Universities (Detroit, Ann Arbor, Royal Oak: house, rent, job)

[HotSauce]

xcalgal,

I'm sure you've done all kinds of research already. You might find these two pages on Wikipedia pretty informative (i.e., if you haven't already looked).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_Of_Illinois
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Michigan

Frankly, both schools are very impressive and each has its strong points. It all comes down to this: what would be the best fit for your son. After doing our research, U of M was the best fit for our son. But U of I is a very impressive school for sure.

I do recommend that you attend parents' day at both schools- if you haven't done that already.

[Cato the Elder]

My entire point is that I don't have a favorite. In fact, I'm currently affiliated with U of M. I have yet to hear from anyone singing the praises of U of M engineering who doesn't have some emotional attachment to the school.

You missed my point about stars. Students like Larry Page would have arguably been a star anywhere. Marc Andreessen didn't have the pedigree but somehow made a huge impact on the world. Do you honestly believe he would have invented Mosaic and Netscape if he didn't attend Illinois and work at the NCSA? Do you believe that Page would have helped invent Google at Stanford without attending U of M as an undergrad? I think so.

Finally, tuition is something to consider. Michigan tops $30k/year for out-of-staters while Illinois is less than $24k/year. If I were in the OP's shoes and was convinced that my son wanted to be an engineer, I would send him to Illinois - simple as that. So please stop with all the irrational exuberance and provide some solid facts for the OP.

[Cato the Elder]

Originally Posted by HotSauce

xcalgal,

I'm sure you've done all kinds of research already. You might find these two pages on Wikipedia pretty informative (i.e., if you haven't already looked).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_Of_Illinois
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Michigan

That's a good idea:

U of M
The university is one of the founding members (1900) of the Association of American Universities, the nation's most significant consortium of research universities. The university has one of the largest annual research expenditures of any university in the United States, totaling about US $775 million per annum from 2004 to 2005, and US $797 million in 2006, and $823 million as of year end 2007.[42] The Medical School spent the most at over US $333 million, while the College of Engineering was second at more than $131 million.[42] UM also has a technology transfer office, which is the university conduit between laboratory research and corporate commercialization interests.

UM helped develop one of the first university computer networks (the Merit Network) and has made major contributions to the mathematics of information theory. Other major contributions included the precursor to the National Science Foundation computer networking backbone,[43] the virtual memory model, and computer databases. The university is also a major contributor to the medical field with the EKG, gastroscope, the announcement of Jonas Salk's polio vaccine, and the extracorporeal membrane oxygenation system or ECMO. The university's 13,000 acre (53 km²) biological station in the Northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan is one of only 47 Biosphere Reserves in the United States.[44]

UM is home to the National Election Studies and the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index. Political scientists and policy analysts use UM's Correlates of War project as a gauge of nations' relative global power and a barometer for the outbreak of war. The university is also home to major research centers in optics, reconfigurable manufacturing systems, wireless integrated microsystems, and social sciences. The University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute is located at the university, and support was recently given to the life sciences with the establishment of the Life Sciences Institute and the construction of associated facilities. Undergraduate students are able to participate in various research projects through the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) as well as the UROP/Creative-Programs.[45]


U of I
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is often regarded as a world-leading magnet for engineering and sciences (both applied and basic). Having been classified into the highest category, comprehensive doctoral with medical/veterinary and very high research activity [6], by The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, UIUC offers a wide range of disciplines in undergraduate and postgraduate programs. Urbana-Champaign is also quantified as one of the Top 25 American Research Universities by The Center for Measuring University Performance[7]. Beside annual influx of grants and sponsored projects, the university manages an extensive modern research infrastructures.

