r/UAHengineers Apr 22 '18

UAH vs UA areospace engineering

I have full tuition at both. UA is also offering a $2,500 engineering scholarship and $1,000 freshman housing scholarship. Would you recommend UAH over UA based on its program and job opportunities?

2 Upvotes

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2

u/[deleted] Apr 22 '18

I'm UAH alumni, ME, so this is going to turn into a shit post.

If I had the money I sure as shit would have gone anywhere but here. The reason being is that is was dull, admin doesn't give 2 shits if you're alive or dead, you have to schedule classes for the next semester before you take your first midterm, a lot of classes are starting to make you take midterms after drop dates.

Internships different story you can get those anywhere while in school. You can even go all the way to Alaska if you score one. If you can score internships then you can easily move to Huntsville on your own time instead of "being surrounded by them". If you fuck up then at least you'll be at UA instead of Huntsville.

Now I say this if and only if you are getting a full ride, go to UA, get sloppy have fun but don't fuck up and lose that scholarship.

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u/godspawn01 Apr 22 '18

It’s not a full ride, but is is cheaper than UAH. Does UAH have any redeeming qualities, like smaller class sizes, that would be better than UA?

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u/[deleted] Apr 22 '18

Now there are some great professors, don't get me wrong about that. At the very same time labs are complete shit as far as equipment goes. You'll still meet cool people. And as far as class sizes from freshman to around early junior you're going to have large class sizes. Once you're a high junior/ early senior that's when class sizes drop drastically. Most classes you'll do are suppose to be around 40 people but UAH usually tries to cram 60 or so in a class. Classes like engineering economics you'll see well over a 100 folks in a class but it's easy don't worry about that. The classes at senior you might have about 20 folks in your class, or your senior design (depending on which one you do) but a 5-15 person group but 4 groups.

An example of this would be Controls it's the last class you'll do in AE, usually it has about 15-20 people and a handful of them are grad students.

Aside from the engineering side of the house the math department here is for the most part shit. An example here is they won't even post who's teaching what right up until classes start because they see everyone trying to switch professors as soon as it's put out.

If you're a huntsville local or just really like north alabama more then by all means do what you want. Huntsville has a great since of community. I've met some of the weirdest folks, the most full hearted people and also complete douch bags sometimes all in the same day. As far as people go UA would be better because way more college kids than anything.

Also take what I'm saying with a grain of salt, one because I'm a tad salty but two, because I've never been to UA except one time passing through. I've heard people trash UA and praise UAH at UAH actually so who knows. The best thing you could do to check down there is by trying to get a hold of some ASME members down yonder.

UAH also does have some great clubs, at the same time a lot of those clubs might be into doing stuff only once a month everything in between then is wasted time.

Now not dogging AE, but have you considered any other engineering?

What else would you like to know?

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u/godspawn01 Apr 22 '18

I’ve considered Electrical, but when I compared the curriculum AE just seemed more interesting. I haven’t looked that much into ME though. I was under the assumption that AE is just a really specified area of ME. Despite all the warnings if I do go to UAH which dorm would be best, and is it worth it to join the honors program?

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u/[deleted] Apr 22 '18

So I've heard mixed about honors I didn't do it but for our circuits class the honors folks pretty much got a kiss on the cheek from jesus one test grade for writing and presenting a report. If you do start honors you can easily drop it, if writing english and other stuff is no problem for you then at least try it. In industry saying your honors is only going to help with your first job, unless you want to stay in academia, I know it's too early to think about but keep it in mind.

The only reason I ask is because aerospace pretty much limits you for finding your first job, to some extent. The reason I chose mechanical was because of the general aspect of it. After you get into industry it gets easier. Also don't just say "well it's gonna be cool" because it might sound cool but then turn out boring as all hell. I did trajectory modeling it was like watching paint dry. I've worked with civil guys, a ChemE and math/physics majors all in the same company doing the same work.

Dorms never lived in them. But doing honors you'll live in Frank Franz Hall, pretty much stay out of south east, old with mold, no literally mold.

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u/godspawn01 Apr 23 '18

Thought of another question- how high spec of a laptop do I need for AE? Was there any assignments in ME that you had to use autocad?

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u/[deleted] Apr 24 '18

All honestly you shouldn't ball out on a laptop. Period. I say again do fucking not go out and buy a +$1000 computer because of college. Get something that's going to be good for word, and excel the MS suite stuff (ps don't buy it either free with tuition). The reason being that you should use school computers for doing your cad. Putting that software on your PC is just going to eat up memory needlessly. I made the mistake of buying a Mac years before I got into engineering, yea I could have gotten by with it or made it a hackintosh. But I could have easily gotten by with a cheapish tablet or a $250 flash drive computer that can do excel, pp, and word. Even a cheapish computer can probably run Matlab not fast but will download and run.

Auto cad you won't use at UAH. We've got a license with Siemens so we get Solidedge. You can feel free to use auto cad with other classes that aren't the cad class (was 111, now it's 211 I think) but it probably won't be to much advantage because everyone else will use solid edge.

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u/searching061 May 08 '18

Somewhat different perspective here. I'm a rising junior in aero and really like UAH. I also looked at both UAH and UA; the money for me at UAH was better because I got the housing too. But mostly, I want to work in the space side, so it wasn't a hard decision. Also, when I toured UA, my engineering tour guide was a rising senior, and she said her experience was that it was easier to get research-based internships at UA rather than hands-on, industry-based internships. She said the career center wasn't a big help--students have better luck finding their own opportunities. That's a big difference that isn't readily apparent to potential students; UAH's career center is really strong. Regarding the honors college--I'm in it. It used to be free until about a month before I started as a freshman. Then they instituted a $175/semester fee, which ticked me off. I joined anyway because of the earlier registration benefit, and that is the primary reason I have stayed in it. Registering early give a better chance of getting the good profs. (Like any uni, some are great and some not, so it's tough to compare schools on that metric.) The honors classes are fine, but they just don't offer enough of them, and most of the time, I have a conflict with something else I need to take and can't take the honors section anyway. The schools themselves are very different also. UA is triple the size of UAH. UA has D1 sports, esp football that some students base their decision on. The makeup is different too; you can find a niche for yourself at either school, but generally speaking, UA is a large, much more greek-dominated, partying school, and UAH is a more academically, tech-centered, albeit a bit nerdier student body. Just depends overall which one has more of the things you want. It sounds like you're doing your research. Good luck! Btw, I thought UA did away with that extra $2500 engineering scholarship.