Vanderbilt or UGA Honors?

midmo
Wed, 01 Apr 2009 10:11:21 +0000

TexasMom,

My son is a sophomore in the engineering school. Benefits of the program for him have included a lot of personal contact with professors from the start, research opportunities from his first month on campus (but see below), more opportunity than most engineering programs to take courses in A and S, sufficient credit for his many AP courses (and some university courses in hs) that he has been able to enroll in advanced courses, a chance to complete a master’s degree at the same time as the bachelor’s degree (again, see below*), a “small school” environment in the engineering program, where individual students are known. The courses he has taken have been rigorous.

Courses in A and S have been rigorous, and have given him a chance to get to know non-engineers. In fact, most of his roomates are not engineers.

All of the engineering majors are ABET certified (computer science is not strictly engineering and, to my knowledge, is not ABET certified anywhere). The fact that the engineering school is somewhat less well known than big engineering powerhouses with huge graduate programs is not, in my opinion, a factor, although opportunity to do actual research and get to know faculty (future references) is very important; that has not been a problem for my son. I was told by one of the deans that every student has the opportunity to be involved in research by junior year, many by sophomore year and some during freshman year (again, I address this below). If you peruse the engineering web site and the sites of the individual departments and the research centers, you can get an idea of what sort of research is/is not going on. Of course there are fewer types of research than mega-programs, but that is not particularly important for individual students as long as the fields of interest are covered.


A couple of points about getting involved in research at an early stage. First, my son actively searched out an opportunity by talking to a professor doing work that interested him. Second, his math and science background was stronger than most incoming students; he had a couple of post-Calc BC courses at a university prior to graduation from high school, and I think this was a factor in getting this opportunity as a new student.


**Again, it is not terribly rare for students to apply for entrance to the dual bachelors/masters degree, but only students who enter with significant AP and/or univ. credits and who have taken a full load of courses will be able to finish in four years.

Is it worth the extra money for YOU? Really, that is a calculation only you can make. Vanderbilt has been a great find for our family, but (this is a big but) son attends on a full tuition merit scholarship.

One further note. I don’t know what other programs you are looking at, but a conversation with a friend of my son last week left me wincing. This young man is a very good student. For financial reasons, he is enrolled in engineering at our state’s public flagship, a decent school but not a power house. The student won a research scholarship this year and started off on his project with great excitement. As of last week, the project was dead in the water because of a shortage of equipment (many students, including graduate students, sharing it) and broken equipment that should have been repaired or replaced two months ago. Frustration. So, consider the financial state your public options are currently facing when you do your calculations.