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As I was going through the whole college application process this year, when people asked me what my first choice was I couldn’t tell them. I would list my top three and I would then half-jokingly express my hope that the colleges would do the choosing for me. Well, they didn’t.

Not that I’m complaining, but I now have some very difficult decisions to make. I was admitted to the five schools I applied to (although I have not yet heard from my reach, but it will be a certain rejection). Of those five I have narrowed my choice down to two, but I am still having a very difficult time deciding between the two, and I am interested in your opinions on my choices.

Washington and Lee University (VA)-
W&L’s engineering department is very small, which is both good and bad. The school is known more for its business and political science majors, but as a small LAC it is relatively well known at least on the east coast. My father and sister both attended W&L, so I am very familiar with the campus and social life. I have talked with some engineering professors there and attended a few science classes (all of which were less than 14 students), and they basically explained that the engineering program at W&L is a pre-graduate curriculum. The major is not ABET certified, and my official major would be “Physics-Engineering.” The plus side to this would be that I would have an additional four years to determine what area of engineering I’d like to study in grad school. The negative side, of course, would be that I would not be graduating from a school known for engineering and I am concerned my education may not be up to speed with other graduates who attended ABET certified programs. I would, however, have the opportunity to double-major in some sort of business degree (or possibly Computer Science), which would hopefully give me a unique advantage over other engineers. The W&L Engineering Department has a pretty good grad school acceptance rate, with names like Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, RPI, and Cornell on it’s "recent attendees" list.

University of Virginia SEAS-
While UVA is not necessarily known for its E-School, the engineering education it provides is, as far as I know, pretty good. A friend of mine recently graduated from UVA as an Electrical Engineering major and was able to obtain his masters in just one term of grad school (he spent his summers home from college taking engineering classes to accelerate his studies). He’s now working as an engineer in northern Virginia and seems to be in pretty good shape; he’s really pushing me to attend “The University.” The downside to attending UVA would be that I would not have the opportunity to explore many other majors before having to decide, and I am not sure how difficult it would be to transfer to the College if I decide engineering is not for me. An upside, of course, is the name and the fact that I know I will get a well-rounded education at UVA. UVA would be the more financially reasonable option as well: while W&L has offered me a half-tuition scholarship, it’s still almost twice as much the cost of UVA In-State.

What do you think? At the moment I think I’m leaning towards W&L and I would hopefully be able to play soccer there. Ignoring the financial aspect, however, would attending W&L and then going on to a good Engineering Graduate school be reasonable, or would I be in better shape attending UVA and focusing on engineering as an undergrad?

By Gameguy56 (Gameguy56) on Friday, April 02, 2004 - 08:55 pm: Edit

Washington and Lee also has a 3-2 Program with Columbia University, so you can get an ABET engineering degree. So why not get the best of both worlds

By Wdlynn (Wdlynn) on Saturday, April 03, 2004 - 08:42 am: Edit

The 3/2 Program with Columbia or RPI is definitely a possibility, but the Engineering professors I talked to at W&L said that most students who plan to participate in the program end up staying for the full 4-years at W&L and going to graduate school instead of spending the extra year in undergraduate study.

It does provide another option if I attend W&L, however.