College and Guns

[adobewalls]

top ranked Engineering College + gun friendly state = Texas A&M University

http://aggieengineer.tamu.edu/

If you choose to live on campus, you will have to check your guns with the Kampus Kops, but you should have 24-hour access to them (at least that was the case when I was there.)

http://www.studentsreview.com/top_engineering_schools_ranking.html

Shows the rankings.

Texas, Baylor, Texas Tech and Rice are alternatives, but depending on your lifestyle may or may not be for you. Texas A&M is removed enough from urbania to keep the distractions to a minimum but close enough to Austin, San Antonio and Houston (about 2 to 2-1/2 hours) should you like urban life. Enrollment about 40,000 to 45,000; surrounding community is about 200,000+.

When I went to the school, I could go from afternoon classes to Dove hunting in about 30 minutes.

Good Luck - the country needs more engineers.

 

[roo_ster]

First, live in off-campus housing. Firearms are generally prohobited in dorms.

Undergrad/Grad Schools Options:

Texas A&M
Been mentioned. My wife is an alumnus & loved her time there & buys me all sorts of A&M gear. Good engineering schools. Can get hot & muggy in the summer. Much tradition and if A&M's footbal team scores, YOU score.

Texas Tech
The guys I work with who went there liked it, except for the sand storms.

Georgia Tech
Fine engineering school in a really cool city. Atlanta rocks.

As far as your age & such:
Keep your eye on the ball in front of you WRT grades, SATs, athletics, etc. I first took the verbal part of the SAT in 8th grade (did not have the math for the math portion). Do well in HS, excel, work hard, and realize that things can change.

 

[yy]

consider your couse of study well.

I'm glad you're choosing engineering as a big direction. I'd like to plug this choice. A liberal arts education is a rich man's education because you need to be rich to afford it and feed yourself after graduating.

Now, there's absolutely *NO* reason why you must major in the same discipline from college to masters. Very often it's a la carte. I'm getting my PhD in EE after getting my BS and MS in electrical engineering and find that there is zero advantage.

In fact a lot of brilliant researchers start off in one discipline and move to others, unrelated areas.

The important skills regardless of discipline/majors are as follows:

1. statistics (a deep understanding of argument with statistics, not just the mechanical application of statistical tests, heck, computers do that for you)

2. logic. Two prongs: (1) present your ideas and story problems in logic symbols (requires abstraction and be able to articulate your choices of abstraction) and (2) push the symbols around with fluency

3. topology. (sounds intimidating, but really just abstractions based on what we understand about the real numbers) the requisite skill is to understand proofs and apply reasoning to make your own proofs of different hypotheses/theorems/lemmas etc.

4. Then you apply your understanding to mechanical applications of calculus and physics. Yes. calculus and physics. The fundamental theorems of calculus and classical physics problems are really similar once you realize calculus was a language for describing classical physics.

5. also apply your understanding of probability/statistics towards quantum physics which require things (the language of the trade) variational calculus, tensor calculus, Ito calculus, and wave equations (differential equations) ---- note that these big words are extensions of calculus. The deep fundamental understanding comes from logic, topology, and random events.

6. finally, that all of our learnings are really just musings. Some call them models. Others call them 'physical laws' In the end, it was some guy's BS that fit the observations at the time.

My conclusion? You can start with these two books as early as now. Nevermind the school curriculum. They are not required for your understanding of the why's. "Statistics as principled argument" and Schaum's outline for topology. Don't worry about the specific details such as the p-values or the sigma-algebra. It's all just language.

Read them for the why's, and the rest of your education should fill in the how's. If it does not fill in quickly enough, you can always get other books and skip ahead of your peers.

 

[sumpnz]

One other piece of advise. Don't go into engineering for the money. Almost no-one ever gets rich as an engineer. The salaries are pretty good, but the only engineers that ever get rich either start their own company, or they are savvy with investments.

Liberal arts degrees can be useful as a gateway to something else. My sister got a bachelors in psych. She's now almost done with a PhD in the same field. Once she's done with that she'll be making a lot more than I am if she's smart enough about it. I've known people who've gotten a degree in some "would you like fires with that" field in order to get into a good med or law school. By going for the "easy" majors they were able to get top grades which gave them an edge in getting into their grad school of choice.

 

[another okie]

If you want to be an engineer, take every math course your school offers and do extra work on that side. That's the most important thing you can do to get ready for engineering courses. Inadequate math preparation is why folks flunk out of engineering. You should be ready to do calculus when you go to college, at least.

Even though I'm a okie I would second the recommendation of Texas A & M as both a good engineering school and a gun-friendly place, not to mention an alumni network second only to perhaps West Point in strength. If you want to do petroleum engineering, either the University of Oklahoma or the University of Tulsa is the place.

 

[Texshooter]

SON

all the schools I have seen listed in the responses would be great, but come on down to Georgia Tech. Guns? Yeah, like everywhere we have some restrictions, but you will not have any problem getting a CCW, you will be 15 miles from Glocks HQ (if that is to your liking), HK is building a new plant in Columbus, the state legislature has prohibited the city of Atlanta from suing gunmakers, fun place, you will get a great education (not easy, but great), and like I said, this is Georgia! We love guns.

 

[Majic]

As others have posted, you won't find a major university that will allow you to have firearms on campus. That means living off campus. Then you have to determine if you could even provide the time and funds needed to spend on firearms. Your schedule will most likely be hectic and disposable funds limited. College is a totally different world from high school.

 

[Sean T]

Colorado School of Mines in Golden, CO...? Supposed to be one of the toughest engineering schools in the country.

Also home to Coors Brewery, a nice plus ! You can't miss it either as it's about as big as the town itself. Although the campus does have a male to female ratio of about 9:1 . The campus itself is pretty small too. CU-Boulder is much nicer and bigger (~20,000 plus grads) and has a more even distribution of the fairer sex . Their engineering program is pretty good, one of the best if you're into geological engineering, i.e. stuff regarding the production of natural resources.

 

[ny32182]

I only skimmed the thread, but....

I will recommend Clemson or GA Tech... emphasis on Clemson, unless you like living in the middle of the city. Both are quality engineering schools in gun friendly states. I've got about 30 hours to go on my undergrad computer engineering degree from Clemson. Living off campus is a must though, as you will find that its a felony to have a gun on campus... in Clemson, at least.

Don't get too worked up about ivy league schools or the like in the northeast. I thought they were the be-all-end-all in high school too, but a few years and some real world experience has changed my perspective/opinion. You will see the light sooner than you think.

 

[BluesBear]

Kettering in Flint Michigan is a great Engineering school.

The University of Kentucky also has a world class Engineering department.

 

[Soap]

Purdue is a great choice. The gun laws here are very good. Carrying on campus is not illegal, just against school policy, i.e. you can get kicked out but no legal ramifications will result. They are of course a top engineering school as well.

 

[SemperFi83]

Try The Ohio State University. Ohio just got concealed carry, there is no AWB (outside city limits oc Columbus) no gun registration and no FOID or silly crap like that. And besides, OSU has a pretty good engineering program.