Maybe this is the wrong topic but I'm not sure it warrants a new one.
I am mentoring a young man who I think has a bright future. In high school, he took all the mediocre classes, had a 2.9, and a 23 on the ACT. His shop teacher encouraged him to be a welder. Literally said "I'm going to help you get a welder job at ______ company.
My wife saw a spark and told him to take an ACT prep course. He bumped his score up to 29, with just a little prep. Encouraged him to apply to colleges, he got into OK state and a few others. He ended up attending Texas A&M Texarkana because he can live with family there and they gave him money. Basically paying him to attend. He majored in Mech. E. and just finished his first semester. 3.8 gpa. He told me "I can do better, I played too many video games this fall."
The whole time he was working part time at a local business basically as a gopher. This young man was a quiet but good high school athlete who, for whatever reason, never had a ton of ambition. Sort of just puttered through. Family are good people, all auto mechanics. No discipline issues. To make extra money this young man finds broken gas string trimmers/weed eaters, fixes them and sells them on social media. Can turn out 1 or 2 per weekend.
So, I personally think that, with his grades and apparent drive, I need to help and encourage him transfer to the best possible school that will take him. If you're going to major in engineering, better school is ... better. But, I understand there is an argument for "if kid is succeeding, why would you mess with that." Yes, I understand a 3.8 at tamu-txk is not the same as splitting the atom, but I think it's a showing that he takes it seriously. These are the best grades he's ever made.
Assuming he doesn't discover beer this spring, and makes another round of grades, I think I can get him into UTD, Tech, ousux or maybe aggy. I feel like Austin is a stretch but will likely apply.
My basic questions are:
1. How big of an advantage would it be to graduate from UTD over TAMU-Texarkana? I assume that UTD's career services is going to put its grads into places like Texas Instruments and Toyota. I assume it's just better than a regional aggy school.
2. Of those schools, how do you rank the engineering/computer science departments (UTD, aggy, ousux, Tech, Okie lite).
3. How much weight do you put on "aint broke, don't fix it... a degree from a mediocre program is good enough... if he wants more go to grad school somewhere better."
4. He's thinking about changing to ee instead of mechanical engineering. I think ee or computer science would likely be better but, any thoughts? I'm not trying to tell him what to be but, he really doesn't know - likes to build things and fix things.
5. He's got 1 month until classes start again, and I am thinking about challenging him to something. I'm thinking "take a google class on how to program Python and, if you can show me some proficiency, I'll give you $250."
I can be an asshole and this kid may be the only one that comes to my funeral. I want to help him as best I can.
Please comment - any advice is appreciated.