Small, affordable engineering college - Ohio Northern University

nova2nola
Sun, 08 Apr 2018 13:13:06 +0000

Just thought I’d put this out there for others in the same boat as my son - looking for a small college with engineering. Most people know about CalTech, MIT, Harvey Mudd, Rose-Hulman, Case Western, RPI, WPI. But I have one to add to the list: Ohio Northern U, a private college in Ada, OH. If your child is like mine (B+ student, an average test taker, but very hardworking and interested in CS/Engineering), this school is worth a look. Or if you need merit aid, but know you won’t get much if any at the big name schools.

We recently toured, and loved the school. It has a separate college of engineering, and is breaking ground this month on a brand new engineering building. The library has been recently renovated also - gorgeous. The students were friendly and very serious about academics. Their pharmacy school is well-known, and their musical theater program gets some play on CC. Lots of pre-meds as well. The male/female ratio is way better than most of these type of schools, and they have some good D-3 sports if your student wants that. Not gonna lie - the town is remote and small. But there seems to be a lot going on on campus, plenty to do.

The food gets bad marks in online reviews, BUT was recently overhauled - brand new cafeteria, good food (as good as any I’ve tasted on college tours, including JMU and Gustavus, which are ranked at the top). The housing was fine for freshman, nothing amazing, but gets better each year. You can live off-campus as a senior. There are fraternities and sororities, but they seem to be more philanthropy-based, not wild partiers. And the rush process seemed to be more like, “Want to join? Ok.” rather than the stressful rushing & matching thing at many colleges. Greeks don’t dominate the campus life.

They have an optional co-op program for engineers, which adds a 5th year. Job placement for engineers is 96% according to the video we saw on tour. We toured the labs with a professor, and they were great. Will be even better in the new building. Saw lots of students working on cool projects.

I talked to a professor about retention of engineering majors. He said they don’t lose many, and that if someone is struggling, they have a program in place to identify and help them. Lots of personal attention from profs, which is unusual in engineering, I think. Not a cutthroat, weed-out, sink-or-swim kind of place at all.

Anyway, I hope this helps some people out. I had never heard of this college a few weeks ago, but now it’s in my son’s top 2. An Ohio mom visiting with her sons told me that although it is not known outside of Ohio, it is very well respected in the state.

If anyone out there has experience with ONU, please chime in. Would love to know more about it.