As a junior in high school, it is about time for me to consider which colleges and universities I am going to apply to. Right now, I am wanting to major in Aerospace Engineering, so I am considering a few colleges.
My first choice would definitely be MIT. It is a great school for anything math and science related, but the chance I am going to get in is very, very low due to me slacking off too much freshman and sophomore year. However, if I do get a good enough score on my ACT and SAT, I might have a chance.
My second choice would be Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. And here is where my question comes into place. I know that this is a great school for Aerospace Engineering, but I am wondering if any of you have gone to this college and how the experience was? I am asking about both the Daytona and Prescott campuses. I am deciding between which one I want to go to, and which one would be better.
My back-up would be CU.
And some of my school “stats”:
GPA- 4.2
AP tests taken to date-3
Right now, I am in 3 AP classes (AP Physics B, AP US History, and AP English Lang), also am in Calc 3/ Diff Eq (which I plan on retaking just so I can get much better at it), and am planning on taking 4 more AP classes next year (AP Physics C, AP Chem, AP US Gov’t, and AP English Lit).
a guys who i have been friends with since middle school went to the daytona campus after high school on a AFROTC scholarship. he majored in meteorology, graduated/commissioned last semester, and is now training to be on board a ‘hurricane hunter’ (planes that fly into the eye of hurricanes)
he’s a pretty straight edged guy, parties less than i do, but is cool dude overall.
he has great things to say about his experience.
plus dude, southern girls are HOOOOOT. hell, he’s a major nerd and got a smokin chick he picked up from the school.
[quote]HolyMacaroni wrote:
a guys who i have friends with since middle school went to the daytona campus after high school on a AFROTC scholarship. he majored in meteorology, graduated/commissioned last semester, and is now training to be on board a ‘hurricane hunter’ (planes that fly into the eye of hurricanes)
he’s a pretty straight edged guy, parties less than i do, but is cool dude overall.
he has great things to say about his experience.
plus dude, southern girls are HOOOOOT. hell, he’s a major nerd and got a smokin chick he picked up from the school.[/quote]
Is there a reason you want to specifically go into aerospace engineering? Why not go into mechanical engineering since you can get into the aerospace field later if you want to, but you’ll also have other options. Perhaps I’m just ignorant to the difference between the 2 but it would just make sense not to restrict yourself this early on in my eyes.
[quote]HolyMacaroni wrote:
here’s a good question, are you considering AFROTC? private pilot?[/quote]
I am still considering AFROTC. Doing that, coming across a job certainly would be easier. I couldn’t be a pilot though. My vision is way too bad for that, unfortunately, due to absolutely no reason.
[quote]Amiright wrote:
friend goes to embry riddle… hes rotc and doing aerospace engineering. Its a great school for that major, and pretty much that major only. From what he tells me… there is absolutely nothing to do in that town… basically hangs out with his navy buddies and girlfriend but not really much to do with them.
Also you will develop “riddle vision” because there isn’t shit as far as women are concerned.
My best advice for any school is to go on a college visit to the ones that you’re most interested in and have the best chance of going too… also be very critical about the school you attend. Make sure its somewhere you’ll be happy. [/quote]
Thanks for the info. I kind of expected the women factor to not be too good, but as Holy Mac put it pretty well, the Daytona site might be better in that field.
[quote]
Is there a reason you want to specifically go into aerospace engineering? Why not go into mechanical engineering since you can get into the aerospace field later if you want to, but you’ll also have other options. Perhaps I’m just ignorant to the difference between the 2 but it would just make sense not to restrict yourself this early on in my eyes.[/quote]
Aerospace, from I am aware as of now, involves a lot more physics with fluids and, generally, just a lot more math. I am probably going to do a lot of classes for mechanical, and if I can, try to double major because mechanical sure does open a lot of options, but aerospace is a field that not very many to try to get into, giving a lot of job opportunities.
Wherever it is, make sure that there are more girls than guys and that there are recreational things to do. Like sports, a college town, and that it’s easy to walk places. You will be drunk, and navigating is easier if you can just walk.
[quote]johnconkle wrote:
Wherever it is, make sure that there are more girls than guys and that there are recreational things to do. Like sports, a college town, and that it’s easy to walk places. You will be drunk, and navigating is easier if you can just walk.[/quote]
With engineering, there are probably never going to be more guys than girls unfortunately. However, both campuses for E-R do have sports, which is pretty good. Daytona definitely seems like the more fun campus though.
[quote]johnconkle wrote:
Wherever it is, make sure that there are more girls than guys and that there are recreational things to do. Like sports, a college town, and that it’s easy to walk places. You will be drunk, and navigating is easier if you can just walk.[/quote]
With engineering, there are probably never going to be more guys than girls unfortunately. However, both campuses for E-R do have sports, which is pretty good. Daytona definitely seems like the more fun campus though.[/quote]
Feel free to remove “probably” from the statement regarding females haha. In first year my class had 150 or so students, I believe of which only 8 - 10 were female, of which only 1 was even reasonably attractive.
Don’t be so hung up on Engineering. I was, and then after a year I decided I wasn’t doing that shit anymore.
If I had chosen a college based on my major and pigeonholed myself into one path, I’d be stuck doing something I don’t like.
Bottom line, I know engineering won’t always have a lot of girls. I’m not talking about the major, I’m talking about in general. Pick a good environment that you like, because 4 years is a long time, and everything is better when you’re enjoying yourself.
