Thanks everyone! I’m surprised to see this much consensus! He had been hearing from friends that research is the gold standard and that colleges value consistency, so continuing the research was the obvious choice. I think he would prefer the construction job, so he’ll probably be thrilled when I tell him what you all said.
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I do wish kids would stop listening to their friends. Up until a few years ago, “research” wasn’t a thing and now all the kids think they have to do it. It’s great for some kids and I guess it keeps them busy, but really, I can’t think of a worse way for a teen to spend their precious summer. For the majority, it’s “pay to play” “research” and it’s simply not that interesting.
For every one kid that is actually doing really meaningful research (maybe one day, when they are in college, it might be published) there are 100’s of others whose parents have simply spent money.
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Experience doing labor and trades work could be useful for an engineer in terms of designing things that would not be unreasonably difficult to build, maintain, or repair.
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That is by far IMO not the useful part of learning labor and trades work. Designing a set of plans is not usually that difficult. That’s the fun part. In a way, my favorite projects are those that never get built.
The hard part is getting it built. Problems always crop up in a job site. Working through them with the contractor is key. Contractors value age and experience. They do not take kindly to engineers who think they know everything, especially because they got grade grades and test score through school, and had fancy interning and research jobs.
They do look favorably on people who feel comfortable shooting the breeze with them, are willing to listen to them, and appreciate what they do. They would especially like someone who has done the grunt work in the field.
That is the most useful part of the job. And even if they don’t go into civil engineering. Someone who is willing to do grunt work, physical hard work, shows a lot of backbone.
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There’s actually quite a lot of schools that have automerit. UTD and Alabama are of a few National Merit schools with big offers but many schools have automerit. But again, it will depend on your budget and then stats and geographic flexibility.
But UMD does not have automerit - so if you have a budget to achieve, unless you can afford UMD at full cost, it can not be the only school on your list.
I would advise three buckets:
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Assured to hit
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Good chance to hit
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Possible but not very likely to hit - if you are a MD resident, but can’t afford the $29K or so for tuition, room and board, it goes in this bucket. It may be your top choice but you need a lot of winds to blow the right way for it to work, in essence.
UMD is odd - they have the Honors, Scholars, and FIRE programs - so in essence, three supplemental programs.
Every year, the most amazing kids statistically post that they got Scholars, not Honors and get offended. Or same with FIRE.
And kids with less stats get Honors - so there’s just no way to know. And you must be in Honors to get Banneker Key.
The schools with no loan, meets needs are more competitive - because they are picking and choosing and if they are need aware and you need too much, you can be rejected simply for that reason. There was an interesting article a few years back. Lafayette College walked through their process of who to admit and basically they were turning down many academically qualified that needed too much. They’d rather give $30K to two people than $60K to one - was the premise - I made those #s up but that was the gist.
Here are a few of many examples of automerit
From WVU, Kentucky, and Kansas - but that’s three of many out there. So you can easily determine your price - and sometimes, but you can’t count on it, they might show up with more. But you’ll know you’ll get at least this much. So if you share stats, a budget, and geographical flexibility, you can build the “assured” list - and then have UMD remaining as a possible but unlikely (as you’d need help - if it doesn’t meet the budget at full pay).
Construction, construction, construction!! It’s so important to know how things are actually built in the field. Contractors have much more respect for engineers who have a clue. TBH, I don’t. But DH worked as a rough carpenter for several years. I’ve tended to do the theoretical calculations, and he puts together details that can be built. 
If I had it to do over again, I would work in construction every summer during college.
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My EE engineer husband worked construction before getting his engineering degree. He was also a professional theater electrician. He was able to talk the talk with the folks on the ground because he had actually walked in their shoes, and knew their “language” and what they did.
I would say…research would be at the very bottom of options here.
In addition to the construction work, he might also want to find opportunities to shadow actual civil engineers (and others) and have conversations with them about their fields.
My DH was always happy to find time to talk to a prospective engineer…and discuss options, etc.
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I appreciate the effort, but at this point he’s still sorting out what he wants to study, so he’s not at the point of making a list of schools.
Of course he will apply to more than one school. Having said that, the three schools you list with the highest guaranteed merit come in at or above the cost of our in state options, even without any merit.
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That was 3 random schools. Showing you examples.
As I said, once we know budget, stats, and geography, then we can find the appropriate schools - if there are any.
That was just to show you how auto merit works but how schools like a UMD don’t have ‘auto’ merit - was all.
Wasn’t recommending those three. But responding to your message that just a few have it which isn’t correct. Many do.
And if he ends up in an engineering discipline - civil or otherwise, it will include many.
If he changes his mind after the Summer, he’ll have time to adapt the list too.
I didn’t say that just a few have it.
