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February 21, 2003
A: FROM MENTOR DIANA DEDE IN
CO
There are many colleges in the United States that offer engineering
and
mathematics as well as physics etc. Every state has public
universities that
offer these fields of study. The best is really subjective.
Some
universities have an emphasis that may be of more interest
to you than
another. It is best to visit the university and tour the department
and
hopefully meet some of the students and professors.
As an example, University of Colorado-Boulder has a well regarded
aeronautical engineering dept. Stanford in California also
has a well
regarded aeronautical engineering dept. University of Denver
has an
impressive robotics dept. but not does offer Chemical Engineering.
Colorado
School of Mines has the only petroleum engineering department
in the State of
Colorado. You need to decide what engineering you might be
interested in as
well as where you might want to go to college.
There are also private universities that offer engineering.
These will
obviously be more expensive but usually have more financial
aid available as
a result. There are many great choices in the United States,
you have to try
and decide what may be best for you.
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A: FROM MENTOR DIANA DIONISIO
IN CA
I'm not an engineer, but MIT and Texas A&M always comes
to mind when I
think about math and engineering. In California, Cal Poly
San Luis
Obispo is a state school that is known for engineering, so
it's cheaper.
UCSD, I hear is one of the top 10 engineering schools. UCLA
and UC
Berkeley are also very prestigious in Cali. Are you thinkin
of going
private or public? Local or out of state? Cost? Think about
that too.
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A: FROM MENTOR JOAN LUSK IN
RI
I'm not going to answer your question because I don't know
an answer.
I think there are lots of good choices. Questions for you
to ask of
colleges might be, what do the graduates do? What kind of
careers do
they have? What fraction of the math or engin majors are women?
What percentage go on to graduate school versus immediately
to work?
In any field there are more theoretical and more applied areas
- what
is the focus of the programs your considering and what is
your own
focus? But don't be surprised to find your own focus change.
You
may think now that you want one kind of career and after you
know
more math or engineering you may be attracted to something
quite
different, even within that broad area.
A college at which significant numbers of women students study
math
or engineering is likely to be a more comfortable place than
one at
which you are always the first and only. Faculty will have
become
used to the fact that women can do well in math and engineering,
and
so will the other students. The WiSE program (Women in Science
and
Engineering) exists on a lot of campuses and brings women
students
together. At this web site http://www7.nationalacademies.org/wise/
I'd hoped to find a list of school that have such a local
program but
that didn't pop up. Asking about WiSE or student clubs for
math or
engineering would give the schools you consider a chance to
show you
how welcoming they are to women.
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