t avoid it if those are the school they have been accepted to and can afford. My son had to take of UMD and CU Boulder due to cost (full price tag) and out of those, UMD was the only one without ETM. He is down to VT and PSU and both have ETM. He is aware of this and understands that he will need to maintain a solid GPA. He has no other choice. It is all a bit stressful though for sure!
$13k per year is optimistically rounded down to $40k. It’s $52k if we’re being honest. We paid that much more for our son to attend an OOS school, but unlike your son, the instate flagship didn’t resonate with him. I’d choose PSU and give him some of the difference in an invested trust if you can afford to. He’ll get an equivalent experience. JMHO.
@eyemgh I honestly can’t do math! lol! I quickly realized I didn’t add that up correctly! lol! Thanks for your opinion! PSU is looking real good at this point! We went to the Accepted Students day yesterday and he felt really good about it! Might do a visit to VT for him to see if anything changes, but otherwise, PSU will be it!
I would highly recommend a lite schedule first semester at Penn state. Calculus 140 with anthro 1, English 15 and the seminar for engineers. Son had a terrible first semester as he had too much fun outside the classroom. Can’t believe he is at an A in Cal 1 right now but he woke up and well felt the pain of failure for the first time in his life
Nice to hear happy “bounce back” stories 
The first semester of college challenges many students (especially if they were bright students who had successful “wing it” methods in college). For engineering students, the workload is often even more intense than other majors… so that first semester can be quite an adjustment period.
Test are frequently longer and harder. Even the best students can be caught off guard. I remember vividly FaceTiming with our son (a practice @colorado_mom thankfully suggested we do that we still maintain today) after his first test. It was in honors calc 3. He said something happened to him that had never happened before…he got a C on a math test. It wasn’t curved and he scored a 79. I asked him what the range was. He said there were scores in the 30s. Every student in the class had scored a 5 on the Calc BC AP test. He ended up with an A, but it was a good intro into what would be needed going forward.
Virginia Tech would offer a different state and culture and it’s smaller, but in terms of environment, academics, and outcomes, it’d be very similar to Penn State.
Perhaps go on a visit if you can afford the difference without loans to decide whether qualitative aspects are worth the cost difference?
If the cost difference makes things tight don’t worry.
@MYOS1634 hit it on the head. There will be a qualitative difference. Afterall, no two schools are alike. That is one of many reasons that rankings are so dumb. The way to think of that dollar differential should be more like a gift for the different experience rather than an investment in final employability and salary.
@MYOS1634 @eyemgh Thank you so much! The rankings are what I think is holding him back from being 100% committed to PSU. And sure, money is an issue. We have some saved, but not the whole package. Both of us will need to take loans if VT is his dream and at this point, it isn’t at all. He keeps asking if VT is worth the extra $50k and I can’t answer that since I’m not in the engineering world. If you are saying that there is no difference in final employability and salary and the rankings don’t matter, I feel he will be settled in his decision and head to PSU, along with some extra money in his pockets! He really did like it there a lot and saw himself happy there. He just really needed an engineers expert view on these two schools to help him make the decision.
AFAIK the PSU Engineering brand is VERY strong.
The difference might be geographical: both are strong in the mid Atlantic, PSU may have more influence in NYS, OH, and New England (Philly, NYC Boston) whereas VTech may be stronger in the “upper” South.
I’m not sure even in the DC area that there’s a preference for VTech grads over PSU grads all things being equal.
The VTech brand will carry him farther in NC/SC/KY/TN if that’s where he wants to work but even there employers know a PSU degree.
Especially if you’d have to take parental loans, don’t look back.
Many people try to sell the “go to school X if you want to make more money and have better opportunities” cool-aid, but it really largely boils down to where regionally the graduates end up working. After they work one job, engineering becomes VERY egalitarian, with those who can do, moving up the food chain and those who can’t lagging. School choice becomes a limited distinguishing factor.
My son is a classic example. He went to a good program and amassed a very solid record of academic achievement, work experience, and projects. Before he graduated, he had two offers, both that he was very interested in. One was in a relatively rural East Coast town, the other in a very large West Coast city. The West Coast offer was $30,000 higher than the one in the East. Much of that difference, but not all, is eaten up by the significant cost of living differences.
One of my favorite tools in assessing these decisions is to go to LinkedIn and search for the school. Click on Alumni and then scroll right and under What They Do select Engineering. Click the show more button and it will reveal, in order, the companies their alums work for. If he does that he will see that, with a couple of exceptions, both institutions place their grads in virtually the same companies.
The power of graduating debt free is HUGE. I certainly wouldn’t choose debt for an arbitrary rankings listing. Those change every year. If that distinction was material, you’d expect it to show in the list of companies where alumni work. It doesn’t. They are both peer institutions, both well respected.
That’s my opinion. Certainly others can chime in.
I think we met at PSU & MD (my son is a redhead also :)). He was accepted to the same schools - except he was wait listed at VT. While he would have loved to go to Boulder, he also didn’t get any $$ and it didn’t make sense. Maryland and PSU were his top 2 choices & your perceptions after both visits align with yours. The engineering programs are so similarly ranked that we went with Maryland as its in state for us. My friend who is an engineer & does hiring for an international company says Maryland , VT and PSU are all equally highly regarded. He is a PSU engineering grad :).