Very good college for engineering and a top name.

It is a great school of you are the right student.

As an alum- the campus has grown significantly but has maintained their reputation and I’ve had good luck hiring graduates to know their stuff still.

It is a hard school in so far as a higher than average burn out rate, you have plenty of room to fail. If you ask for help you will get it but they won’t chase you to make you get help.

As a current sophomore that’s a pretty accurate summary.

WPI is a good school, but not worth the cost IMHO. It isn't 2.5x better than the various state schools in Mass for engineering. I wouldn't take out excessive loans to get an undergrad degree from WPI.

I have two other issues with small technical schools not specifically limited to WPI. The first is lack of diversity in interacting with non-STEM majors. College should be a time for growth of all sorts, not just technical training. The second is the lack of options if one decides to drop out of engineering, which a very high percentage of students do. A larger school with more options makes transferring major much easier.

Just my two cents as someone who spent most of high school wanting to go to WPI, but as an adult am very glad I didn't.

Yes

It is an excellent school for Engineering and its graduates are well prepared. I have hired quite a few of them over the years.

Yes

I’m a current student. (CS/RBE) I definitely like the school, but you have to be the right type of person for it. Yes, there’s a huge salary at the end, but if you don’t enjoy the work you won’t make it through. As for the cost, it’s expensive but they give pretty good aid. I wasn’t even sure if I was gunna get in and I ended up with about $20k/yr in marit aid. I’m happy to answer any specific questions.

It's been almost 20 years since I graduated, so I can't speak to what has changed since then but it was a challenging although great experience all around and I have never been unemployed since. With that said, if you are not prepared to 100% commit to a STEM degree (or simply a career plan within those types of fields in general) and put in the work, then it may not be worth your time and money.

Also, if money is an issue, you should also know that in the end it's the school you end up graduating from that issues your diploma. I knew a few classmates my junior and senior year that transferred in after building credits from a cheaper school, the only catch is that you need to keep that GPA up if you want to get accepted.

I have worked with more successful and accomplished people from WPI than any other tech school, including MIT, in my 35 years in high tech.

As someone who considered MA state schools, but decided on WPI, I must say that the culture at WPI is what sets it apart. It’s a smaller school with a great community. We have a Humanities & Arts requirement so a good number of our classes are non-STEM. I decided that I didn’t like engineering after my freshman year, and there were plenty of other majors for me to choose! 🙂

Yes, it is. I got my Bachelor's there for robotics engineering. It was difficult, but I learned a lot and it was fun. I met a lot of amazing people.

Prior to WPI, I went to QCC for my associated for engineering. They have an articulation agreement between the schools. This let's you transfer the credits from QCC to WPI with no questions asked, essentially. You have to follow the program though.

QCC was also a great school for engineering. It absolutely prepared me for WPI, especially taking summer classes with Dadbeh, the engineering dept head.

WPI does accelerated classes, so your in class for about 8 weeks, with three classes each, then you go I to the next semester. It's 4 semester a year, so you end up with a lot classes and work. It's all project based, so you're working with a group. This is both a blessing and a curse, but out of all the groups I had, in two years there, I only had maybe 3-4 sub par group mates.

Again, it's difficult, but it's well worth it.

Further more, if you can go to QCC prior, and you do well, and get into Phi Theta Kappa, the honor society and are active, you can get a substantial scholarship to WPI. I ended up with about $60,000 in college debt for a Bachelor's degree, which is roughly the cost a single year. Again, it's difficult but we'll worth it. QCC is very much a "get out what you put in" type of school. If you're hardworking and dedicated, you will learn a lot more than the average student who is just going to college because that's expected of them.

Is Ken Stafford still around?

Another vote for WPI as a very good engineering school.

Good is relative. What major? What metrics?

People in the comments said that their engineering program is good. Niche has them at #59, usnews has them at #61. Certainly not bad, but it's also not a powerhouse like some other schools.

It's stem classes are rigorous, but all stem classes at good universities will be.

I'm studying in the state of Indiana. There is nobody out here that has heard of WPI outside of those from MA. It's a small school, so it makes sense, but just objectively it's brand is not nation wide.

I've also visited occasionally, and the campus is pretty nice, but I can't really say much beyond that. I also cannot comment on culture or student life.

However, as with most MA schools, their coop program is one of the best out there. The relative density and development of MA makes the college to work transition a lot easier, and generally helps a lot with preparedness. My school also highly emphasizes this, and I can tell you if WPI is even anywhere near the level of my school there is absolutely nothing stopping you from achieving your goals.

May I ask what field?

Ken retired as a professor emeritus few years ago, but he's still doing some MQP's and working with FIRST.

As a Clark alum, I've got to say that your choir is top notch! We had a real lack of tenor and bass, so our director reached out to see who from WPI wanted to join a second group. The guys who came over were so amazing and really keen to get into the community of it all. I know WPI had a bit of a rep among Clarkies, but all the WPI guys I met really put a good name on the school.

EE, CE and CS

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They've actually expanded their options in recent years outside of engineering! But still a great school.

I've heard people say its undergrad engineering program rivals MIT.

Fellow alum: Yes it is a good school for many reasons beyond the quality of it's teaching. There are however 2 things to consider.

1. Holy hannah is it expensive and I doubt in 10 years it's gotten cheaper. Even with financial aid it's still quite expensive w/o being a household name.
2. It uses terms (basically half-semesters) meaning that after 3 weeks of class you are already at mid-terms. This makes things FAST. Now that has some benefits and coming from the odd way my voc. high school worked was able to adapt but you could see those freshman year who weren't and eventually dropped.

There is definitely more a working in a team aspect compared to what I've heard from MIT - but if you do go just want you to be prepared for how fast it will seem and how much it will cost ya.

Yeah, I think people in Mass severely overestimate the name recognition of WPI outside of NE.

who says this? WPI is decent but nowhere on the level of MIT. Not even my school claims to rival MIT and it's a widely known engineering school with consistently high rankings

I work for Amazon Robotics and a lot of our engineers come from WPI. It's an excellent engineering school, but not cheap. I also had a friend go there and then later get his MBA from Harvard.

They are a bit unusual in that they run quarters not semesters, so each class is 7 weeks long. It's good in that there isn't much fat in the material, but bad in if you get behind in a class it can be really hard to catch up.

Aw thanks! We are lucky to have an excellent music program! I am part of a Clark club (there wasn’t enough interest at wpi to start my own) so Clark students kindly let me join theirs. I also did a fellowship with a different club at Clark and I’ve had nothing but good experiences there!