Depends upon the attrition rate and the admission rate. With a rate of admission above 90%, it is not safe to assume that all engineering students at this school are capable of handling the coursework.
Six year graduation rate was 47.5%–which is quite low.
If you think you could get there in May, I would call New Paltz admissions, tell them exactly this, and ask them to extend their response deadline to match Maine’s. I’d be very surprised if they wouldn’t, especially given that she was just accepted this week. I think they would grant an extension even in a normal year, and extensions are even more common this year, with the FAFSA problems.
I know everyone has their own limits, as far as what distance is tolerable. But I don’t see 5 hours away as that extreme. My daughter’s school, while within our home state, was more like 5.5-6 hrs away, and it wasn’t really a big deal - it was still easily driveable in a day. A 3.5 hr drive would have been nicer, sure, but the difference not worth ruling out a school for, at least for us. If she’s concerned about selectivity, New Paltz is at least as selective as Wheaton (similar median stats, but significantly lower acceptance rate), and much more selective than UMaine. And the town is frequently cited for its charm. 5 of the Most Charming College Towns in New York State
Maybe the UMaine visit will go well, and she’ll find that the combination of Engineering and Honors gives her a community she can be happy with. But it would definitely be good to have another option, with a lot of the attributes she likes about Wheaton, but with in-house engineering.
Excellent post. I agree with it 100 percent.
And yes, she will be challenged. If the school is ABET accredited, it’s fine. U Maine has a good reputation. I know lots of engineers who graduated from there.
Personal story: I was valedictorian of my high school class and had a unweighted GPA just under 99. I thought I was hot stuff. I got into the honors program at UT-Austin. To my shock, on my first honors physics exam, I got a 45 and there wasn’t much of a curve. I made a C in physics that semester. My last B was in 5th grade! I got a tutor and worked really hard. The second semester I got a B. I still graduated with high honors, but I’m just saying that engineering is an incredibly challenging major for most students. My two friends in my dorm who started in engineering switched to different majors after their freshman year.
And if they can’t, they will be weeded out VERY quickly, probably in the first year. Design classes at the upper level will have bright students.
Yes, and unlike many flagship U’s, UMaine has Engineering Tech majors, so that those who find the ABET Engineering majors too challenging have options that are still in the engineering field. So those who are retained in the ABET majors will be a strong cohort.
I’ve heard it asserted at many schools that Honors requirements don’t mix well with engineering majors and their requirements. I’ve never heard this about Maine specifically; does anyone know whether honors and engineering combine well there?
I don’t know about U Maine’s honors program. I will say that the honors program at UT-Austin didn’t do much for me. I think my only honors classes were physics and calculus! There were no other benefits that I could see. Maybe it’s better now, though.
Engineering is challenging enough that I wouldn’t add honors, personally.
Could be worth it for the honors housing, though, even if honors is dropped later.
Good point. I stayed in a wonderful private women’s dorm so I didn’t have to worry about housing.
Yes, I should clarify I mean the engineering students who stick it out. Lots of people who thought they wanted to do engineering will drop out within a year or maybe a bit more. If you are one of the ones who make it past that point, I think you will usually find the remainder are smart, motivated students, at least at most credible ABET-certified programs.
I am aware. At the time, she was really happy with Wheaton and was admitted EA, so she only applied at that point to high reaches. I encouraged her to broaden her options, but people on the spectrum can get very fixed ideas…
Live and learn.
Could she change her mind again (since she used to be fixed on Wheaton Physics -could the interest in Engineering switch back or move to sth entirely different)?
UMaine Honors housing will matter for her environment so register for that Asap no matter what unless they don’t reimburse and you can’t take the hit.
An issue is that if she changes away from engineering UMaine will not be a good fit.
You do have to deposit spmewhere but hopefulky New Paltz can delay a bit.
In May or soon there’ll be a list of colleges thzt miscalculated yield and still have places - there may be better fits on that list. (DO secure somewhere though).
Maine has quite a few boarding schools with pG years, if need be. It wouldn’t jeopardoze her freshman status, ie., chance at scholarships.
College wide or just for engineering?
U Maine has a fine engineering program. This would be an excellent option. We have first hand knowledge of the quality of their grads
The University of Maine honors program course requirements are listed at Requirements - The Honors College - University of Maine . These appear to fulfill many of the non-math/science general education requirements described at Program: General Education Requirements - The University of Maine - Acalog ACMS™ . The question would be whether the student is interested in the honors program required course subjects, or would rather choose other courses to fulfill the non-math/science general education requirements.
