Ask HN: College Decisions MIT, PSU, Stanford

Make sure you apply to more schools than the three you listed (MIT, Penn State, Stanford). Based on the information you provided in your post, you're definitely not guaranteed to be accepted to MIT or Stanford (there's a very significant chance that you'll be rejected). MIT and Stanford both reject many applicants with profiles similar to yours (or better than yours) each year.

I'm partly speaking from personal experience. I had similar stats to you (4.8 GPA weighted, 3.9+ GPA unweighted) in high school and a 2330 SAT (780 math / 780 reading / 770 writing). I also had very high standardized test scores in other areas and numerous extracurriculars / state and national level awards.

I ended up getting rejected from both Stanford and Princeton (though I did get into Yale). Basically, the top colleges are a crapshoot even with stellar stats, and you should really apply to 7-10 colleges with some backups mixed in.

As far as where to go, I'd just give the general advice of making sure you don't take on a significant amount of debt. If you're middle class, MIT, Stanford, and the Ivies should give a lot of financial assistance. It's debatable whether prestigious colleges actually provide better education than good state colleges, but the prestige associated with a top school will help you a lot in the future (like it or not, most of the world is not anywhere close to an approximate meritocracy, which means that prestige will play a significant role in the opportunities open to you after college).

A) Apply to more than 3 schools. You sound like you have great credentials, but these things are unpredictable. B) Why only these 3 anyway? You want a great engineering school? What about Caltech? Harvey Mudd? I can name others. C) Not to be a snob, but MIT and Stanford will open up doors that Penn State will not. I can imagine someone choosing Penn State over the other two. D) Other than academics, what do you want from your school experience? -Do you want to be close to home? Far away? In between? -Do you want a very large school? A small school? Something in between? -Do you want to be in a city? Rural area? Suburbs? -What other interests do you have and can you pursue them at the schools you are considering?

Your credentials give you an abundance of choice. Take advantage of that by looking at all the options available and thinking about all the things you want.

C) Not to be a snob, but MIT and Stanford will open up doors that Penn State will not.

With a Bachelor's degree in some STEM field? It most likely won't make an iota of a difference.

"Opening doors" goes beyond getting a job.

Not sure anyone claimed otherwise.

The truth is I honestly do not know where to start. I am from outside philly and I truthfully cannot determine if I want to stay close or not. Those 3 schools I only mentioned because they were the first 3 I visited.

Well, if you can't decide, I would venture to say that you might want to stay within driving distance. Stanford is great, but you will not be able to visit home (or be visited by people from home) all that often. But you have great options within a, say, 6 hour driving radius.

What about socially? Are you looking forward to parties, joining a fraternity, anything like that? Sports? A school with a big sports culture (like Penn State)? Or is that not at all what you want?

In what type of environment do you think you would thrive? A large place with infinite options (academically, activities, people)? Or a smaller, more close-knit environment?

Those are good places to start thinking.

And, please, go visit more schools. You will start to see things that seem more comfortable or attractive to you.

I cannot upvote this enough. I made this mistake when I applied for schools for undergrad, applying only to Harvard, MIT, Caltech, Princeton, and Columbia - Columbia was meant to be my backup school as I had a family friend who was a professor in the physics department (who also was a Caltech alum) who wrote a positive letter of recommendation for me (my declared intended major was physics).

Turned out my being overly humble in not listing the plethora of awards I received combined with colleges losing significant money from the Enron scandal resulted in me being waitlisted or rejected from all the schools I originally applied to. My case spread like wildfire in the NYC tristate area as one of the high profile rejections that happen every year or so.

In my case, it turned out that my force of character, will, and intelligence carved out an extremely good career so far without having the kind of connections that people from schools like Harvard and Stanford might have - is that a risk you would like to take though?

Consider if you are over thinking / over planning this. Much of life is a crap shoot. I'm sure you will do well wherever you go and be glad that you made that choice. I remember one very successful professor who admitted he got his degree at Stanford because he liked the weather. Loosen up a little. The benefits/costs of any choice are down in the noise. You can't make meaningful decisions with this precision.

I'm going to preface this by saying I don't know much about aeronautics engineering but I am familiar with another niche engineering industry, Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering. Another avenue to consider is to find out what the professional society(s) are for the type of engineering that you're interested in. Look on there website for biographies of leaders for the society, example president, committee chairs, etc. You will likely find a few universities that are more representative than the others. That's a good sign people are actually working in the field. Another good place to just get an idea is the US News and World report site. I know filling out all the applications is a pain, but in the long run it's worth it just to see what you get offered and perhaps there will be another school that seems to be a better fit.

A few other good local/ interesting engineering schools you might want to check out: Lehigh University, they were doing some jet engine research there when I was looking at schools. I think Pratt of Pratt and Whitney fame may have been an alumni.

If you're interested in foreign language and globalism, university of Rhode Island has an international engineering program where you double major in a language and an engineering discipline. They also had an international internship component.

Again I don't know if it's a good program but Embry Riddle is always the first school that pops into my head when someone mentions aerospace/aeronautics engineering.

I know good engineers from Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech too.

Good luck, it's really a tough decision to pick a college but really it's a pretty personal one. I think like most things in life there are more than one right way to do things but definitely wrong ways. You seem to at least be on the right track.

MIT is amazing, yes. But...

1. Hiring is for academic credentials and research, not teaching. Professors will sometimes have no interest or skill in teaching.

2. You get worked insanely hard, not in a good way. Different people deal with this better or worse, but I suspect it's a problem for many.

Don't know as much about PSU but... does it have a teaching focus? You might have better learning experience if it does.

Also, if you need student loans you might be much happier in 5 years if you took out smaller loans.