The university campus hosts the site of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), which created Mosaic, the first graphical Web browser, the foundation upon which Microsoft Internet Explorer is based, the Apache HTTP server, and NCSA Telnet. U of I also has the third largest academic library (after Harvard's and Yale's) and the largest public engineering library (Grainger Engineering Library) in the country. In 1952, the university built the ILLIAC (Illinois Automatic Computer), the first computer built and owned entirely by an educational institution. U of I is also the site of the Department of Energy's Center for the Simulation of Advanced Rockets, an institute which has employed graduate and faculty researchers in the physical sciences and mathematics. It is at the forefront of materials science and condensed matter physics research, and home to Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory. There are two cutting-edge complexes for research and teaching recently opened, Siebel Center for Computer Science in 2004 and the Institute for Genomic Biology in 2006. The Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, however, is still the largest interdisciplinary facility on campus with 313,000 square feet. Both the Illinois Natural History Survey and Illinois State Geological Survey are located on campus and affiliated with the university. The university is also recognized as a world-class center for agricultural and horticultural research.

In the 24 February 2004 talk as part of his Five Campus Tour (Harvard, MIT, Cornell, Carnegie-Mellon and UIUC)[8], titled "Software Breakthroughs: Solving the Toughest Problems in Computer Science," Bill Gates has mentioned that Microsoft hires more graduates from UIUC than from any other university in the world.[9] Alumnus William M. Holt, a Senior Vice-President of Intel, also mentioned in a campus talk in 27 September 2007 entitled "R&D to Deliver Practical Results: Extending Moore's Law"[10] that Intel hires more PhD graduates from UIUC than any other university in the country.

[Cato the Elder]

Here are a couple more relevant links and excerpts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Univers...of_Engineering

The University of Michigan College of Engineering is the engineering unit of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. With an enrollment of 4,874 undergraduate and 2,704 graduate students as of 2004,[1] the College of Engineering is one of the premier engineering schools in the United States. In various ranking systems, the college is frequently ranked as one of the top ten engineering schools in the nation.

The college was founded in 1854, with courses in civil engineering. Since its founding, the College of Engineering established some of the earliest programs in various fields such aeronautical engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, and nuclear engineering. The Materials Science and Engineering program is the oldest continuing metallurgy and materials program in the United States. Biomedical engineering is one of the newest programs established at the College of Engineering.

The college was first located on the University's Central Campus before moving to the University's North Campus, starting in the late 1940s. Today, the College of Engineering is primarily located on North Campus (the Marine Hydrodynamics Laboratory is located on Central Campus), which is shared with the School of Information, School of Music, School of Art and Design, and the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. The North Campus also houses Lurie Tower, one of 2 grand carillons on the Ann Arbor campus, and one of only 23 in the world. Dr. David C. Munson, Jr. currently holds the position of Robert J. Vlasic Dean of Engineering.

Various laboratories are located at the college of engineering, including the Center for Wireless Integrated MicroSystems (WIMS) and the Center for Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems (RMS), both of which are NSF laboratories. Another major laboratory is the Center for Ultra-Fast Optical Sciences. The Phoenix Memorial Laboratory is a laboratory dedicated to research into the peaceful use of nuclear technology. It once housed the Ford nuclear reactor, which has been decommissioned.

The college of engineering also has wind tunnels, electron microscope and ion beam laboratories, a civil engineering test facility, and solid state manufacturing facilities. Various laboratories dedicated to automotive engineering, optical sciences, and robotics are scattered throughout the college. A hydrodynamics laboratory is located on the University's Central Campus. An office of the Weather Underground is located at the College of Engineering.

The Duderstadt CenterThe Duderstadt Center, formerly the Media Union, is named after former University president and nuclear engineering professor James Duderstadt. It houses the Art, Architecture & Engineering Library and also contains computer clusters, audio and video editing laboratories, galleries, and studios, as well as usability and various digital media laboratories, including virtual reality. The Millennium Project, which focuses on the future of the university learning environment, is also housed in the Duderstadt Center.

Computer services and networking is provided by CAEN, the Computer Aided Engineering Network. CAEN operates various computer laboratories throughout the College of Engineering and the University campuses. It also operates the college's wireless network (with VPN and web-based authentication) and runs daily backups for College of Engineering servers. As of 2007, CAEN no longer maintains separate mail servers for CoE students and faculty.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UIUC_Co...of_Engineering

The University as a whole is known as one of the nation's great research institutions and the College of Engineering is no exception. The College has the third highest per dollar research expenditure in the nation with over $202 million spent annually. The College is home to 26 research centers, 10 major laboratories, and nine affiliate programs. In addition, the college serves as the home for the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), and the United States Department of Energy's Center for Simulation of Advanced Rockets. In total the College employs 408 research faculty members, 2,681 graduate researchers, and over 1,200 staff members.

