Several LACS offer a joint program with Columbia that offers the best of both, you can start at the LAC with their smaller classes and finish at Columbia. Also, a Comp Sci, Physics or BioChem major from Williams or Swarthmore, will be a very marketable degree. The STEM departments at Williams and Carleton are actually fairly large, similar in size to a Case Western , RPI or Olin, and they are more selective generally. Thus, also consider that employers are realizing that technology is so quickly advancing that the LAC skill set is equally important in the longer term.
The STEM enrollment at Williams or Carleton are not even close to a Case or RPI or Olin. RPI has 6500 undergrads, most are STEM. Williams is 2000, Iāll guess a third or half or STEM. Thatās like a 1000, because of course Williams does not have engineering. If you extend that logic, Carleton and Cal Tech are pretty similar as well.
Letās face it. If you want to major in engineering (of any type) and donāt intend to go on to a graduate school (or switch to a 3+2 program) later, LACs, other than HMC, arenāt, frankly, the best choices. Besides the lack of engineering-specific courses, LACs, other than HMC, donāt offer the kind of hands-on experiences (e.g. training in a machine shop) that benefit future engineers. Because of job opportunities and requirements, most engineers donāt go to graduate schools.
Thanks. I agree based upon what I have seen. Just worried about the scenario that S starts down the engineering path and decides it is not for him. That supports the idea of large universities where transferring from an Engineering college to Arts and Sciences, might be relatively easier than transferring universities. The other way to LAC with physics major and then grad school.
Yes, itās hard to get the right mix of bucolic, tight-knit community that one associates with a LAC and a full-blown engineering school.
My kid graduated from Santa Clara University with a degree in engineeringā¦and a double major in the college of arts and sciences as well. She easily could have ditched the engineering major if she had wanted to.
This university has a fine engineering program plus a number of other fine majors. Itās also a Jesuit school and frankly they do a great job with higher education.
School is located in the greater San Jose CA area. Campus is a traditional one.
Itās not the only college like this. Unless your kid chooses one of the tech colleges, it should be easy enough to switch out of engineering if he chooses to do so.
Thereās quite a few medium sized universities that offer engineering.
More important than enrollment is the size of the teaching faculty and their availability to students. With a faculty to student ratio of 1 to 7, the Williams STEM department faculty numbers are in total actually very similar to RPI.
Actually, what is more important is the faculty relative to students in those majors, as well as how much of the facultyās capacity is taken up by service courses for those in other majors. That impacts what the faculty can offer to students in that major (in terms of courses offered, how full they get, and other availability factors).
I think youāre right. But, I also think itās hard to get granular data about how many students are enrolled in particular majors at particular colleges. Ironically, both @TennisParent and @theloniusmonk are in agreement that LACs have fewer STEM majors as a proportion of their total student enrollment than universities with engineering departments.
As stated earlier, many schools offer some kind of āwelcome to engineeringā class the 1st semester. My own opinion is that kids should start out at a comprehensive university, where it is relatively easy to change oneās major. Or start at a CC.
Like the others here, I would also recommend Bucknell and Lafayette. Not sure if the following were mentioned: Univ of Rochester, Clarkson, George Wash Univ. , Syracuse (larger though).
OP, if your son doesnāt like engineering, what would other choices be? I was not concerned with my daughter going to a smaller Tech school because I knew if she didnāt continue with engineering, sheād transfer to another major this school had - math, chemistry, computer science. She was never going to major in English or history or dance.
When we looked at a small LAC, the admissions person went on and on about the 3+2 program and how great it would be. I noticed on the tour that the physics (or was it math?) department had FIVE professors. There was no way sheād have been happy there. We only looked at it because she was being recruited. What we learned was she needed a bigger school or at least a school with more science and math.
I donāt think 3+2 plans work very well. Iād ask a lot of questions about how many students have successfully transferred to the ā2ā school.
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This is exactly the reason our D18 went to Swarthmore. We werenāt really sure about Engineering long term, so we saw Swat as having the best options if things didnāt work out.
