UVA or VT Engineering?

[Anonymous]

Virginia Tech.

[Anonymous]

Please try not to react to the several troll posts that deliberately encourage entropy in this thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This this PP.

Sorry for the long post.

I would also mention that VT because of its size seemed to have a lot more visiting professors and TA sections that taught big lecture hall classes vs. the tenured faculty that VT is known for.

Also, that whose smaller size thing doesn't really apply to CS. Both programs are huge, maybe too big, about 1,000 students for each. Then UVA has like another 1,000 in CS for Liberal Arts and Sciences.

And about the UVA being more business or management oriented. I was talking about the future. She got the gist that there were more UVA engineering students had aspirations to switch over to business or management roles vs. stay in more technical roles.

I am sure there plenty at VT that are like that too, but it seemed more pronounced at UVA. Less really nerdy techie kids.

I've really got to question how on earth you made the assumptions you did about the students at VT if your daughter didn't even wind up going there. Seems like you've assumed a great deal about the student body and done a lot of filling in the blanks using your imagination. For instance, TAs teaching lectures classes? My VT student hasn't had that experience at all and has developed close relationships with several of her professors. And how would you know about the "quality" of students, varied interests, networking, competitiveness, CC transfers, types of high schools students came from, etc. etc.?? Or whether the students had taken Calc in HS?

In short, your post(s) seem like very, very transparent trolling. If your daughter chose UVA, then neither of you have any clue what VT is like, other than what you may have seen on a tour.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I got into both and chose Virginia Tech. Graduated ChemE.

I really don’t think it matters other than cultural fit of the overall university, and there are innumerable threads on that.

I do vehemently disagree with the “challenged by cohort” and grad school argument PPs have made. At one time VT Engineering quietly pulled everybody over 1500 into a separate intro track class and that was my cohort. It was about 70-80 freshman total. Students from that intro class got into Stanford PhD, Caltech PhD, and Princeton PhD just off the top of my head.

Do you like ChemE? My kid is a freshman ChemE major at a different school. How are the career opportunities upon graduation? I've heard there are a broad range of career directions with ChemE you can take.

[Anonymous]

VT has a much more comprehensive engineering school than UVA. Scale can be important. UVA is strong in areas like biomedical, but you should make sure it is sufficient in your area of interest. UVA is thought of a more theoretical program with students somewhat more interested in careers paths outside of pure engineering.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I got into both and chose Virginia Tech. Graduated ChemE.

I really don’t think it matters other than cultural fit of the overall university, and there are innumerable threads on that.

I do vehemently disagree with the “challenged by cohort” and grad school argument PPs have made. At one time VT Engineering quietly pulled everybody over 1500 into a separate intro track class and that was my cohort. It was about 70-80 freshman total. Students from that intro class got into Stanford PhD, Caltech PhD, and Princeton PhD just off the top of my head.

Do you like ChemE? My kid is a freshman ChemE major at a different school. How are the career opportunities upon graduation? I've heard there are a broad range of career directions with ChemE you can take.

Both my kids are studying ChemE and I studied ChemE. My advisor says that we are just over priced plumbers!!! I never worked a day as a ChemE. Instead worked as a quant at a bank, hedge fund asset manager

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:UVA is thought of a more theoretical program with students somewhat more interested in careers paths outside of pure engineering.

I hire engineers to do engineering. I am very happy to hire engineers from (in alphabetical order) GMU, UMBC, UMCP, UVa, VCU, VT, and from other programs.

I care deeply which upper-level in-major electives candidates took. Our work needs specific skills and there are various specialties within in any engineering degree. I also am looking to see if one took the more rigorous in-major electives for those specialties. We interview people and ask them hard questions. Some questions seek to validate knowledge. Other questions seek more to see how one reasons about difficult engineering design choices.

Attend whichever engineering program is the best fit that offers one's chosen degree. Some programs are large. Others are small. Some have higher graduation rates. Some have better co-op setups - for students who want that. Some are in urban areas, others are in suburban or rural areas. It is all fine. Take the rigorous path for your degree and your engineering specialty at whichever program is BEST FIT for you.

[Anonymous]

VT, no comparison with UVA at all for engineering

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I got into both and chose Virginia Tech. Graduated ChemE.

I really don’t think it matters other than cultural fit of the overall university, and there are innumerable threads on that.

I do vehemently disagree with the “challenged by cohort” and grad school argument PPs have made. At one time VT Engineering quietly pulled everybody over 1500 into a separate intro track class and that was my cohort. It was about 70-80 freshman total. Students from that intro class got into Stanford PhD, Caltech PhD, and Princeton PhD just off the top of my head.

Do you like ChemE? My kid is a freshman ChemE major at a different school. How are the career opportunities upon graduation? I've heard there are a broad range of career directions with ChemE you can take.

Both my kids are studying ChemE and I studied ChemE. My advisor says that we are just over priced plumbers!!! I never worked a day as a ChemE. Instead worked as a quant at a bank, hedge fund asset manager

My med student did chemE undergrad and finds med school easy OP, look at the coop opportunities and employment rates after graduation. Engineering and medical professions are glorified difficult trades. It's all about placement into jobs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This this PP.

Sorry for the long post.

I would also mention that VT because of its size seemed to have a lot more visiting professors and TA sections that taught big lecture hall classes vs. the tenured faculty that VT is known for.

Also, that whose smaller size thing doesn't really apply to CS. Both programs are huge, maybe too big, about 1,000 students for each. Then UVA has like another 1,000 in CS for Liberal Arts and Sciences.

And about the UVA being more business or management oriented. I was talking about the future. She got the gist that there were more UVA engineering students had aspirations to switch over to business or management roles vs. stay in more technical roles.

I am sure there plenty at VT that are like that too, but it seemed more pronounced at UVA. Less really nerdy techie kids.

I've really got to question how on earth you made the assumptions you did about the students at VT if your daughter didn't even wind up going there. Seems like you've assumed a great deal about the student body and done a lot of filling in the blanks using your imagination. For instance, TAs teaching lectures classes? My VT student hasn't had that experience at all and has developed close relationships with several of her professors. And how would you know about the "quality" of students, varied interests, networking, competitiveness, CC transfers, types of high schools students came from, etc. etc.?? Or whether the students had taken Calc in HS?

In short, your post(s) seem like very, very transparent trolling. If your daughter chose UVA, then neither of you have any clue what VT is like, other than what you may have seen on a tour.

Not a troll. Not from my imagination. I don't really know if any of that is true or exaggerated. I never even thought about CC transfers before until I heard that line from her. I attended the Engineering Open House with her and it left me with a very positive perception at VT, especially that mining professor that runs the student programs at VT. She was incredible. Almost everything in that post is from current students at VT that are friends with my DD, often when she visited there and crashed at their dorms or apartments for footballs games or to hang out and chatted with them and their roommates.

She heard a lot more griping than students would say to their parents or tour groups. They were generally very positive and loved VT, but they all had gripes. She's heard worse about UVA and schools like Pitt and Penn State in all different ways.

Like I said before, she liked VT, almost picked it, especially since she had a big friend group there, but it was close and the big school issues played a big part of tipping the decision to UVA, which had its own flaws. The girls that she knows at VT generally really like it, and that is not the case with UVA but is more about the social aspect of it.

[Anonymous]

I have a UVA engineer graduating this May and he was offered 3 jobs with six figures before March. I seriously do not think it matters if you go to one over the other. It’s what you do in the four years you are there with your time.