Studying Liberal Arts at an Engineering School: A Smart Option

"I'm a ramblin' wreck from Georgia Tech and a hell of an engineer," are the proud lyrics to my school's song. But I am among the growing ranks who must change the words to "and hell if I'm an engineer." I am a student at the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at Georgia Institute of Technology. Go ahead and ask: Georgia Tech has a college of liberal arts? But it's Georgia Tech!

Actually, a growing number of students are attending traditionally technical schools to pursue non-technical majors. I turned down a number of highly respected liberal arts colleges to be a non-engineering minority at Tech. It sounds like a strange decision, but I think my experience will give me an advantage in the future.

There is no escaping the tech at Tech. Even earning a liberal arts degree requires a strong core of technical classes. I have taken everything from inorganic chemistry to computer programming to honors calculus III. The rigour of those courses and the analytical skills I developed will help me no matter what I choose to do. Even in my classes within the liberal arts college, we place more emphasis on statistics, research, graphing, and calculations. Somebody made a joke in class involving the global economy and the null set, and everyone not only got it but also laughed, which really couldn't happen anywhere else.