I went to MIT for Aerospace, and it’s hard to say what it’ll take to get in. They reject kids with perfect SAT scores and I knew some kids that really didn’t have any business being there. Of course, I was applying back in 1999. Now they seem to be going a bit more for that well-rounded Ivy-type student rather than the hardcore math prodigies. If you play sports, it’ll help. You’ll have a lot more AP pedigree than I had, assuming you ace the tests.
If you want to work with high-speed fluids/CFD, jet/rocket propulsion, or aerodynamics, Aerospace Eng. is the only field you’ll get much exposure to that. Otherwise, I’d recommend going Mechanical. Every major aerospace company has as many or more mechanical engineers than aerospace engineers. Aerospace is basically dabbling in a bunch of other disciplines like structures, software, controls, fluids, human factors, and systems.
I don’t know much about Embry, but a friend lived in Prescott for a little while and hated it. It’s basically a retirement town, and at any technical school, it’ll be about 80:20 guys to girls. So unless you want to pick up some cougars or hot widows, I’d recommend the Daytona campus.
[quote]JLu wrote:
Is there a reason you want to specifically go into aerospace engineering? Why not go into mechanical engineering since you can get into the aerospace field later if you want to, but you’ll also have other options. Perhaps I’m just ignorant to the difference between the 2 but it would just make sense not to restrict yourself this early on in my eyes. [/quote]
Aeronautical is a branch of mechanical engineering.
Just like radio waves and lasers are a branch of electrical engineering.
Carnegie mellon is also a good engineering school. Though its more computer-science focussed though. Depending on the curriculum, the aerospace engineering major may just be mechanical engineering plus a class or two, or a branch of the curriculum as with electrical/computer engineering. Either way, you’ll be dealing with a shit-ton of fluid dynamics. Most colleges, I believe, spend a year on fluid dynamics for ME majors, though I’d imagine aerospace engineers would realistically have more.
Though in all honesty, I highly doubt you’ll get into MIT. Not to dash your dreams of course, but being realistic. An acquaintance of mine got maybe a single B in his high school career, loaded up every AP possible in our HS (which, I believe is on the order of 26 in my HS), and got perfect scores on every SAT, with maybe a couple points shy of perfect on the regular SAT. He got on the waitlist.
A better question is what your extracurriculars look like, and your passions and whatnot that differentiate (not the equation) from the sweaty, cheeto stained masses of similarly smart/hard-working people.
What was this about again? Oh yes, you may also want to give University of California, Berkeley a try. It’s supposed to be among the best as well, though the environment is rather unforgiving, from what some friends of mine tell me. Also, given that you are in Colorado, out of state fees can make it somewhat prohibitive, if that’s a factor. Finally, I’ve also heard that Harvey Mudd is an excellent engineering school–well for mechanical engineering at least, but given the relationship between areospace and mechanical engineering, I’d suspect it’d be a good aerospace engineering school as well.
[quote]johnconkle wrote:
Wherever it is, make sure that there are more girls than guys and that there are recreational things to do. Like sports, a college town, and that it’s easy to walk places. You will be drunk, and navigating is easier if you can just walk.[/quote]
With engineering, there are probably never going to be more guys than girls unfortunately. However, both campuses for E-R do have sports, which is pretty good. Daytona definitely seems like the more fun campus though.[/quote]
Feel free to remove “probably” from the statement regarding females haha. In first year my class had 150 or so students, I believe of which only 8 - 10 were female, of which only 1 was even reasonably attractive. [/quote]
x2
Engineering is not known for being kind to gender diversity. Sometimes I wonder why they even bother with women’s bathrooms in the engineering buildings, but I digress, you’d be more likely to meet semi-decent girls in the math/physics/chem pre-reqs, or if you get into an honors society and end up tutoring a semi-decent girl in said math/physics/chem pre-req classes.
Engineering is not known for being kind to gender diversity. Sometimes I wonder why they even bother with women’s bathrooms in the engineering buildings, but I digress, you’d be more likely to meet semi-decent girls in the math/physics/chem pre-reqs, or if you get into an honors society and end up tutoring a semi-decent girl in said math/physics/chem pre-req classes.
Best of luck![/quote]
nursing. omg get a nursing girl. hell just hang out AROUND the nursing building.
GL with MIT. Never applied there but didn’t want to and couldn’t be any happier where I’m at, studying chemE at Northwestern. I would suggest also looking into the University of Illinois-Urbana. It has one of the top ranked engineering programs in the country, a very very fun campus and is not ridiculously expensive, even though you would be out of state.
And if your GPA scale was like mine, where regular A = 4, Honors A = 5 and AP A = 6, then you need to really bump up that GPA. I graduated with something like a 4.9 and was still only like 11th in my class (Top 10 all went to great schools though obv, including Harvard, Yale, MIT, Duke and Stanford). Don’t wanna dash your dreams, but just being realistic.
[quote]kman3b18 wrote:
GL with MIT. Never applied there but didn’t want to and couldn’t be any happier where I’m at, studying chemE at Northwestern. I would suggest also looking into the University of Illinois-Urbana. It has one of the top ranked engineering programs in the country, a very very fun campus and is not ridiculously expensive, even though you would be out of state.
And if your GPA scale was like mine, where regular A = 4, Honors A = 5 and AP A = 6, then you need to really bump up that GPA. I graduated with something like a 4.9 and was still only like 11th in my class (Top 10 all went to great schools though obv, including Harvard, Yale, MIT, Duke and Stanford). Don’t wanna dash your dreams, but just being realistic.[/quote]
The highest is a 5, and those only come form Honors or AP A.
Well, from what I understand, mechanical is probably more useful to learn as it encompasses a lot of aerospace, so Mines would be a good bet to try to get into so far.