In addition to the program as a whole ranking in top five of Engineering schools, many of the departments within the College of Engineering are also highly ranked.

The Undergraduate programs in Civil Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering are considered to be the top such programs in the nation. Mechanical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Environmental Engineering consistently rank in the top five such programs in United States. The Aeronautical & Astronautical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, and Nuclear Engineering programs consistently rank within the top ten such programs in the nation. Mechanical Engineering is currently the 4th best program in the nation according to US News and World Report.

The Graduate program in Civil Engineering offered by the college is considered to be one of the top two programs in the discipline. Additionally the graduate programs in Mechanical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Environmental Engineering, and Materials Science & Engineering consistently rank within the top five such programs in the nation. The graduate programs in Aerospace Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Nuclear Engineering, and Physics consistently rank within the top ten such programs in the nation.

Plaque commemorating the Theory of Superconductivity, developed by John Bardeen.The faculty of the College of Engineering has earned many honors over the course of the College's prestigious career. Currently 82 of the faculty hold named chairs or professorships, 34 are members of the National Academy of Engineering, 15 are members of the National Academy of Sciences, 15 are members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, two are Nobel Laureates, one is a National Medal of Science recipient, and one is a National Medal of Technology recipient.

Micro and Nanotechnology LaboratoryAlumni have created companies such as Netscape Communications, AMD, PayPal, Oracle Corporation, Siebel Systems, Lotus Software, and YouTube.

[Cato the Elder]

In case you missed it since it's separated over two posts, U of M engineering spends 131 million a year on research while U of I spends 202 million. Can we stop now with the erroneous comments about the superiority of U of M's engineering? The facts just do not bear it.

If you are a MI resident, I would still recommend U of M engineering to the vast majority b/c of the school's overall better quality and price differential, but I'm addressing the OP's situation here, which to me points to Illinois.

[HotSauce]

xcalgal,

Here are some sites that you and your son might be interested in. You probably have already looked at all of this. But just in case you haven't, here you go...

http://aerospace.engin.umich.edu/
Click the links on the left side of the page to access various info about the aerospace program at U of M.
Your son might find the "student projects" under the "Research" link interesting - e.g., the Mars Rover project, Student Space System Fabrication Lab, etc.
Under "People" click on "Students" and you'll see a list student email addresses. Your son might want to email some of them to get their perspective.

http://www.ae.uiuc.edu/
The web site is structured differently than U of M's. But similar information is provided.

Of course you would probably want to check out the credentials of the various professors listed for both schools. They both have pretty impressive faculty.

Some other interesting links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerospace_engineering
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...eering_schools
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...pace_engineers

[HotSauce]

Cato, My comments have been directed to xcalgal since she is the one asking for information. I do have one thing to say to you since you made a blanket statement after responding to a few posts I made (i.e., where you say, "Can we stop now with the erroneous comments'). I don't think you will find anything "erroneous" in what I have posted. If you do, it was not intentional.

As I also pointed out earlier; my son chose the University of Michigan and he loves it there. I don't think anything anyone says would convince him to switch to Urbana or convince him that he made the wrong choice That does not take a thing away from Urbana. My point is that he is very happy with his choice of colleges.

Last year we toured Urbana - all of the engineering facilities and the rest of the campus. We spent a few days there. We stayed in the hotel that is right there on the campus. We sat in on engineering classed. We saw all of the new engineering buildings and the things in them. We sat down and talked to the dean of engineering, other administrators, professors, and students. It was a pretty nice campus - I'll say impressive. I don't remember exactly what it was; but something that one of the administrators said was a strike against Urbana on our book of college visits. I wish I could remember exactly what it was so it doesn't sound like such a nebulous statement.

We visited quite a few colleges that also had impressive engineering departments. Each school had its pluses and minuses.

