Transferring to an Engineering University: Advice from Aero Education

[brentalism]

I've seen people post questions about good colleges around here...

I am currently attending West Virginia University. In high school I was in all honors 93 average, 1370 SAT, I was the carefree smart kid who never had to do any work. In my freshman year at WVU I settled down and earned a 3.86 with a 4.0 second semester. During my college application process I was very unfocused toward any goal or ambition and now I fear I am missing out on a better education. Do you think it would be worth my while trying to transfer to a more prominent engineering university and would I be able to?

Thanks

 

[DLinkage]

I don't really know how good of a school WVU is for engineering, I actually didn't even know it existed until now. I graduated from Purdue from their aerospace engineering program this past spring. Right now I think its ranked 4th nationally in terms of aerospace schools. They are currently constructing a new building for the department which will be opening next fall (2007). I did well in high school also but some of the courses here will really push you. One of my dynamics classes (AAE340) had 10-20 page homework assignments due weekly. Other than that the only course that took up a significant amount of time was my senior design, which was really interesting because it was design-build-test. That way its proof that your 2 months of analysis was correct...or if it wasn't lol. The people there are nice although their not as outgoing as most the people I've met back home in chicago. If you're over 21 there's this thing called breakfast club which happens every home football which I'm sure you'll hear more about but to my knowledge, Purdue is the only place where this marvel of fun occurs. The only two negatives I can really say about the place is that the greek system is too much like high school with regards to some of the attitudes between the houses when compared to the greek system at other universities. The other is Indiana weather, the winters are freezing, it takes forever to warm up, and the weather can be completely random.

 

[Solar Flare]

I don't know much about it because I am trying to apply to college myself but I am thinking of St. Louis U., Georgia Tech (great engineering school) and there is also Embry-Riddle Aeronautical U. but it's known to be more of a flight school than a university...I'm debating myself about a major in physics v.s. a major in AE.

 

[oksanav]

I live in Texas but have a lot of family in West Virginia. I don't know about the college, but I know from comparing with my cousins and when my brothers lived there that the k-12 education was always at the very least 2 years behind what we did over here. Considering that Texas has what I'd generally consider horrible education, that doesn't say much for West Virginia. A couple cousins went to your school and they always said it was easy but they just went into education so it wasn't a big deal. So I would definitely look into transfering if I were you. I did the same thing though, just went to the closest school, because in the arts, which is where I started, the college doesn't really matter except for connections. With science it's different, but as long as I like my teachers I'm happy.