British Mech Eng Student - Year in the US

[Fletcher19]

2nd year atm and basically i am thinking of doing my final year in the US. I would like to finish my course here but it looks like a load of my mates are going to drop out very soon and although it would be easier to just stay and finish in familiar surroundings with the rest of my mates it has inspired me somewhat to go away for a year.

My department runs exchanges with

University of California
Georgia Institute of Technology
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Pennsylvania State University
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

tbh i am not really concerned with georgraphical location. which of these are considered the better ones?

Also somewhere without too many skinny arse frat boys but not just full of nerds either

[rivermetimbers]

Heres a breakdown for you...
- UC is probably the best location, but which campus? (there are MANY UC locations, Berkeley and LA probably being the best)
-GIT... never heard of it, DONT GO
-U Illnois.. is an OK school
-PSU is literally in the middle of nowhere, but the social life is great, especially in the fall with football(American style).. one of my friends currently goes, you'd enjoy it
-Rensselaer is 70% guys, and most people are in frats.. also located in the middle of nowhere in upstate New York (very cold in winter.. one of my friends also goes there)

Cliff Notes: either go to UC (depending on which campus) or go to PSU.... both are gonna have frats but UC has a better engineering program, although Rensselaers is also very good but you will hate the social life

[Fletcher19]

Ok thanks, i kinda got that impression reading about RPI.

I think the second one is more commonly referred to as GA tech

[rivermetimbers]

haha, yea that is Gtech (i shoulda known that...) Gtech is a fun school in a fun city, AND their engineering program is pretty fun. Considering its the south tho, there are tons of frat douche's (at least from what I saw when i visited there last fall). basically tho wherever you go there is gonna be frat douches, just depends on how many.

[Quicksilvre]

I go to RPI. Academically it is very strong, socially...not so much. The male-to-female ratio is heinous, and while Albany is reasonably pleasant, Troy (the town RPI is actually in) sucks. I'm pretty certain you would enjoy yourself better at any of the other four. You're going to have to tell us which campus of UC you're talking about. I'm guessing it's the Berkeley campus (the one referred to as Cal). Whether it's that or UCLA, you'll get a very good education there, and I think it's the same for Illinois and Georgia Tech as well. Don't know about Penn State to comment on them.