Thoughts on colleges?

I am a senior in high school, looking at studying engineering in college, likely mechanical, although I am open to other fields. I have been accepted at

Harvey Mudd
UC San Diego
UCLA
UC Berkeley
Santa Clara University
Baylor
Vanderbilt

I was wondering if you guys could offer any thoughts on the above colleges, recommendations on where I might go, etc. I will be visiting some of them over the next few weeks to get a feel for them, but any advice from people who have experience with college or professional careers would be great. Money is not a problem for any of the colleges. I am sure I could do pretty well at any of the colleges I listed, but I am looking for opinions on their educational experiences, college's reputations in industry, or any experiences with graduates from these colleges. I have not decided about any postgraduate work, but I have liked school so far and could easily see myself pursuing a master's or PhD if I found it attractive, necessary, or advantageous to do so.

I can't speak about the academics of each college, other than many of them have a well-known reputation for excellence.

Culturally I'll say that you might want to stay coastal, and Vanderbilt is nice. Yet, the South takes a lot of getting used to. You won't find nearly as much tolerance in the South as you will along the coast.

San Diego has the best weather on the planet, so that's something to consider as well.

Good luck.

Cure cancer.

I attended UCLA, but not UCB or UCSD. Of course their reputations are in that order, but the cost for each is about the same. So you have to answer the question for yourself is there something specific that measns something to you at any of those 3? I was already working and went parttime, but the little time I spent on or around campus otherwise was great fun. Westwood Village, what a life! Especially to watch on TV as UCLA played (And BEAT, while I was there) the University of South Central. (I suggested sympathy for USC, afterall, even if we lose we go back to Westwood. Even if they win they're stuck in South Central. . . .)

My sister went to Santa Clara, always lamenting that she couldn't get into UCB, where she'd rather have been. She didn't study engineering.

If you left out that you'd been accepted to Cal Polytechnic Pomona or San Luis Obispo, those are highly rated science and technology schools. If I should decided to 'Kill Time' in graduate school with work staying slow, I'll probably wind up in Pomona, but it's important that as a California resident that'll only cost around $5k for the year, at least to register. Probably just about as good as the UC schools, etc.

If you'd been accepted to UC Santa Cruz, AKA 'The Banana Slugs,' they are supposed to have the best surfing, but it's cold water surfing. You throw your board off the cliff at Steamer Lane I think I recall, you jump. . . .

Something from the ol' guy that may go against the conventional wisdom. It's all about the co-op opportunities after you are in a top 30% school, if you want to enter the workforce with a BS. Investigate what companies are linked with each university "at the hip" so to speak. If you intern well, and you want a job after graduation, one is usually waiting. I know I used my interns to "test drive" their capability back in the days when I hired. Now I only have one employee, "me" and I find him an irascible curmudgeon!

Oh and take some business classes. If you can make good 'business cases' with your reports and proposals you will rise above your peers internally. Engineering bosses have to make the cost, schedule and performance trade. When you can address your risks and plans in their language they will associate with you more than the "performance at all costs" type engineer.

Keep one thing in mind.
If you want to do engineering, the likelihood of you working for the government and making weapons is extremely high.
There aren't many engineering jobs in the private sector these days as America is no longer really makin' stuff like it used to.
But if you have a brain on you, there is a shortage of programmers. If you can handle complex structures with many facets, then you can deal with programming.

I grew up next door to an engineering college and everyone i knew in the area ended up working for lockheed martin and other companies that mainly make weapons and military tech. If that's your thing then go for it. But i just wanted to throw that out there.

But back to your question - I heard California Polytechnic is excellent for engineering. Top notch.

All very good engineering schools; since you are in Portland, you are welcome to come by and see some labs at PSU. I work in Civil and Environmental Engineering and when I was in your position of choosing a college to attend, I never seriously considered Civil. I did Physics and an exchange semester doing Mechanical Engineering. Now that I'm working in Civil, it's given me a different perspective. The areas of Structural Engineering and Water Resources are both worth considering.

Harvey Mudd is the highest caliber school you list (and by far the smallest!), in the same league as Cal Tech, Stanford, and MIT for engineering. However, Harvey Mudd is undergraduate only, and may best be viewed as a graduate-school preparatory college. Engineering at HM is more general engineering than, say, mechanical or electrical or chemical or whatever engineering, regardless of which specialty you choose there, but with such broad engineering, physics, chemistry, and math coverage, you will be prepared for nearly any engineering, science, or math graduate studies at any of the top grad schools. If you were accepted at Harvey Mudd, you probably were accepted at every school you applied, as their acceptance criteria is about as high as it gets. CONGRATULATIONS from a Purdue engineering alum who has the greatest respect for HM grads.

My next two choices from your list would be UCSD and UCLA. Both have amazing engineering programs.

-- Alan

If you like sex and drugs then I highly recommend you go to Berkeley. I live in Australia, but I had the pleasure of spending some time as a student in the US at university, and it included some time at UC Berkeley and the college co-op houses around the area, and it was the most crazy shit I have ever experienced in my life (this was 1998). I have never seen anything like it then or since. It was like an alternate reality of piles of drugs and sexually rapacious hot women with low standards. It was how all universities should be, and is about what being a university student should be all about, which is keeping your mind as limber as possible and to be prepared to positively approach anything that life demands you to experience..... and heaps of drugs and STDs.