We spent a lot of time visiting U of M since that was our sons first choice. We toured the main campus and engineering campus. We actually made a few return visits so we could see more of the engineering campus and more of the main campus. We were taken on a few different guided tours through most of the facilities on the engineering campus. We sat in presentations by various engineering professors in different disciplines and in different engineering buildings. We sat down and discussed things with various administrators and especially in the engineering department. It was all very impressive to us. We visited Michigan's engineering school again just a few weeks ago on parent day. We say all of the major ongoing student projects (e.g., mars rover, land rover, etc.) I found them all fascinating. We took a guided tour of the industrial engineering facility and saw some of the student projects in action. They also took us back through the several of the engineering buildings. I found it all very interesting. We were given a facinating demonstration by a professor who studies the scientific principles of various gases and light. Really entertaining and enlightening. As somewhat of a computer geek; I really like the Eniac on display in the computer building. That's a chunk of history. The whole experience almost made me wish I were a whole lot younger and was able to return to college full time. I'll have to say, I agree with my sons choice. This is not an emotional attachment. I just like Michigan's campus and facilities better. And as a musician and engineer nothing beats the fact that they have combined the engineering and music schools on the same campus.

I don't know when is the last time you visited either U of M or Urbana. Both places are very impressive. Both engineering facilities are excellent. I think in that sense they both stack up quite well.

As far as researching schools goes: if you knew my wife, you would know one person who has done probably more research into both schools and several others than either of us and probably more than most parents do. Do you work a full time job? If so, then there is no question: my wife's research far exceeds ours. She agrees with my son and I that Michigan is the better choice - at least for our son. A couple things that she just reminded me of: 1. the administrators at Urbana were a bit snobbish (i.e., more than one that we encountered during our few days there) - that was a turn off; 2. during our visit to Urbana (over a few days) they didn't show us anything special the students had going on (i.e., out of class projects, etc.) Whether or not they had them, they did not show anything impressive to us (just new buildings).

[HotSauce]

xcalgal,

Yesterday after church my son and I were talking to a Vice President in the Aerospace division of one of the world's largest companies. For sake of clarity I'll call him "VP". He got his PhD from the University of Michigan's School of Engineering. His sons and ours are friends and his wife and my wife are very good friends. One of VP's sons is studying biomedical engineering in the honors college of a school out west. His other son is in 12th grade and is deciding between University of Michigan or Michigan State where he plans to study engineering too (not sure which discipline). VP and his wife helped introduce my son and us to U of M's engineering school. Yesterday I asked VP to give my son advice on how to best prepare for a career as an engineer in what will be a continually increasing global centric work force. Now we are talking "real world" after academia. The VP knows how intelligent/talented my son is. His sons are very smart too. But VP said something to the effect that education and knowledge are not going to keep a highly paid US engineer employed over a perhaps less educated engineer half way around the world who can get the job done for a fraction of the pay. I think by now we all know that is true. Now add to that the fact that many engineers in India, China, etc. are just as educated and harder working than many in the US. Reason: they have to be to fight for a few cents raise here and there so they can feed their families and buy basic necessities. Yes there are elite there just as here. But the vast majority are eking out a living. Where as here in the US we are hoping for a raise to buy our next big house or toy. I hope I'm not starting a debate over that. It's the current/near future reality. So how can a US engineering student differentiate him/herself? VP said the thing that one must develop above all is creativity. I don't think this has a whole lot to do with which school to pick. Or does it? If you look beyond the "what is the best engineering school" stats (not saying ignore them), your son might ask "what school allows more freedom for developing creativity?" I don't have the answer. Just posing the question.

