Looking at universities

[bobsmith1492]

A few notes: from Shadowmage's recommendations, I disagree. Some of the schools he listed are mostly focused on research rather than the undergraduate program (MIT comes to mind in particular). When it comes to undergrad work, if you go to an accredited school for a full bachelors of science in engineering degree, programs at different schools teach you pretty much the same thing. The grad schools are where the top schools separate themselves, mainly from how much money they get for research (money for research = paid grad students). They get money mainly because of their reputation.

The conclusion: get an undergrad degree at a good, reputable, but cheap school (i.e. NOT MIT or Stanford) and go to the big schools for grad work.

Check whichever school you're looking at in New Zealand to make sure of what kind of degree they offer. Avoid an "engineering technology" degree - that's more applied and less theory, which is what you'd need for grad work. I think in Britain (and therefore possibly in NZ) it's known as electronics engineering as opposed to electrical, but that may have changed.

Anyway, if you do come to America for undergrad stuff, go for it! But... you might not want to go to Michigan Technological University; it has good programs, but it's about as far from most of civilization as you can get in the US and it gets many feet of snow a year... they were clearing it out with bulldozers midway through spring still when I visited. If you like snow and related sports, though, go for it.

I would recommend my school, Grand Valley State. It's a very applied, project-oriented program; you have a big junior project and a relatively huge senior project as well as three full semesters of coop work experience along with the standard classes. Of course, everyone thinks their school is the best, so, who know. It's undergrad; you pick your school, you do your time, and then get on to the real work.

I haven't picked out a grad school yet, myself. Right now I'm looking at MIT, Carnegie Mellon, maybe UofM, and Purdue.

 

[duragezic]

Originally posted by: bobsmith1492
A few notes: from Shadowmage's recommendations, I disagree. Some of the schools he listed are mostly focused on research rather than the undergraduate program (MIT comes to mind in particular). When it comes to undergrad work, if you go to an accredited school for a full bachelors of science in engineering degree, programs at different schools teach you pretty much the same thing. The grad schools are where the top schools separate themselves, mainly from how much money they get for research (money for research = paid grad students). They get money mainly because of their reputation.

The conclusion: get an undergrad degree at a good, reputable, but cheap school (i.e. NOT MIT or Stanford) and go to the big schools for grad work.

Check whichever school you're looking at in New Zealand to make sure of what kind of degree they offer. Avoid an "engineering technology" degree - that's more applied and less theory, which is what you'd need for grad work. I think in Britain (and therefore possibly in NZ) it's known as electronics engineering as opposed to electrical, but that may have changed.

Anyway, if you do come to America for undergrad stuff, go for it! But... you might not want to go to Michigan Technological University; it has good programs, but it's about as far from most of civilization as you can get in the US and it gets many feet of snow a year... they were clearing it out with bulldozers midway through spring still when I visited. If you like snow and related sports, though, go for it.

I would recommend my school, Grand Valley State. It's a very applied, project-oriented program; you have a big junior project and a relatively huge senior project as well as three full semesters of coop work experience along with the standard classes. Of course, everyone thinks their school is the best, so, who know. It's undergrad; you pick your school, you do your time, and then get on to the real work.

I haven't picked out a grad school yet, myself. Right now I'm looking at MIT, Carnegie Mellon, maybe UofM, and Purdue.

Hey now.. them's fighting words!!

Besides, Tech should only accept new students if they are females.


Yeah its pretty weak up there. But I grew up my whole life just 3 hours away from there so I'm used to the setting.

 

[bobsmith1492]

Heh, it's on. I almost went to MTU, but they didn't offer very good scholarships and it was a long drive from where I live, so, that along with the extra-long winter made me decide against it. I still have 2 MTU shirts though, and only 1 GVSU shirt! Hm...

Oh yeah, the girls: if that's something you're considering when you decide on your school, then MTU is not the way to go. What's the ratio, duragezic? 5-1 (or more), guys-girls? Anyway, they're all guys up there. Now, here at GVSU, it's like 2-1 girls-guys (twice as many girls as guys), so that may be something to consider. Plus, there are a lot of wealthy people in Grand Rapids that offer good scholarships, especially for engineering, not to mention that the buildings are all fairly new and well-kept and we have a lot of equipment for projects and whatnot, again, thanks to wealthy GR residents.

 

[aznbumbaclot]

I go to UM-Ann Arbor and it's a great school. Although I am not an engineer, I do have some friends who are recent graduates and have moved on to working with the big boys (Intel & AMD). One of them helped relocated to Boston and helped with Socket AM2. Almost all of the engineering grads here get jobs right away post-graduation.