In an odd twist, had she not been at Swat I doubt she would have graduated anywhere else with an Engin degree. One of her professors literally took her under her wing and tutored her through 2 of her classes Sophomore year.
Engineering has been a major at Swat since itās founding and is now the largest major at the School. There are plenty of STEM kids wandering around the campus.
She has now been working for a couple of years, and the startup that hired her confessed (after a year or so) to targeting Swat because they wanted a non-research State U view of their issues and how to solve them.
I really want my son to look at Swarthmore, but he wonāt do it. I think it could be a good fit. Was there anything your daughter did not like about Swat? Did she take any classes at Penn? I thought that might be a good way to take some engineering classes as a larger university in combo with Swat, but not sure how realistic that is.
@SchoolNews Iām not EyeVee, but DS is a Swat engineering grad. There was one
engineering course at Penn he really wanted to take, but couldnāt fit into his schedule. Lots of labs makes things harder. He did take a couple of courses at Bryn Mawr though, which he really enjoyed.
Swat is a great place for someone who wants engineering but has many other interests s/he wants to explore. DS took courses in philosophy, education, anthropology, etc., and his writing and oral presentation skills strongly benefited. Engineers write lots of reports and have to make presentations to clients, so those are good skills to have.
It is a special place; do you know why your son is set against it? Itās collaborative rather than competitive, but the students are very smart and it can be intimidating.
Swarthmore is a great school. For STEM students, itās also a good training ground for grad schools and as future scientists. But as future engineers? Frankly it isnāt the best place for that purpose. Yes, the future engineer could expose him-/herself to many other subjects at Swat, but so could he/she at other schools.
Water rises to its own level. If you donāt believe Swat is a place for you to be a future engineer, then you donāt belong there. I guess it depends on how you want to use what you learn.
I would suggest that the non-engineering opportunities were equally as important as the engineering ones. When people run the list of engineering schools, not many have the level of non-STEM offerings that Swat does. Those classes at other schools also donāt have the same type of kid participating in small groups of 10-12 for almost all courses. My Dās friends from Swat are absolutely amazing kids. I miss Thanksgivings with her friends (we live nearby and hosted several each year).
My daughter didnāt know what she wanted to be at 17 when applying to schools, but she knew what she didnāt want for a career. Electrical Engineerā¦no thank you. Chemicalā¦nope. Environmental, Ceramic, etc., etcā¦not for her. She wanted to study engineering because she wanted the challenge and she wanted to know how things work. She was in it for educationā¦not a job. The job just sort of worked itself out in the end, and sheās doing something she likes with an interesting company where she learns a lot each week and gets paid fairly well for it.
It may not be the best place for a lot of people to study Engineering, but I will never question that it was the best (and possibly only) place for her.
@SchoolNews - there were a few things she didnāt like. Every single class was a challenge. Generally, that was a good thing, but there were times during the first 2 years where we all wondered if it was worth it. She was working all the time. It didnāt help that she played a sport and sang in the choir.
She also would have liked a semester abroad, but the engineering options were limited. She didnāt take a class at Penn. There are a lot of kids who take classes at Haverford/Bryn Mawr, but the Penn option has a lot more strings than the others and can be a big ātime suckā for one class. There are vans that run frequently to the Tri-Co versus having to hop a train to 30th St and then walk over to Penn. Another small point, but kids canāt eat at Penn using their Swat meal plan when theyāre on campus like they can in the Tri-Co. BM has GREAT food.
Looking back, sheās also a tiny bit upset she didnāt get to go there with the new Engineering building. The old one wasnāt greatā¦but thatās no longer an issue.
For all of those limitations, the other positive was her personal relationship with the professors. She knew them all by name, and they knew her (and all of her classmates). I mentioned in the last postā¦she had a very close relationship with one professor, who helped her both inside and outside of Engineering with some heavy calc issues ājust to brush upā with her MIT Ph.D. She was amazing.
Thanks
Olin in Needham MA is quite prestigious, small and project-based. Tufts would be good too.