Basically, long story short, here is my situation:
I will be a Junior in college.
I am an RPI student who was a BME, but changed to Industrial Engn.(Stats) I am a very good student with networks with professors at RPI and I am even doing research with one of the prof. in my dept. I also perform very well in class and maintain a decent high GPA (above 3.6). I have good friends and relatively happy at RPI.
However, I applied to transfer because there were some things i was unhappy about rpi. I also wanted more options since i changed majors.
I wanted to transfer because:
Troy, NY SUCKS :-w
rpi endowment is low…billion dept
some profs are leaving…slighty shaky but ok
severe grade deflation with very little or NO curves (typically >94 = A)
**5. trying to go to a ‘better’ university or more ‘well-known’ college
^
reason 5 is prob. the biggest reason. i believe that graduating from a ‘better’ prestigious univ. can give you lots of benefits.
i am going to be a math major at vandy focusing MORE on STATS/FINIANCIAL. and hope to work in a wall st firm or insurance/bank company or BLS etc…
But BEFORE, i plan to go to graduate school (NYU, Cornell, basic. eastcoast top 15 school)
SO does going to VANDY give me a signifcant boost to enter a top 15 grad school over RPI???
Also, at vandy, courses have transferred well but i need to take more humanities courses…at RPI i can focus more on technical courses??? I have a MATH MENTOR position at RPI and intl’ student mentor
SHOULD I JUST STAY AT RPI OR LEAVE TO VANDY??? HELP!!!
WHICH IS BETTER IN MY SITUATION???
This is a personal decision and no one on this forum should be deciding for you. However, I think you have to realize some misconceptions in your premises.
Well, it is Troy...
Endowment has very little to do with the quality of education you are getting. It should not really be a factor unless the university is on the brink of insolvency and thatis not the case with RPI.
faculty come and faculty go. There is no university where the faculty is static so unless there is insolvency (see 2 above) and closure of departments, there is no real impact on your education.
Welcome to an engineering school...
RPI is very well known and is a good school. For Engineering, there is no question that your degree will be recognized form RPI. Vanderbilt will not give you a significant edge in entering graduate school because most graduate programs don't really look at the university but the student. If you want to go for an engineering graduate program, then RPI will certainly be more useful to you than a mathematics degree form Vanderbilt. For working on Wall Street, either one is probably OK.
Bottom line, it is your choice but do it for the right reasons.
Right now it seems to me that it would be better to stay. Although you’re school may not be as well known it seems like you have very good stats and would be able to compete next to anyone who went to a more well known school. Transferring that late would like incur alot of hassle that in my opinion wouldn’t be worth it. Plus, one more year of Troy cant hurt ;). Thats just my two cents.
Seems like you’re at a great school that you enjoy, and have solid grades. RPI is actually located in the region where you want to go to graduate school and work. Right off the bat, on the Class of 2013 Placement Report, I see students attending graduate school at Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, Penn, UChicago, NYU, MIT, CMU… Plus more elsewhere in the US (Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA, Northwestern, Vandy, CalTech). It doesn’t appear that getting into a great graduate school is a problem for RPI graduates, though granted, many of these may be for engineering. You’ve already proven you can be successful at RPI; you may come to Vandy and find the courses to be more difficult or have trouble establishing a social network (tough no matter where you’re transferring to).
Vandy is some sort of upgrade in terms of “prestige,” but who knows if that will translate into a better shot at top graduate schools. Nashville is certainly better than Troy, and the professors here tend to be excellent. It just seems to me like you have a great thing going at RPI. If you were unhappy at RPI, it would be a different story.
I would stay at RPI at this point. If you were a freshman looking to move I might feel differently, but at this point by the time you adjusted to your new school, made new contacts among the faculty, made new friends and developed a new social life, you maybe have one year left. So the point of moving because “Troy sucks” becomes minimal. You state you have good friends and are happy now, so I have to say bringing this aspect up at all is a little confusing. OK, you didn’t choose a school in a city where you get exposed to lots of interesting things, like New York or Chicago or New Orleans, etc. There are great grad schools in interesting cities. Choose wisely there if you want that larger city excitement. So while Cornell is an amazing school, I wonder if you would really like Ithaca any more than you do Troy. Look at Boston or LA or NYC, etc. if you feel you are missing out on this aspect of life.
You will certainly get into great grad schools coming from RPI, assuming you get good recs and do well on the GRE. In fact recs are a bigger factor in grad school admissions than in undergrad. So your contacts at RPI and the relationships you will have after nearly 4 years with your profs will be hard to replicate at Vandy.
I agree with the other poster that said endowment is an odd thing to bring up. I cannot imagine what that has to do with anything at the individual student, undergrad level for the most part. And besides, while a billion isn’t Harvard/Yale type levels of course, it is still a very large endowment and among the top 2-3% of all colleges and universities. They are hardly going broke. It only limits RPI as compared to Duke, Vandy, WUSTL, etc. But then those last three schools I mention wish they had Harvard money and feel limited compared to them and Yale. There is always envy of the bigger guy.