Apologies if I misread. I saw you listed Bama and UTD and they are National merit schools so I thought you conflated with Automerit.
UTD, by the way, does not appear to be an automerit school. Bama is, of course. If Engineering, with a 3.5 and 1420 SAT / 32 ACT - would be $20k-ish all in. Non engineering, $2500 higher.
Good luck to your student.
It makes students more indistinguishable from each other, which is not a recipe for success in today’s college admissions environment.
I thought the UTD NMF was automatic. Is it not?
He’s listening and then fact checking. If he just listened and took what they said as gospel, that would be more frustrating.
I know that pay to play research doesn’t do much for a college app, but I thought that since he was paid it would look good.
Yes. Go back to your message and my response.
I responded based on automerit. Not NMF merit which is a smaller level of schools.
You noted Banneker Key which requires Honors at UMD and then some so UMD is $29k. That’s full pay this year for tuition, room and board. If that’s out of budget, even if NMF, you have to consider UMD a reach. If in budget, then depending on stats maybe a match or likely. But a BK is a reach regardless.
So
National merit is a small set of schools where you could free tuition up to full ride. This is Bama, UTD, Tulsa, Maine, NJIT, Wash State and more.
Automerit can be a host of schools and tuition, room and board costs will vary. This is many schools. I simply sampled three random
above as I have no basis for stats, budget or location preference.
Then non auto merit, like UMD - merit is possible but shouldn’t be counted on - so worth applying but unless full cost is affordable, it should be considered unlikely.
It does. Scoop ice cream at Baskin Robins, move shopping carts at Kroger - it’s all good. The paid lab job too - as it’s paid. You are not paying. It’s a real job.
I think what people are saying is construction gets you an insight to a possible inteeest (CivE) and on an application it may stand out vs getting a yawn bcuz so many will say they work in a lab. The paid part in theory could be passed over too, although if you start with paid employment - I don’t think it would be.
But I think a paid job is good - period. If he truly wants to do the lab because that’s a true interest, I see zero issue.
At many merit schools, ECs don’t even matter.
But at schools where they do, with several Summers of paid work and whatever he does during the year, he will have passed the EC bar.
I think looking past admissions where he’s gonna be fine with either summer role in my opinion, @OctoberKate story is of great benefit to someone in fields where usually first and second year students struggle to find internships.
Even if he doesn’t end up in engineering, both jobs are FANTASTIC and will show a young man of hard work and achievement to future employers.
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And social media is often not helping. Asking anonymous kids online what they are doing to stand out to colleges is obviously a self-defeating strategy to most experienced adults, but an understandable mistake given the general nature of where kids today look for answers to important questions.
Fortunately for the OP’s kid, it feels to me like the OP is well aware of this issue and trying to provide meaningful help.
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I agree with the idea that anything paid can be advantageous. Many kids change their majors when on campus. I am actually curious how your son came up with such a specific academic and career path and whether it is likely to change. For some, it holds steady, and for others it changes! (And by the way he sounds like a great kid!)
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Absolutely! At least in Mechanical Engineering (I don’t know about Civil Engineering.) My husband works for a large company that makes medical devices, and devices that are unreasonably difficult to build is a huge problem for this company. Often they don’t discover that the devices are unreasonable to build until they have sunk a lot of money into a certain design. My husband is the only guy on his engineering team who has experience working assembly, and this experience is invaluable. The other guys just don’t seem to be able to imagine themselves actually building these devices (often hunched over a microscope with tweezers) but my husband did similar assembly himself for 3 years, so always designs with the production floor and its builders in mind. He has rescued many a project this way. He also has increased cultural understanding of builders/assemblers. In medical device assembly, it is often female immigrants whose primary language is not English. They do not give their opinions easily, they keep their mouths shut until they have known you for a long time, but their opinions matter. My husband goes out of his way to get to know the floor workers, but there are engineers on his team who have never been to the production floor!
ETA: For the OP’s kid, I vote Construction job all the way!
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I don’t think that he’s going to move away from engineering. He’s a kid who has loved to build since he was a toddler, and has consistently answered the “what do you want to be when you grow up?” question with “engineer” since he was about 3, other than a brief period when he wanted to be Santa Claus, the ultimate maker guy. His siblings would give a different answer every time, airplane pilot, ballet dancer, soccer player, garbage truck driver, president, giraffe (not sure what college major prepares you for that), but he didn’t waver.
He was pretty set on civil engineering, until he joined the robotics team, and loved that, so he thought about mechanical, and then the lab job kind of fell in his lap last summer, and he really enjoyed it and thought about maybe doing biomedical engineering. If I had to guess, he’ll come back to civil, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he picked another kind. I would be very surprised if he switched out of engineering altogether.