The parent’s perspective goes on … We’ve visited three schools in the past three days. Life is different from when I chose Dartmouth (and they chose me) back in the Spring of 1974. Last night in our Super 8 Motel near Iowa City, I looked over and realized Erik was leading three different Google Chats on the laptop. One conversation was with a friend who had just visited MIT and RPI … they were comparing notes.

Some of the comments …

• These schools are big, like cities … cool labs.
• You don’t get to do engineering work Freshmen year  …  class size can be HUGE.
• Valpo, however was smaller and cool … neat robots, visualization lab

Here is where life gets interesting. In my prior post, I mentioned that Erik had learned about WPI’s robotics program via the NXT Blog.  Well … that blog learned of Erik’s quest, and  linked / posted. My blog stats show tons of referrals back to this blog.

In addition, a freshman from the Olin School of Engineering stumbled upon my first posting, and emailed me. Erik and I checked out Olin’s web site ast night, and given our experiences at the "big" schools, it looks like we will delete MIT from our visit list, and check out Olin instead. Check out Olin’s student blog. It appears Olin has a unique approach to engineering education.

We finished our evening with a call home … via the phone … no! … Skype!

The search begins today; it's my son's search for the perfect engineering college, but he gave me permission to blog about the process from a parent's perspective. If you, my blog readers, respond positively, I'll make this a regular feature of eContent.

• The candidate … my youngest son, Erik
  • High school junior (ACS pre-engineering program)
  • 3.8 GPA
  • Programs to a varying degree in C, C++, JAVA
  • Uses Solidworks
  • Five year veteran of S.N.I.P (Super Nerds In Pink)
  • YouTube Video Creator:
    Cyrus, the Cat, Versus the Lego Synchro Drive Robot

Here are the schools on the early target list:

• Bradley University
• Carnegie Mellon
• Iowa State
• Michigan Tech
• MIT
• Purdue
• Valparaiso
• WPI

And now my first comments … these schools were chosen for a variety of reasons. 

Post Update / Insert: see the final post from this series … Erik is about to graduate from college and has a great full time engineering job offer in hand!

• Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) made the list because Erik learned via the Lego Mindstorms NXT Blog of their new robotics degree. It shows that smart schools get themselves listed on "non traditional web sites"
• Carnegie Mellon already messed up with many of Minnesota's top engineering students. I know of many families who wanted to visit Carnegie Mellon this week (Spring break). Their admissions department told each family they only wanted to see admitted seniors during the entire month of April … high school juniors stay away. Given the distance to visit CMU (1,000 miles), using a vacation week is necessary. We had planned on visiting CMU this week. Not!
• Michigan Tech … the perfect combination of Lake Superior, cross-country skiing, wilderness and engineering?? (not many girls, however).
• Valparaiso … a nice sized Lutheran college with an engineering degree

Oh yes … Super 8 motels are clean, inexpensive, and have free wireless at all locations! Off to our morning appointment at Valpo!

The Search Continues – The Second Post in this Series!
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