Female engineers!

[Anonymous]

Look at University of Connecticut. Good engineering programs--did my graduate work there in the mid-90s. Few women, but never had any issues. They have a strong biomed program as well, although I was EE.

[Anonymous]

I was a Cornell engineering student back in the 90s and never experienced any issues there related to gender. I didn't participate much in SWE and didn't really seek out any additional female support mostly because I already felt well-supported by my advisors, professors, and peers. Your DD may find she has a lot of support even it's not female-specific.

Anyway, Cornell has a fairly big engineering school, but it's broken down into several disciplines. These smaller communities fostered collaboration and support. There was a lot of camaraderie as we all worked through tough work loads together. Advisors were helpful, but there wasn't a lot of hand holding. I had one terrible professor but liked/loved the rest. There are opportunities to work closely with the professors and work on some cool projects, but you need to seek those out.

[Anonymous]

UMD College Park, graduated in Mechanical Engineering in 2000. I always felt supported, but was never into the SWE stuff or women-oriented stuff. I agree - if you can hack it, was totally great!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:UMD college park. Grad 2004. Electrical engineering and now work in defense. I had a good experience. Swe and other engineering societies to make it feel smaller. I'm still friends with many of those classmates. There were some very supportive women professors and I was lucky that most of my cohort of students seemed to not be sexist. I had a couple on campus lab research positions during my time there and those professors and grad students were very supportive and it was all merit based. If you could hack it, who cares if you were a woman. I personally don't remember any incidents or disparaging remarks (maybe I got lucky). I have a couple women friends who teach there now. I could have gone to CMU or elsewhere but chose UMD because it was free for me (dept of engineering scholarship). Coming out of school worth no debt is freeing. Oh and I work 40 hrs a week and made $60k straight out of undergrad. We hire for about that and more depending on other experience.

Thank you. Very helpful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Look at University of Connecticut. Good engineering programs--did my graduate work there in the mid-90s. Few women, but never had any issues. They have a strong biomed program as well, although I was EE.

UConn was not on our radar, but will definitely check it out. Thank you!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:University of Pittsbutgh has Biomedical Engineering as does Boston University.

We've heard some good anecdotal experience about Pitt. People especially loved the vibrancy of the city.

[Anonymous]

Anyone with first hand experience at Case Western or Lehigh?

[Anonymous]

What kind of engineering? If aerospace look at Purdue and Ga Tech. UVA too My DC has a female astronaut as head of department at UVA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You might want to ask recent grads. I was an engineering graduate in the mid 80s. I hope to god it's changed since then, because the misogynism ran deep. Especially in the "hard core" disciplines.

I'm now in the defense industry. Apparently a glutton for punishment.

Thank you. May I ask where you attended school - hopefully things have improved.

Penn State

Ditto for U of Md college park.
The other students were ironically the ones that were rampantly sexist. I enjoyed my professors and classes in undergrad. Grad school not so muc that's where it really was awful. But the working world was the worst as the men seemed to unite to put the women down and label them useless whenever they could. I wasn't even allowed to work on a project that entailed subject matter that I had graduate degrees in - in favor of guys who needed special permission to graduate with low grades (i.e.: D's and C's). I got mostly A's and I was told that I had probably received those not because I was smart and worked hard but because I had 'sat in the front row wearing a short skirt'. Yeah - no. School was a picnic compared to work.

At least now they make you do an internship - so maybe you can choose law or medicine instead.

Maybe things have improved but I'm glad my own bright daughter does not want to do STEM (also - low pay for long hours)

OP I think things have improved - I hope - but I'd recommend that your DD get a PhD if she wants to be in STEM. It will go a lot better for her.

NP here. Law is seeing a contraction in jobs and enrollment at schools. Unless your a Harvard or Yale Law grad, it's not a great time for aspiring lawyers. https://qz.com/358929/law-school-enrollment-decline/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What kind of engineering? If aerospace look at Purdue and Ga Tech. UVA too My DC has a female astronaut as head of department at UVA.

OP here: Biomedical. My daughter has spoken to a few UVA grads. The consensus seems to be that it's a great program, heavy on theoretical, preparing most for consulting or straight entry to med school or grad school. Any thoughts?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You might want to ask recent grads. I was an engineering graduate in the mid 80s. I hope to god it's changed since then, because the misogynism ran deep. Especially in the "hard core" disciplines.

I'm now in the defense industry. Apparently a glutton for punishment.

Thank you. May I ask where you attended school - hopefully things have improved.

