Franklin W Olin College of Engineering Top Questions

Perhaps the only co-ed engineering school in America to have a 50:50 male to female ratio, Olin emphasizes excellence not just in engineering, but also entrepreneurship, innovative thinking, and whatever outside passions one brings to the table. Each graduating class is around 85 students, forming a tight-knit community between both the students and the faculty and an incubator for such personal growth.

Olin proselytizes its innovation and openness to change. This was true back in 05-06 but has largely been forgotten and replaced by the standard academic bureaucracy. The board seems to be less interested in innovation than stats and comparables, the facilities department actively looks to skewer students, and the administration has built up a fair amount of bureaucratic inertia to the point where rapid innovation is largely stifled. Sure, there might be a few inconsequential student groups that "innovate" regularly but the long term goal setters and policy makers at olin have hunkered down and don't appear to be moving anytime soon. Tuition used to be free. It is now half. I wouldn't be surprised if you were required to pay full tuition in the coming years. The pledge for free tuition was in Olin's founding statement and has been largely ignored as the administration continues to push Olin to be more like MIT or Stanford.

Olin has an honor code that is taken really seriously, and the honor code in addition to the small size, and familiarity among students, makes Olin a very tight-knit community. Olin is also committed to progress and innovation, so the students get used to giving feedback to faculty as well as to teammates. The faculty does a very good job of taking student feedback into consideration.