Good Engineering schools that I could run at

You should check out Dartmouth College. The Thayer engineering school is very strong across the board, with a project-based curriculum that gives students lots of freedom to pursue their interests. The team has been making steady gains lately, with a 4:02 miler, 13:55 5k guy, and an 8:55 steepler all coming back next year.

The trails are some of the best you will find, and all of the hard sciences are competitive if you decide that engineering is not your thing.

Rowan University not sure where you are located but it is a good engineering school and has a good team.

University of Iowa for biomedical engineering or Iowa State University for everything else.

Hiker trash wrote:

I ran 4:30, 9:47, and 16:00 in high school and turned down a modest scholarship to run at CO School of Mines in 2004. Mines is a DII running school I think. I went to Colorado State instead because I was burned out on running but I switched to microbiology so CSU was a great decision. However, I'm sure they would be interested in you as a runner and a student and Mines is a very good engineering school.

The qualifications for the mines team have gotten much stronger. When I applied (2 years ago), the coach was refusing to talk to Colorado athletes who had not run 4:30. There is a new coach now, but if 4:45 and 10:00 are sea level times, I would anticipate running at Mines to be a stretch. That said, it is a very good engineering school and inexpensive relative to schools rated higher.

Christian Brothers University...NCAA D2 school located in Memphis TN. Ranked 41st in the nation in Engineering. One of the top schools in the South. www.cbu.edu

MIT seems to be the obvious choice. They have pretty generous cutoffs for the team and there is a wide range of ability of people to train with. (e.g. milers range from 4:05 to 4:40).

Iwant2run wrote:

I am a junior in high school and I am not a great runner but I love running. My 3200 is a 10:00 and my 5k pr is a 16:30. My mile Time from sophomore year is 4:45. I am going to do whatever I can to get faster over this summer and I am already very dedicated to the sport. I am willing to put in all the time I have to in order to run in college. I get good grades, 4.45 gpa, and I plan on majoring in some sort of engineering in college. I have done a lot of research on good schools with teams that I could make, but I want to know if anyone has an suggestions of schools I haven't heard of or researched yet? Thanks!

Go to the University of Maine. Surprisingly great Engineering program, easily one of the best state schools in the nation as far as that goes. Also, they are a Division 1 program with Division 3 talent.

Vote4Pedro wrote:

Go to the University of Maine. Surprisingly great Engineering program, easily one of the best state schools in the nation as far as that goes. Also, they are a Division 1 program with Division 3 talent.

Not sure if this is still the case, but the chemical engineering department had the funds to give a full ride to every undergraduate who was interested in pulp & paper and willing to do an internship in pulp & paper. That was 25 years ago when my father was teaching there.

As to the poster's comment that I have no idea what it is like to be at an elite university, it is true that I did not go to one, but I had plenty of friends and relatives who did (Princeton, CalTech, Georgia Tech, MIT, UC Berkley, Vanderbilt (although I'm pretty sure Vandy doesn't count)). Thermodynamics is thermodynamics whether you take it at State U or Princeton, the difference is that you will be surrounded by more talented, more motivated and harder working students at Princeton, but you can get the same education and create the same opportunities for yourself at state U, it is just you will not have friends who are doing it and you will have to be significantly more active in pursuing it (for instance demanding of yourself perfection on tests rather than just getting the A).

Post of the week.

I am an accountant for an engineering company - several of our engineers (mechanical and electrical) went to Manhattan College. I am not sure how the distance team is these days but the school has an indoor track and Van Cortland Park is a few blocks away.

I'm going to RPI next year... it seems like the team is getting a lot better with coach Lynch

UCCS (University of Colorado - Colorado Springs).

Mechanical Engineering program was ranked top 10 in US. Men's xc team 11th at NCAA II Nationals.

D2 school wrote:

UCCS (University of Colorado - Colorado Springs).

Mechanical Engineering program was ranked top 10 in US. Men's xc team 11th at NCAA II Nationals.

Top 10--among schools who do not grant a PhD. Since all the good engineering schools grant PhDs, singing UCCS is a great engineering school is like me saying I am a great runner because I was 10th in my age group at the local turkey trot...big fish in a small pond.

