Wrt NCSU, it may be that many kids from your school chose not to attend so they figured, why bother, lower our yield rate for rankings, and complicate things for yield management when we can save everyone the bother? (You can try and see if you can have College Advising at your school calculate how many students who applied chose to attend - if it’s below 20%? 10%? you have your answer).
I agree your son has the stats for NCSU engineering (I’m assuming he took Calc and Physics, got As) but since it was far from his first choice, … and he’s got 3 good choices.
Since he doesn’t want Greek, Wake will be limiting socially. It’ll also be the most familiar, can be a good or bad thing. Less specialized, also a good or bad thing, strong sense of community. Not especially known for Engineering but excellent general reputation.
Penn State will always be hard to get to, which will mostly matter at Thanksgiving and Christmas - I assume he’ll fly; if driving, consider winter weather. If he didn’t get into or didn’t apply to Schreyer, he can apply to the Engineering living-learning community (it has a secondary application linked to the COE) or the more general LLC for science&engineering students. LLCs create a sense of community and are housed in better dorms (West) than the party dorms (East). Engineering classes will be large, and tough. Since he has AP credit, he could take fewer credits his 1st semester to adjust.
Northeastern: how compatible with engineering are the London/Oakland programs? How enthusiastic is he about moving from place to place? Some students love it, thrive and are energized by the change - and thus love the co-ops, which follow the same “off campus” model. Others can be unsettled by switching places all the time and having friends scattered all over. Finally, NEU is very preprofessional, its point is the organization of co-ops, in a sense opposite to Wake. Does he have a preference between the 2?
Thank you for your thoughtful response! Totally agree about NCS!! But IMO and our college C’s opinion, yield should NOT be a factor for instate kids. I like the way UGa and TX handle this issue with fixed parameters.
If this is the case, and you haven’t, you might look at Alabama.
You have over 50% OOS, with 2K kids from the NY/NJ/CT area, over 1500 from Illinois and over 1K from GA, TX, CA - and so many from all over so to your comment he would experience kids from all over the country - in one place. My son’s first year suitemate was from Scottsdale AZ.
Why - they buy kids like yours in - so it’s very inexpensive for smart kids - and your outcome will like not be dissimilar to NC State. My son has a job where he is in a program with kids from MIchigan and Purdue and Washington and next year Ga Tech and CP SLO - but also Bama, Auburn, Utah and even West Michigan or Akron.
My son personally chose it over other schools including NC State - which he wasn’t a fan of after we visited due to the separate engineering campus.
Hopefully you can work with what you have but if it’s living with people from other areas - you still have opportunities at fine - and inexpensive schools. Within engineering, you’ll have the same opportunities for most jobs from most schools. My kid had 20 interviews and mostly at nationwide jobs - including one offer from a Raleigh area firm ABB - so you still have options.
If he is a wrestler, he would enjoy that at Penn State - they actually have that as a club sport at Penn State. Club sports are a great opportunity to “shrink” a University!
Others have chimed in with good things to think about, so I won’t opine. Feel free to DM me - I have an engineering student at Penn State.
… and he’s got 3 good choices.