By way of reference; I am a Software Engineer who works with a global team for a global computer hardware/services company (not the same company as VP - but again one of the worlds largest most profitable companies). Over the past year or so I have been training/mentoring several engineers who live in India, South America, and some in the United States. My goal has been to get them to where they can take over my previous responsibilities so I can move on to more exciting cutting edge things - which is what I have been blessed to in fact start actually doing. Does training these folks cause me fear? I don't look at it that way. Instead I ask: How do I prepare myself for new challenges? What can I learn now that will be highly valued over the next five years? Check trade publications, etc. Search the Internet. Once I figure that out: read, read, read, do a ton of on line training, go to training classes, attend user group meetings, try to practice what I am learning, etc. A lot of that takes place on my own time. I am continuing to read books that will help me get to where I am able to creatively apply what I am learning - rather than just mimicking what others have done. Although there is not a whole lot to mimic yet. Just as in any field we engineers never stop learning. Did I learn in college anything I am currently using or doing? Not really. Where did I learn the most? From years of experience with a constant drive to stay on top of the latest developments in my field. You could say we are always adding new things to our tool box (i.e., creativity, forward thinking, experience, knowledge, new technologies, connections, always asking "how can I make this better?", "how can I make this easier for them?", etc.). In the end hope I am using what I have in my tool box to make useful stuff for my customers.

A while ago I was having an email conversation with the Vice President and "Distinguished Engineer" over the division I work in (i.e., within our company). He noticed that I live in Michigan so he mentioned to me that he completed his undergraduate degree at Wayne State University in Detroit (not even on the list of top schools). This is a guy who achieved a very prestigious title "Distinguished Engineer" in one of the top IT firms in the world (probably the most respected IT firm in the world). And after achieving that, he was made VP over a very large division of a company having a few hundred thousand employees (a large number of whom are scientists and engineers). From my experience he is more the norm than the exception as far as whether or not a highly qualified individual completed their undergrad degree at a "top" school. I don't have statistics. But that is what I have noticed over the many years that I've been working.

I know my rambling won't help much in picking a school. But I just want to perhaps give some perspective. Tell your son the college he chooses will in the long run become a very small part of his overall career. So look a bit beyond the "what is the best engineering school" question and look at some of the other intangible qualities of a college or university. And I think that is what you were looking for in the first place :-) My vote in that regard is still Michigan :-)))

[M TYPE X]

UI vs UM on the numbers and admin promises does not give any deciding factor.

The deciding factor is Ann Arbor, and this comes from someone that wanted to write in 'Pat Buchanan' on his 2000 ballot. Even if my family all left SE Michigan, I would drive, or fly, to revisit Ann Arbor as I currently do a couple times per year. Champaign-Urbana? hahaha! Only if I miss corn.

They pay me (a PhD student) well enough to be here, and I like my apartment, but it's not Ann Arbor.

I will note that most students from California or New Jersey have zero interest in metro Detroit and complain about Michigan, and even Ann Arbor, so some people are never satisfied. I would banish them to Champaign-Urbana for, oh, five years of grad school. (That seems like enough time to finish a dissertation.)

I entered UM through engineering, and moved over to the social sciences due to differing interests and utter austerity of the social scene (and I'm a very private person happy to spend solitary hours on research, or on occasion, video games).

The UI heritage in computer science/engineering is not something to ignore, so if he is truly serious and doesn't care about PRIUSes per capita, then Champaign-Urbana, not Ann Arbor or Madison, is the place for him.

"Students don't get off campus" is a general statement. Some people like having a train to go up to Chicago on a Saturday or Sunday. Being from metro Detroit, I drive if I wanna go somewhere, especially if I want to see corn for hours. (There's a lot of corn here. It looks good in the summer, too.)

[M TYPE X]

Originally Posted by HotSauce

1. the administrators at Urbana were a bit snobbish (i.e., more than one that we encountered during our few days there) - that was a turn off; 2. during our visit to Urbana (over a few days) they didn't show us anything special the students had going on (i.e., out of class projects, etc.) Whether or not they had them, they did not show anything impressive to us (just new buildings).

The administration here at UIUC leaves much to be desired, but they lack competence and humility. UM admins only lack humility. Remember, all of these administrators are hoping up to 'trade up' to Cornell.

I admit that my 'feelings' re UM admin have warmed, only because the affirmative action controversies are over. Oh, the admins lost, because the people of Michigan told them NO. (They are trying to work around the law, which is not unexpected.) Yes, these political battles affect the college of engineering as much as any unit of the university.