Where to go to college?

Don't know much about those schools, a word of advise though, make sure you really check and double check any information you get from any of the schools. Do not trust anything anyone tells you about the university without doing your research. Schools will do ANYTHING to get your money including mislead you and give you purposefully bad information. I went through this with Fairleigh Dickinson last year and I'm still paying for my mistake, and their incompetance. I got nothing from my semester there, even though I passed all my classes with A's and I'm out a lot of money that I didn't even have to begin with. Added to this, they will not leave me alone. I decided to go to county for a couple of years until I can get things straightened out. Don't rule anything out just because you think you have to; make sure you look into every opiton and have at least two back-up plans.
 
Placement rate can be a bit questionable. Iowa State when I was there ran darn near 100%, but not everyone got a very good job. They agressively brought in some desparate employeers. The Patent and Trademark Office, for example which needs to hire over five thousand patent examiners per year because the turnover rate is so high; they would make you an offer if you met two criteria: an earned engineering degree and a pulse... respiration is nice, but they have ventilators if necessary. But, if you've got student loans that you're gonna have to start paying on, any job is a good job.

A key thing to ask is how much the university will do for you for placement. For some of the recent grads I talked to last year, their school's placement program was little more than a cork board in the hallway with job announcements pinned to it. At ISU when I was there, to graduate in engineering you had to take and pass a zero-credit class (you got no academic credit for it but you had to pass it to get your degree) in how to get a job. And the placement office was very agressively. There wasn't a major engineering/technology company in the country that didn't come to ISU to interview twice a year. The engineering placement office was a well-run ship and a typical graduating senior would have thirty to fifty on-campus interviews... thirty to fifty. The services of that office are available to alumni for life... including on-campus interviews. Several alumni friends of mine in need of work... guys with ten or fifteen years of experience, have gone back to Ames for a a couple of weeks and had twenty interviews on-campus followed by eight or ten plant-trip interviews followed by two or three offers.

When between jobs myself, I sent my resume' to the ISU Engineering Placement office and it was only a matter of days before I started getting calls. I got one plant trip (a bizarre story I'll tell you over drinks at Bladeshow sometime) which did result in an offer which I declined, but an offer nonetheless.

So, find out what they do for graduating seniors and what they do for alumni.
 
My advice is to consider more schools and particularly schools in-state. Don't rule out your state schools because they're not very prestigious. I (and many of my friends) got an engineering degree from the University of Kentucky and then for grad school was able to go wherever I wanted (MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Cambridge...). The reason I suggest in-state schools is that you will likely pay a lot less. That said, all the schools you list produce top engineers. If you can go to any of them for cheap you're golden.
 
If you're willing to go to Pittsburgh, check out Carnegie Mellon too. If you're just looking for a top notch engineering school, don't overlook Case Western. Of the ones you listed, I would go with Pitt, but I was born in Pittsburgh :) Cornell is a very good school too, but you will freeze your nads off up there in winter.
 
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