 

[herm0016]

yea.. about the girls up here, or lack of them the mechanical engineering program is like 10 to 1 school overall now is close to 4 to 1 but getting better. mtu is great because undergrads can get research experence also, espsilly with the enterprise program. this program is a bunch of student run businesses. i am vp of ours right now, we are working on a few projects for developing countries in the health feild, but there are also enterprises dealing with aerospace, microsystems, wireless comunications, and a lot of other stuff.

and yes, we are kinda out in the middle of knowwhere up here and get close to 300 total inches of snow every year, but we have a lot of fun and a very challenging school, but not many colleges own there own ski hill! and the scnery up here is awsome. some of the best outdoors and wilderness areas in the country! so if you like to camp or hike or do outdoors stuff then this is a great place to be. i backpack a lot around here, and spending a week on isle royal comming up in aug. also, our town is great. very safe, easy to get around, you dont need a car to get anywhere, its a 5 min walk to downtown from campus.

 

[sjwaste]

James Madison University (Harrisonburg, Virginia). www.jmu.edu

No engineering program, but a great school for pure sciences (and a very good materials science program as well). I graduated a couple years back, and we were putting people in the very top PhD programs in the hard sciences.

Lots of fun, too.

 

[duragezic]

I agree with what herm0016 said.

And yeah I think overall the ratio is about 4-to-1 (been getting better over the years). And most of them are sorostitutes lol. I guess its best if you have a gf before coming up to school at Tech if she is near enough you can keep the relationship going.

I'm looking to get into the enterprise program myself this fall (Integrated Microsystems probably). I didnt feel like I had enough knowledge to do it my 1st or 2nd year but now that I'm coming back from a co-op I feel I have more real-world knowledge and enterprise would be even better on my resume with a co-op too.

 

[Eeezee]

For the best bang for your buck, I know of two suggestions.

Some would say the Universities of California are best bang for your buck.

I disagree with that, but I don't know much about the UC system. I go to the University of Arizona, a top tier research school. It has highly ranked science and engineering degrees and the top optics department in the country. Its out of state tuition is less than California's in-state tuition for any of its universities. It's super-cheap, we have the hottest women in the world coming here, and we have some of the best graduates. We regularly send science graduates to ivy league masters and PhD programs. We're a top tier research university, but that may not be what you're looking for.

If money is not an option, and you think you can get in, I suggest trying any of the Ivy League schools like MIT. There are other great non-Ivy universities for just about any field you can imagine. You have an internet connection, if you are diligent with your searching you can find the choice that is right for you.

 

[Theiananator]

SAT is nothing to worry about. I didn't prepare at all my first time and I got 2080/2400 which is above average. A little vocab prep etc and you should expect very high scores, assuming you aren't a moron

 

[Parkre]

see sig

 

[Shadowmage]

Originally posted by: bobsmith1492
A few notes: from Shadowmage's recommendations, I disagree. Some of the schools he listed are mostly focused on research rather than the undergraduate program (MIT comes to mind in particular). When it comes to undergrad work, if you go to an accredited school for a full bachelors of science in engineering degree, programs at different schools teach you pretty much the same thing. The grad schools are where the top schools separate themselves, mainly from how much money they get for research (money for research = paid grad students). They get money mainly because of their reputation.

Most high-level schools are focused more on research, I agree. That actually works in your favor, as you can do projects and get help from some of the top professors in their field. Of course, in those schools, you need to be motivated to take in the full potential that the schools offer.

How would you get into a top-notch grad school like MIT if you choose some place like MTU? It's not impossible, but from what I know (my dad is a professor in geology at UMich) professors usually only take the best of the best from weaker colleges.

I do agree that going to Stanford or MIT for your undergrad isn't quite worth the money, but only if you can't get a scholarship somewhere else (that's still a good school). If you're out of state, all decent schools cost 30k-40k without scholarships.

No-name schools are no-name for a reason. Although it's obviously not impossible to get hired by a major company after attending such schools, it would be in your best interest not to.

Many colleges have career fairs (such as the one at the University of Michigan) in which major companies such as Microsoft, NVIDIA, Intel, AMD etc attend. These companies come recruiting at these schools for a reason: they turn out a large quantity of quality students, so they're "reserving" these students for later.

 

[gsellis]

Sigh, just what a Silver Fern guy needs, to go to Michigan. Hey Cookie Monster, there are WEEKS were it does not get above 0C there.

Anyway, I will always recommend Washington University in St. Louis. It is not a party school and we had to add 2 pts so that the 1-10 scale would get above 0 for some of the girls. But, that makes you study more

//Sister lives in Wellington on a sailing yacht.