Last week I had the privilege of visiting an extraordinary new college located just outside of Boston in Needham, MA. The college is the F.W. Olin College of Engineering. Olin only opened its doors to its first group of students in September 2002 but it has already attracted considerable notice from the engineering community as well as from college guides such as the Princeton Review, which give it extremely high ratings in many areas in its current guidebook.

Seeing Olin reminded me once again that there are many extraordinary colleges and universities which provide great educational opportunities for high school graduates. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, etc., receive a lot of attention. The attention is well-deserved. They are extraordinary institutions. There are, however, many other institutions that are highly competitive that provide a great education but which receive far less notice. Since a large part of what makes a college education great for a particular student is how well the student and the college match in size, style, special programs, support services, geographic location, etc., the best "fit" for a student may often be a college which is less well-known.

Many examples of fine but less well-known institutions come to mind - Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (just outside of Albany) has wonderful applied math and engineering programs; Babson has superb programs in business; Washington University in St. Louis, MO, once unknown but now getting increasing attention; Pomona, Claremont-McKenna and Harvey Mudd, 60 miles to the east of Los Angeles, CA, are three of the finest small colleges in the United States; Johns Hopkins, known for its medical school but far less well-known for its great undergraduate programs. There are also special programs such as "honor colleges" within public universities that offer extraordinary opportunities, which have not yet received the attention they deserve. For example, the University of Delaware has an honors program that is highly rigorous and gaining growing recognition.

Thanks to a grant of over $400 million from the F. W. Olin Foundation (which has built 72 fully-equipped math, science and engineering buildings at colleges across the United States since 1938), the Olin College of Engineering appears ready to leap into the elite group. The vision of the college is a bold one:

"Starting in the late 1980s, the National Science Foundation and engineering community at-large started calling for reform in engineering education. In order to serve the needs of the growing global economy, it was clear that engineers needed to have business and entrepreneurship skills, creativity and an understanding of the social, political and economic contexts of engineering. The F. W. Olin Foundation decided the best way to maximize its impact was to help create a college from scratch that can address these emerging needs."

Furthermore, to ensure that no student of talent is denied access to Olin due to financial concerns. Every admitted student receives a four year full tuition scholarship, valued at approximately $130,000. Admission is highly selective, with special emphasis on "creativity, passion and enterprise."