Union Engineering/ Student Life

keepingitlight
Tue, 31 Dec 2013 12:35:02 +0000

My S didn’t end up there but while he was being recruited for a sport we visited several times as a family and he spent the weekend so I think we got a pretty decent feel for the school. I’d say about 1/3 of students are Greek, maybe a little more, which I think is pretty high for a small school. Kids aren’t allowed to pledge until sophomore year. I think that’s a great idea because it gives kids their whole first year to make friends and settle in before the whole greek vs independent thing comes into play. I’ve heard mixed things about the Greek presence at Union. It’s a small school so the negative tends to ring pretty loud…but the greek party culture is frequently at the ground zero of that “party school” conversation. Personally, I loved the Minerva houses. Im not sure exactly how it works, but usually, according to dorm, the kids are randomly assigned a social house and then that becomes their “home base” for social activity. Each Minerva is open to everyone and they all come up with different themed activities and stuff to “lure” kids to their parties…free food. The Minerva parties and activities are school sanctioned so they often tend to be where the party starts, and then kids go off for “less sanctioned” fun. As for Engineering, if it’s at all possible, I would HIGHLY recommend going to their Engineering open house. It’s usually in February and it went a LONG way in answering our questions about engineering in the context of a liberal arts school. They offer more than electrical but I’m not 100% sure which programs are ABET stamped. We got a hand-held tour of the engineering program from one of the directors (?) of the department and they really couldn’t have been nicer or more informative.