Tufts Blogs

If you are anything like me, picking what to eat at a restaurant can be very stressful. There are so many options, everything looks good, and you don’t know which item will give you the most satisfaction at the price point you want. Choosing a college to apply to can give you the same dilemma: there are so many colleges in the US that picking the handful of colleges that you see yourself being at and will give you the most value can be so hard.

To help you in your decision, I want to describe a few aspects of studying engineering at Tufts that I like. Hopefully, by writing about what I’ve appreciated about Tufts after being there, I can illustrate some factors other than college rankings that you might consider when deciding which colleges to apply to.

Small Community

The School of Engineering receives a little over 200 students per year spread over six departments, which means that departments are small and you can get to know your classmates very well. My department, the ECE department, has around 35 students per year, which meant many of us were in 3 or 4 of the same classes at the same time of the day. We’d have a class early afternoon, head outside for a break and some fresh air, then go to our next class together. It also means the people in the front office know all of us, and they always put out some candy and chocolate for us to grab as we’re turning in homework.

I really appreciated this because your schedule in college is so much more individual than high school, and having more people around you that understand the various rhythms of your life can be comforting. Having similar schedules with a large group of people reminded me of the family-like environment in high school. We struggled through the same class material. We learned from each other and learned about each other. And really, after spending so much time with the people in my department, they’re like family now. Seeing them around campus never fails to put a smile on my face.

Professor Involvement in Undergraduate Experience

Professors invest a lot of time into students, making themselves readily available as a resource. They hold set office hours for the classes they teach, but they’re also very willing to spend extra time to help students understand class material. Last semester, the professor for my Linear Systems class added extra office hours in the two weeks leading up to a midterm. He didn’t have to do that, but he did because he wanted to help us learn. I took advantage of those hours, and there were times when my professor was working through class concepts with me one-on-one. In general, this kind of commitment to students is something professors at Tufts consistently demonstrate; from my Chinese professor going over grammar subtleties to my sociology professor holding review sessions to one of my math professors patiently explaining that a constant can be complex (it had never occurred to me until then that mathematical constants can have imaginary parts!), my professors have been so willing to help me individually.

Institutional Support for Study Abroad

            Studying abroad was something I knew I wanted to do, and Tufts is very supportive of its students in this regard. In my experience, that applies to engineers as well. Due to the rigid progression of courses for engineering majors, it can be hard to find a semester to go abroad that doesn’t delay your graduation date. Both the administration and the departmental faculty have been very helpful in helping me figure out if it was feasible for me to accomplish this (it was, and here I am, typing this article in Hong Kong!). Each engineering department has a study abroad adviser who fields any questions related to studying abroad as an engineer, such as determining whether certain courses at the overseas university would satisfy my degree requirements. Additionally, my department is extremely understanding and tries to be as flexible as they can in letting students complete their requirements. For example, ECE juniors do a Junior Design project in the spring semester, but students who aren’t at Tufts during this semester can complete this requirement during senior year. In the end, I went into my abroad program knowing what credits I would have after this semester and how I would complete the courses I missed out on. That has definitely reduced the stress of graduating on time and made my time away much more enjoyable!

Conclusion

            So, those are three aspects of my Tufts education that I’ve really appreciated, of which the latter two aspects point to how individually tailored a Tufts education can be. “You want to study abroad? We’ll help you see if that’s possible.” “Lecture didn’t quite make sense? Come to office hours for a different explanation.” I am grateful to enjoy being around the people in my school and to have professors who care and that has supported me in doing the activities I wanted to do. I hope that the schools you find also have these qualities and whatever criteria you may have. Good luck!