Kevin_Johnson

Forgot to mention: 1) It's super affordable. 2) Has many notable alumni (one good example is Tom Akers (Colonel, USAF, Ret.) was my bro's advisor in mathematics and holds the record for stick time on the space shuttle, broke the record for spacewalk duration, then broke it again the next day, flew on the HST repair mission, etc.) 3) Huge emphasis on undergrad education, and undergrad R&D work. 4) Recently started a program to bring big business engineering into the area (Rolla is a rural setting). A Jet engine manufacturer is setting up a facility there now. 5) You can get NRC licensed to operate a real nuclear reactor.

That's just of the top of my head. There's plenty more where that came from.

Missouri University of Science & Technology (formerly known as the University of Missouri at Rolla, and before that the Missouri School of Mines) is a great engineering school. It's very affordable, the engineering and science graduates pretty much all make above the national average starting salary. A lot of career engineers came from there and have made it good at Boeing, LockMart, Raytheon, etc in aerospace and defense sectors for example.

It also has a huge number of engineering degrees to choose from, and some of them are very unique. It was the first to offer a minor in Explosives Engineering in the country. Their Student design teams regularly win most of the undergrad engineering design competitions in the country (and a few notable world events).

The downside is it's like being on a pirate ship. It's hard work, bad food, and no women. It's worth it though. Most fun I ever had in my life.

The site is mst.edu <- check it out.

First off, since your a sophomore, your plans will change. Bet money on it. Don't get caught up in specifics of where you want to be. Instead take advantage of the powerful abstractions where you can to work out what "axioms of life" you want to design your life with. That's your homework assignment in the unwritten curriculum of the university. The vast majority of people fail that lesson, good folks recognize it and get it partially right, the great people master this lesson, implement, and refine it for the rest of their lives.

Always consider your personality. My regret may be exactly what you DON'T want to do. Having said that... Being a physics students at very good engineering school, and having participated in student design competitions my only regret is not having taken more pure mathematics. In science and engineering, if it works, there's your evidence. You have shown it can happen. Mathematics I viewed, at the time being so simple minded, as a set of neat tricks for solving physics problems (or engineering problems, which at the time I thought of simplistically as merely applied physics problems). The reason I regret not taking more pure math isn't the theorems or skills I missed getting, it was the mindset. Every profession and field looks at the world in a particularly special way. It's a more abstract version of the saying "If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." I'm actually doing research in graduate school now in mathematics and I'm really glad for it. The perspective from being a bit physicist, a bit engineer, and now a bit mathematician really gives one a lot of versatility, and that's where the variety of experience in the "hard subjects" pays off. You see, everyone who has specialized to be only one thing, think university professors, are like shaft mines. The specialists dig deep to get at the really rich seams, but they pass by a lot of pretty good stuff following the very richest dig through their subject. Take a bit more breath in your studies and you will see lots of good stuff, and how it's connected together.

Finally, have fun too. Every day of my undergraduate schooling was a cycle of learn, work, play, build, fight, drink, sleep, and repeat tomorrow. It's the best that could have happened in spite of being exhausting, all consuming, obsessive, and unrelenting. I loved it because to me that is fun.

Best of luck to you.