Sample shortlist

This is a sample. The applicant isn't real.

Below is the five-school shortlist the Builder returned for Alex Park, sketched from a common STEM-leaning junior profile. The same engine runs against your twenty answers; you get five schools you probably haven't considered.

The Shortlist! Builder

Five colleges for Alex Park

Matched against your twenty answers from a curated list of 221 US colleges.

Your signal read

You're a strong STEM applicant who works better in places that take engineering seriously without being run by them. You ranked "good teaching" above "famous research" and "small enough to know the faculty" above "city access." You also flagged that you don't want the school you attend to be the most prestigious thing about you. Your shortlist below leans toward focused engineering schools and smaller research universities, not flagship publics.

1

Case Western Reserve University

Cleveland, Ohio · private research · ~5,800 undergraduates

One line: engineering school that hides inside a research university.

Three of your answers point here directly. You ranked teaching above research reputation; the Case Engineering core is graded against your own learning, not curved against your peers. You wanted "small enough to know the faculty," and the upper-division CS sequences average around twenty-five students. You said you'd take a school that gave you co-op time in industry; Case's required research or co-op requirement is the cleanest version of that on the list.

Tuition fact

Sticker tuition is roughly $66,000 for the 2024–25 year. Case's published net price for families earning $75–110k is about $32,500.

Source: case.edu/financialaid · retrieved May 2026

2

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Troy, New York · private engineering-focused · ~6,400 undergraduates

One line: built around problems, not survey courses.

You answered yes to "I want to spend more class hours building than listening," and RPI is the school on the list that has the highest ratio of project-based contact hours to lecture hours through the second year. The CS department's required Game Programming and Networks labs both ship code or a working prototype as the final deliverable; the Multidisciplinary Design Lab pairs you with industry teams from sophomore year on.

Grading climate

Rated medium-harsh: required engineering and CS sequences are curved toward a B-minus median in the first two years, then loosen significantly post-core. Average reported workload is 18–22 hours a week.

Source: catalog.rpi.edu · retrieved April 2026

3

Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Worcester, Massachusetts · private engineering-focused · ~5,200 undergraduates

One line: a curriculum built around three real projects, not a thesis.

WPI sequences the degree around three projects (Humanities, Interactive Qualifying Project, and Major Qualifying Project). You answered that you wanted "credit for things I make, not just things I take," and that grammar is closer to how WPI organizes the major than any other school on the list. The IQP runs at an external project center, often overseas, and replaces a semester of conventional classes.

Net price

Published net price (median, 2023–24): $43,800. Engineering employment within six months: ~93% reported.

Source: wpi.edu/financial-aid · retrieved March 2026

4

Stony Brook University

Stony Brook, New York · public research · ~17,000 undergraduates

One line: the largest CS program on this list, at a public price you'll actually pay.

You answered "I want a CS major where the elective list is twenty courses long, not five." Stony Brook's CS catalog is among the broadest among public flagships, with concentrations in systems, security, and game programming taught by full-time faculty. You also answered yes to the affordability filter; SUNY out-of-state runs roughly $30k all-in, an order of magnitude lower than the other four matches.

Tuition fact

Out-of-state tuition for 2024–25 is roughly $30,200 all-in (tuition + fees + room/board). In-state is roughly $28,400.

Source: stonybrook.edu/sfs/tuition · retrieved May 2026

5

Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Terre Haute, Indiana · private engineering-focused · ~2,000 undergraduates

One line: the smallest serious engineering school in the country.

You ranked teaching priority highest; Rose-Hulman has been at or near the top of the USNWR undergraduate engineering teaching list for twenty consecutive years. Class sizes in core engineering courses average ten to fifteen students. You answered cautious about "rural campus"; we surfaced this anyway because every other answer pointed here strongly enough that the location concern read like the one to revisit.

Grading climate

Rated balanced: rigorous coursework, but courses aren't curved against peers. Average reported GPA in graduating engineering classes is 3.2.

Source: rose-hulman.edu/academics · retrieved April 2026

What to do with these five

Pick the two or three you'd actually visit. Then run the Insight! Report against your real list to see how each one weights against the schools you already had in mind. The Builder is the discovery step; the Insight is the decision step.

Open The Insight! Report

Your shortlist

Twenty answers in seven minutes.

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