I was part of the team at UCCS which is why I responded. We had several guys who majored in engineering who either graduated with good jobs or went on to pursue a PHD elsewhere.

I never compared us to anyone else, just listed it as another option for the kid to consider based on what he said he was looking for academically and athletically. The men's xc team has about 25 guys who split one scholarship, so no superstars. We had a lot guys who were about his level in HS.

From US News and World Report. 2012.

"The undergraduate program at UCCS tied at No. 9 in the nation among public engineering schools whose highest degree is a bachelor’s or master’s. The overall national ranking for the program, including public and private universities, was No. 25."

you self-delude to maitain ego wrote:

Top 10--among schools who do not grant a PhD. Since all the good engineering schools grant PhDs, singing UCCS is a great engineering school is like me saying I am a great runner because I was 10th in my age group at the local turkey trot...big fish in a small pond.

What does a PhD program have to do with undergrad?

cff wrote:

you self-delude to maitain ego wrote:

Top 10--among schools who do not grant a PhD. Since all the good engineering schools grant PhDs, singing UCCS is a great engineering school is like me saying I am a great runner because I was 10th in my age group at the local turkey trot...big fish in a small pond.

What does a PhD program have to do with undergrad?

Very little...but the best undergraduate programs also "happen" to have PhD programs. Saying something "number 9 among public engineering schools without a PhD program" is like saying that some restaurant must be a fantastic French restaurant because it is the best French cuisine in all of Gary, Indiana. Once you've taken NYC, SF, and Boston restaurants out of the contest it is no longer much of a contest, is it? Eliminating schools with PhD programs eliminates MIT, Cal Tech, Carnegie Mellon, Penn State, etc. etc...and if you're going to rank without ranking against the big dogs, it isn't much of an achievement to do well.

you self-delude to maitain ego wrote:

cff wrote:

What does a PhD program have to do with undergrad?

Very little...but the best undergraduate programs also "happen" to have PhD programs. Saying something "number 9 among public engineering schools without a PhD program" is like saying that some restaurant must be a fantastic French restaurant because it is the best French cuisine in all of Gary, Indiana. Once you've taken NYC, SF, and Boston restaurants out of the contest it is no longer much of a contest, is it? Eliminating schools with PhD programs eliminates MIT, Cal Tech, Carnegie Mellon, Penn State, etc. etc...and if you're going to rank without ranking against the big dogs, it isn't much of an achievement to do well.

How is one undergrad better than another?

cff wrote:

you self-delude to maitain ego wrote:

Very little...but the best undergraduate programs also "happen" to have PhD programs. Saying something "number 9 among public engineering schools without a PhD program" is like saying that some restaurant must be a fantastic French restaurant because it is the best French cuisine in all of Gary, Indiana. Once you've taken NYC, SF, and Boston restaurants out of the contest it is no longer much of a contest, is it? Eliminating schools with PhD programs eliminates MIT, Cal Tech, Carnegie Mellon, Penn State, etc. etc...and if you're going to rank without ranking against the big dogs, it isn't much of an achievement to do well.

How is one undergrad better than another?

Well that's a complex question and there are many metrics you could use. But typically the way it works is that some people graduate from really good schools, some people graduate from crappy schools and on average the graduates of the really good schools go on to obtain the best jobs and effect the greatest changes on society while the grads of the crappy schools end up left behind.

I agree; there are big differences in schools and this nonsense that they take the same classes so they are all the same is so weak as almost to disqualify the poster from the conversation unless that have content to add to that comment.

I know well the chair of an engineering department at a major school and the grad school entrants do not randomly pick from undergrad programs. What you learn and then environment of your peers is very important.

Different fields to an extent but another close contact is a manager at a major computer firm and he says that generally will not bother interviewing anyone from an SEC school except those at the top (Vandy, of course, and Florida - comment was made before the move of Texas A&M and Missouri which are relatively strong compared to much of the SEC).

So, if the firms are only hiring from the better schools and the grad schools are selecting from the better schools then either you need to do very well at lower-level schools or go bigger and do a good job. Of course, some 'good' schools have their problems. U. Washington has huge freshman-level classes which is not a good thing but forced by budgets, etc.