I recently began seeing a lot of positive things about RPI but I wasn’t able to tell how accurate all of this information was and what scale was being used.
I am applying this fall as an EE (ECE but most colleges don’t have that) major and I want to focus on autonomous systems and robotics in college and beyond. My current list is basically just the big names for engineering like MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, CMU, GT, Umich, UT Austin, etc. with my only safeties being Texas A&M and UTD since I am auto-admit there.
I have seen that RPI offers a lot of financial aid and so I was wondering how it stacks up against Texas A&M specifically for Autonomous Systems and Robotics. How do they compare in terms of getting jobs in this field? What about the research that is going on there?
In case it’s helpful, the OP’s chance me thread is here:
RPI is a great option for all things engineering! See if you can get your guidance counselor to nominate you for the RPI medal award. It is a $40K/year merit scholarship.
I think this student might have missed the opportunity. It is awarded at the end of junior year. However, I think for high stats kids, they tend to grant lots of merit, so it pretty much evens out.
My daughter wasn’t nominated by her guidance counselor until the beginning of senior year.
It is always tricky comparing a smaller private university like RPI to a massive public like TAMU.
Like in the latest NCES cohort, RPI graduated 602 primary majors in engineering, 69 in EE, which are actually very big numbers for a graduating class of 1379 overall.
But TAMU (College Station) had 13305 graduating students, 2334 primary in Engineering, 270 in EE. When you think about it, being almost 10X the size but only having around 4X in Engineering or EE specifically indicates how this is a real focus at RPI. But still, those are radically different department sizes.
Does that make TAMU a better choice? Obvious not necessarily, indeed colleges like CMU, MIT, and so on are also much smaller than TAMU, but I don’t think anyone would argue that makes them bad choices for kids interested in Robotics! But I think once you are talking RPI versus TAMU, it is more a matter of picking your favorite sort of context in which to study engineering, as opposed to a universal better or worse.
One thing I am sure about, though, is you are not going to be making an obvious mistake either way. These are both traditional engineering powerhouses in their own ways, both are specifically involved in plenty of robotics stuff, and I am sure if you do well at either, you will have plenty of opportunities for relevant internships. And then it is up to you to show that you are a good engineer.
As a final thought, you could try reaching out to the RPI Robotics Club:
It might be interesting to talk to some of those folks and see what they think about Robotics at RPI.
I think you have a number of great choices, but if you’re willing to look at smaller schools in the northeast, you may also want to add WPI (Worcester Polytechnic Institute) to your list, you should get in, the only question really is amount of merit aid. They have an ECE major or a Robotics Engineering major and are traditionally very very strong in Robotics. I know you are leaning away from an RBE major, but you could easily add an RBE minor to your ECE degree. I think I’ve read that WPI was the first US Institution to offer an undergraduate major in Robotics Engineering, and the also have a Masters and a PhD in RBE - which isn’t common - and does a good bit of interesting collaborative research in this area. Here’s a page that has some info on the RBE department - https://www.wpi.edu/academics/departments/robotics-engineering . Price is generally comparable to RPI, sometimes a little more or a little less after merit aid.
WPI is a great choice for robotics with many great internship opportunities in the area. If you enjoy project based learning, and a trimester schedule (allows for more classes), it is worth checking out. However, even with financial aid, you will probably not be close to the cost ot Texas A&M.
Great job prospects after graduation. Our town is full of both parents and kids who have graduated from WPI, and all have graduated with a job in hand. Also, lots of research that you can see on the school’s website.
I mentioned WPI back in the prior thread, I believe, and I still agree! Well worth checking out for anyone interested in Robotics.