College admissions expert and educational consultant Mark Montgomery reviews Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Georgia. With numerous schools in sciences and engineering, Olympic-class recreational facilities, and the globally-focused International Plan, Georgia Tech is a school worth considering in your college search.
TRANSCRIPT:
Today I’m here at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Georgia. The Georgia Institute of Technology, and I’m really enjoying my visit here. Number 1, because the weather is fantastic. It’s April and the flowers are in bloom, the trees are in bloom, the sun is shining. What’s not to like?
There are many, many cool things to talk about with Georgia Tech. There are six different schools here. Computer science, engineering, architecture, the liberal arts and sciences, the sciences school which includes psychology. And I’m missing one, it’s escaping me right now. But a nice thing about that is here at Georgia Tech, although it’s a relatively large school, 16,000 students or so, you don’t apply to your major. You apply to the university as a whole and then you can choose your major.
Our tour guide today started out as a biomedical engineer, and now is a mechanical engineer. Interesting story there but I’ll come back to that later. In terms of admissions, it’s really pretty nice because if you don’t know but you know you want to do tech, this is a pretty darn good place to come.
CO-OP Program
The other thing that’s really cool about Georgia Tech is the co-op program. So you can do a series of three co-ops over your time here. Each one is a semester long and you can get a lot of professional experience working either at a company here in Atlanta. Or at a company anywhere else in the world.
Study Abroad
That’s another thing. Another cool thing about Georgia Tech is that study abroad is very much possible here, even in the sciences and engineering. They have an International Plan that allows students to continue along their major. Whether it’s at a facility that is operated by Georgia Tech itself, there’s one in Lorraine, France. Or if you choose to go somewhere else, you still can continue along your path. So that’s another interesting feature about Georgia Tech.
Olympic Facilities
Another thing that I found interesting about Georgia Tech is how much it has been transformed back in 1996 when the Summer Olympics were here in Atlanta. So some of the dorms on one side of the campus. Certainly the gym and the recreational facilities, those were all built as part of the 1996 Olympics.
So the pool, there’s an Olympic pool, the diving, it’s an Olympic diving pool, they have outstanding recreational facilities here. And some of the suite-style dorms over there on the — I’m forgetting whether it’s the east or the west or the north or the south side of campus. But over near the gym, that was part of the Olympic village. So the campus is really a nice mix between sort of this old, historic part of the campus and the newer, more architecturally modern part of the campus.
But where is the campus?
The campus is right smack dab in the middle of Atlanta. And yet, it doesn’t have the feel of an urban campus. Because it’s green and park-like, it has many academic quads. And students are wandering around, walking among their classes without the cars and the traffic and the kinds of things you’d think of at some of the more urban campuses in America.
So Georgia Tech, if you’re interested in the sciences, if you’re interested in even some of the social sciences, and certainly engineering, it is one of the top engineering schools in the country. If you’re interested in any of that and you want a big, spirited school, lots of sports, in a thriving urban environment, Georgia Tech is certainly something you should look at.
Mark Montgomery
Expert Educational Consultant
