Posted by Scott England at 04/11/2001 2:39 PM EST
Student on team #401, The Hokie G.U.A.R.D, from Virginia Tech/MCPS and Virginia Tech/VBEP.
In Reply to: College / Career Advice
Posted by Eric Gargus on 04/09/2001 6:22 PM EST:
Yo, Scott England, VT student in Engineering Science and Mechanics (concentration in biomechanics, minor in math) and a mentor on team 401 Montgomery County Public Schools and Virginia Tech (soon to be many more sponsors I'm told) I applied and was accepted to UVA, Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech, 3 factors made my decision easy.
# 1 tour all the campuses, I was not pleased with UVA when I tourned it (walked around for 4 hours, didn't see a single person smile and there seemed to be no organization to the campus)
Georgia Tech was nice, but that's out of state tuition for me and I wouldn't want to go to school in Atlanta
Virginia Tech has the most beautiful campus by far, a very good school of engineering, in state tuition for me, and what was one of the most major influences, Jeff Seaton and John Evans, two of the major mentors on team 122 (my high school team, Jeff was also an MC at the VCU regional and nationals) are Virginia Tech graduates.
One nice thing I'll say about VT that I'm not sure how common it is in engineering departments nationwide, all freshmen in engineering start as General Engineers, and after taking the infamous EF (engineering fundamentals, weeds out the first 40 %) and seeing what each type of engineer would do, students can then transfer into any of Tech's 11 engineering departments
http://www.eng.vt.edu/
While making up your mind, I'd definitely say check out the websites of both schools, and tour the campuses if possible
~Scott