Penn State

Ditto for U of Md college park.
The other students were ironically the ones that were rampantly sexist. I enjoyed my professors and classes in undergrad. Grad school not so muc that's where it really was awful. But the working world was the worst as the men seemed to unite to put the women down and label them useless whenever they could. I wasn't even allowed to work on a project that entailed subject matter that I had graduate degrees in - in favor of guys who needed special permission to graduate with low grades (i.e.: D's and C's). I got mostly A's and I was told that I had probably received those not because I was smart and worked hard but because I had 'sat in the front row wearing a short skirt'. Yeah - no. School was a picnic compared to work.

At least now they make you do an internship - so maybe you can choose law or medicine instead.

Maybe things have improved but I'm glad my own bright daughter does not want to do STEM (also - low pay for long hours)

OP I think things have improved - I hope - but I'd recommend that your DD get a PhD if she wants to be in STEM. It will go a lot better for her.

NP here. Law is seeing a contraction in jobs and enrollment at schools. Unless your a Harvard or Yale Law grad, it's not a great time for aspiring lawyers. https://qz.com/358929/law-school-enrollment-decline/

Depends on how bright you are. There are a lot of bad lawyers. If you're a smart one - like you said Harvard/Yale or anywhere else if you will be at the top of your class - go for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What kind of engineering? If aerospace look at Purdue and Ga Tech. UVA too My DC has a female astronaut as head of department at UVA.

OP here: Biomedical. My daughter has spoken to a few UVA grads. The consensus seems to be that it's a great program, heavy on theoretical, preparing most for consulting or straight entry to med school or grad school. Any thoughts?

UVA is heavy on the theoretical in all its engineering programs it seems. Places like u of maryland prepare you for industry.
U of md has many applied classes and graduate school work thatvis applied (rotorcraft, space vehicles, fluid flow in a wind tunnel).
Places like uva and Princeton are more theory - which means a lot of math just for maths sake if that makes sense.
Does she like that? I preferred applied engineering so I chose the big state school over uva (was probably a mistake though).

I had an engineering friend at u of md who had perfect grades in undergrad who went to Princeton for grad school in aero engineering and he left after a semester because he hated the theoretical program. He didn't like the lack of structure - no one guided him he was just supposed to figure stuff out and invent a new theory on his own and he wasn't up for it. He came back to college park

It just depends how you are wired and what you like.

Medical school is not a bad route. Or she could go to another engineering graduate school program.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What kind of engineering? If aerospace look at Purdue and Ga Tech. UVA too My DC has a female astronaut as head of department at UVA.

OP here: Biomedical. My daughter has spoken to a few UVA grads. The consensus seems to be that it's a great program, heavy on theoretical, preparing most for consulting or straight entry to med school or grad school. Any thoughts?

Also, has she looked into Hopkins? Columbia?

Georgetown has biomedical engineering but basically you go to Georgetown and study liberal arts and then you head to Columbia for the engineering .
As engineering programs can be brutal the might not be a bad idea.

I've heard great things about duke for biomedical

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, my daughter is interested in biomedical! Question for the Hopkins grad, a friend of ours was an adjunct there and basically discouraged us from applying. He said it is so uber-competitive and she would hate her college experience. What was it like for you?

Hopkins person here. Love working there but your friend is right although BME has a great projects/design class.

I have a question for the Hopkins grad. We toured there recently and the students left this huge impression that the school is chill and so fun and what are you going to do with all of your free time? They spoke of these great internships people were doing and how they're going and doing all of this fun stuff (playing the oboe or whatever, video games).

They spoke about this 'beach' where everyone goes out and hangs out and socializes in the warm sun and plays volleyball.

Only if was 85 degrees out and a Saturday at noon and only 3 people were outside? I've never seen only 3 people out at a college.

So what's the real truth ? I call bulls$$t on all of it . I've heard that for starters people are hyper competitive about the internships to get 'the best ones'
And are all the students in the library 24/7 or what?

Hopkins takes none of their own into med school either I've heard.

[Anonymous]

Duke '00 EE grad. There were only about 6 women in EE out of 60 in our year, but biomedical had a much higher percentage of women (and was/is an excellent program).

I didn't have any problems with professors or other students - generally good camaraderie all around. At least for EE I felt that the program was heavily theoretical and not practical and didn't prepare me especially well for the workplace. I interned at a telecom company in Raleigh as a senior with a bunch of recent grads from NC State and felt like they all had better practical preparation while in school to be able to work as an engineer straight out of school. Most of my classmates went on to consulting or investment banking or continued towards their masters, etc.