UIUC vs. Tufts for Civil Engineering

hebrewhammer
Tue, 09 May 2017 07:01:28 +0000

This may be a minor point but the engineering school at Tufts doesn’t just occupy a single building - the departments are spread out across 5+ buildings which are, for the most part, either very newly renovated or still under construction. I also don’t think there’s any real advantage to there being an engineering library…

As far as the quality of undergraduate education, the majority of my classmates (I graduated 5 years ago) have gone on to start interesting careers in industry and/or academia. I’m not familiar enough with Illinois’s engineering school to say what sorts of opportunities are available there but I do agree that compared to somewhere like MIT or Stanford (where I went for my MS) you need to be a little more proactive at Tufts in going after research/project/internships. On the plus side, though, many of the engineering professors at Tufts are there BECAUSE they want to teach undergraduates, not in spite of it, and are happy to give undergrads the chance to do research.

I guess my point is that you shouldn’t feel bad if you choose Tufts despite a lower ranked engineering school as there will still be plenty of opportunities (and maybe better opportunities to actually develop relationships with professors) and the student life aspect is very different between the two schools.