This also feels to me like the kind of thing where it would be great to be able to track down some recent Maine engineering/honors students to ask some questions. My experience with honors programs kids is they are often willing to give frank assessments of whether their honors program was helpful or not for doing something challenging like engineering or pre-med.
Like, sometimes they seem to feel like it actually made their gen ed/distributional requirements easier to fill, and they also got good mutual support from other engineering/pre-med/etc. people in the program (forming study groups and such).
I am not sure I have heard a lot of really starkly negative comments, but some people have instead suggested the benefits for them were limited to things like housing, and sometimes they actually exit the program early.
So it might be useful to see if some such kids can be found.
However, the chance of graduation for an engineering student who had a 4.0 HS GPA including hard courses in math and physics is significantly higher than that of a typical University of Maine student.
According to the University of Maine Common Data Set, the average HS GPA is 3.5, the OP’s student’s 4.0 HS GPA would be in the top 34.7% of enrolled students, the OP’s top 3% rank would be well within the 21.7% who had top 10% rank, and the OP’s student’s 1400 SAT would be in the top 12.9% of the 23% of enrolled students who submitted SAT scores (only 3% submitted ACT scores, meaning that at least 74% did not submit either SAT or ACT scores).
In other words, the high risk of non-completion of many University of Maine students does not apply to the OP’s student, at least not for academic reasons. The OP did not mention any financial difficulty with University of Maine either (the other big reason for non-completion).
It is relatively common for students to under-appreciate their in-state options. However, I agree with the general consensus that U.Maine is a great choice.
If a student wants to study mechanical engineering, then IMHO they should go to a university that has a great program and is ABET accredited for mechanical engineering. U.Maine is a very good choice (and is ABET accredited for many types of engineering). I do not see the point to take an extra year with a 3-2 program.
It looks to me as if your daughter probably has high school stats that are better than is actually needed to get into U.Maine. For a student who is going into an academically challenging major such as engineering, I think that this is a very good thing. This suggests that she will be very well prepared to do well in her engineering classes. I think that she will find students who are “like her” in her engineering classes (such as being academically very strong students who like engineering and math).
I think that this is exactly right.
One daughter said the same thing about the honor’s program at UVM. She dropped out of honors just because she did not see the point. She nonetheless did very well in graduate school admissions (and is currently well on the way to a DVM).
Regarding budget: We had the policy that if either daughter under-runs their university budget, then whatever is left they can use for graduate school if they want to. It sounds as if U.Maine might leave your daughter will some money that could offset part of the cost of a master’s degree if you were to follow the same policy.
I don’t think Publisher is worried about the OP student’s performance, but rather the caliber of the other students in her classes. And as I said, that won’t be an issue after the initial weeding out process.
And In fact I feel like mildly pushing back on the notion that this kid does not have enough choices. I actually think a choice of Maine (Honors) for engineering or Wheaton (with merit) if not engineering is potentially plenty of choice! Both really good options for those particular paths, and while they could have added more “targets” and maybe gotten admitted to such targets, would they necessarily have been better than those options? Or just different? Or maybe different and more costly?
Anyway, who knows, but this is part of why our HS prefers the term “Likelies” to “Safeties”, just to emphasize that a Likely can actually be a great option! Particularly when a Likely comes in really affordable.
I don’t know which of the OP’s options is the best choice, but I did want to share some information in relation to some of this which may also help future readers of the thread -
Dartmouth offers the program as a 2-1-1-1 in addition to a 3-2 (the 2-1-1-1 allows the student to do junior year at Dartmouth but return to the original campus to graduate with their class before returning for the BE year to Dartmouth).
According to the info on that page, Dartmouth does offer financial aid for the 5th year (but only towards tuition, not towards room and board); this financial aid package would be different from what Wheaton offers, of course, but financial aid is available.
That page linked above also lays out the requirements so that one can plan ahead with the appropriate courses at their original institution. OP, I’ve shared with you via PM more details that may allow you to reach out to a few Wheaton students who are currently finishing up that 5th year at Dartmouth. They can probably answer questions for you!
These are important to the OP’s daughter.
The University of Maine at Orono is not diverse–82% report as white, non-hispanic. Attracts regional students with about 75% Maine residents.
Would be a stretch to describe the student body as “other high achievers” based on admission stats. U Maine admits over 90% (94% according to US News) of applicants which is not-selective. Test optional. ACT 25th% to 75th% range is 22 to 30 according to recent US News.
Sure, the survivors who make it to the upper level classes in their last 2 years may be fine students, but it’s the first two years that should be of concern based on the daughter’s preferences.