Day 2: Rose Hulman Institute of Technology

If your student is at all interested in engineering as a career, you have to consider Rose Hulman Institute of Technology.  This small university in little ol' Terre Haute, Indiana boasts the number one ranking in U. S. News and World Reports for engineering college based upon a national survey of deans and senior faculty.  By the way, they have held this position for the last 16 years!   I had the opportunity to visit and learn more about this school today.  Here are the quick facts:

• 2100 students 80% male
• Maximum class size is 30.
• All PhDs teaching classes, no TAs.
• 4404 applied last spring.
• Median SAT- 590 critical reading, 710 math
• Median ACT- 30 English, 31- math
• Median class rank- top 7%

This is an engineering school.  That's it.  Being that this is all they do, you can imagine that they do it very well.  Their professors are passionate about teaching students about engineering.  Here is a fact/figure that really matters to both students and parents- 100% of graduates are hired or started graduate school by the sixth month after graduation.  Also, 83% of the students who start out at Rose Hulman graduate in 4 years. 

Freshman Dormitory

There was a job fair for seniors on campus last spring. At that fair, there were 240 corporations who were there recruiting the 475 graduating seniors.  You gotta love those odds! Suffice it to say, Rose Hulman is churning out highly qualified, well prepared and in-demand engineers.  

Fabrication Lab at Ventures

If your son or daughter is looking for an engineering program that will pay the bills later on, this is it. There are several really strong programs at Rose Hulman that bear note on this blog entry: 

Catapult Program- This summer program for high school students interested in engineering is incredible.  Students wishing to participate must apply.  High school students are brought on to campus for 19 days to work with faculty and college students to tackle an engineering problem, to create a solution to the problem and then to build a prototype.  This program is expensive ($1400), but students who participated in the catapult are very highly favored in the admissions decision and are offered merit based scholarships because they participated.  In short, it more than pays for itself for the student who ends up going to Rose Hulman later on.  Most of the students who attend Catapult like Rose Hulman so much that they end up going there.

Rose Hulman Ventures Program- Corporations come to this student-based engineering firm with an engineering problem they need solved.  Many times, this means they need a tool designed that will do a job that the corporation needs done in a quicker, cheaper, easier way.  Rose Hulman students are hired to work on the project team to tackle the problem, design the solution and then to create a usable prototype. This sounds a lot like the work that is done by an engineering firm.  This sounds a lot like real world work experience that comes with the ability to say "I created that."  This sounds a lot like job opportunities in the future.

Cutting edge tools for building prototypes

Because of the highly specialized school Rose Hulman is, it will not meet everyone's needs, but for the kid who considers a mechanical lab a place to go "play," Rose Hulman offers a wonderful playground.

enlarged view of tumor removal tool