Figure out what it is that you really want both from school and from your personal living environment, and make those two work together. That is a great thing about this country, we have excellent schools in many different settings. It is too bad you didn’t realize to do this for undergrad, but hardly a disaster since you are happy at RPI for the most part. Just throw yourself into your schoolwork and research, have a great time with your friends, and then apply to grad schools where you think you will be happy both scholastically and personally.
Why don’t you check out study abroad for a semester or even a year (London School of Economics perhaps?). There are lots of great options that will 1) get you out of Troy 2) expose you to other parts of the world (always a plus) and 3) there are such a variety of programs these days that even those who don’t want the typical liberal arts coursework can find a fit internationally.
I would recommend going to Vandy only if you were hoping to remain in the south where the alum network on the business side might be an advantage. Speaking from the employer perspective, the difference in prestige is negligible or non-existent. I would care a great deal more about the skills you bring, the way you present yourself, and what you accomplished during your time in college. Sounds like you’re on track at RPI.
In many ways, you have described an excellent overall college experience at Rensselaer. Regarding #5, in my opinion, RPI and Vanderbilt are simply too close to each other in significant, measurable ways for that to be a major factor.
For graduate school you will need strong letters of recommendation from your instructors. A positive letter from a professor with whom you have done research will be especially helpful. Since you are well-connected to your professors at RPI, you should think twice about transferring out and starting over from scratch. Graduate school application deadlines tend to be in December or January. If you transfer to Vanderbilt, you will have three semesters or less to get to know the professors there and to look for recommenders. You may be able to present a stronger application if you stay with the professors you already know at RPI.
Transferring to a different college makes sense if you have compelling academic reasons to do so. For example if you run out of courses in your chosen field at your first college, it makes sense to move to a college that offers the curricular opportunities that you want. I do not see that happening in your case. Your industrial and systems engineering major at RPI includes courses that apply mathematics and statistics to many real world situations, which is excellent preparation for a career in statistics and finance. RPI also has a good math department if you prefer less emphasis on engineering. I do not see that you will gain curricular opportunities if you transfer to a math major at Vanderbilt.
In summary you appear to be flourishing at RPI. Why transfer?
For the record, in the head-to-head engineering program comparison in USNWR, Rensselaer and Vanderbilt are tied. I know your considerations are multi-faceted, @seouliteabroad, but this is one more indicator that the academic differences between these two schools are not as significant as you think they might be.
@fallenchemist Is it really fair to compare Vanderbilt to Duke as far as endowment sizes are concerned? Duke’s endowment is almost twice as large as Vanderbilt’s endowment.
In this context I think it is fair, but of course that is in the eye of the alumni. You have schools with small endowments by almost any measure, the few super rich schools, and everything in between. It also depends on what obligations that school has in operational terms, what the income from the endowment has to cover, and what that allows the school to do in terms of attracting top faculty, new facilities, etc. In that context, Vandy and Duke are both well ahead of RPI, Tulane, and others around $1 billion but that also have to support high level research, med school, law school, etc. but behind the few in more rarefied air.
Assuming fairly similar budgets, of course having a larger endowment gives that school potential advantages. But I would argue that most of those advantages support the graduate and professional schools, where getting that $5 million piece of research equipment and attracting that likely Nobel laureate to the faculty have the most impact. Certainly it helps at the undergrad level as well (newer dorms, better food choices, more ability to offer obscure courses, whatever) but IMO when you are talking about the difference between schools in these upper tiers the differences show up more in the grad and professional schools. This member is asking about undergrad.
4. Severe grade deflation with very little or NO curves (typically >94 = A)
As a former recruiter at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), I find this statement a bit disingenuous. My company at the time, only interviewed Engineering (EE, ME, Computer Systems/Computer Science) graduates with a GPA at or above 3.8 and we interviewed over 120 students with a GPA over 3.8, most with 4.0 GPA. We had one student (an African American) who was going off to Stanford to do his PhD in Electrical Engineering who had 3.9+ GPA and was being sponsored by AT&T Bell Laboratories. I have never seen such high numbers of undergraduates with these GPA stats, at any of the other leading Engineering Institutions I have recruited at. Come to think of it, maybe you are experiencing classes with such large number of students with high test/exam scores, there is no need to curve. Is it possible that you think you will get better grades at Vandy?
RPI is such a well respected Engineering institution, especially on the East Coast that I doubt Vandy will offer any advantages over RPI and might be a negative, in the overall scheme of things. One recent (2015) RPI Mechanical Engineering graduate I know, was just offered a $72K salary at Boeing in Seattle, Washington. I
Yes, Troy is not one of the most exciting cities, but you have weathered the storm for the past two years. IMHO, you should stay put at RPI and the next 2-years will go by in a heartbeat. You will have just as good (or better) access to the best graduate programs (and employment) anywhere in the US by graduating from RPI as you would if you transfer to Vanderbilt University.
By this I take it that you are an international student. As you know, even with the OPT visa extension it is extremely difficult for international students to find work in the US after graduation. Don’t change universities unless you have solid evidence that the new one would give you significantly better placement for internships and jobs, and that you would be able to develop the relationships necessary to help you take advantage of those superior placement services. I expect that there are more advantages to staying at RPI than to transferring at this point in your college career.