Trifter

Kettering University is located in downtown Flint, MI.  Formerly known as General Motors Institute, Kettering has everything you need to get into any type of engineering.

First, the size.  Kettering is downright puny.  It consists of less than one city block.  It has a dorm building, called Thompson Hall, with four floors.  Each floor is divided into hallways, called units.  There are 17 units with about 30 students each.  This equals a little over 500 students in the dorms, with a gated community available across the street, bringing the total count to about 1200.  The student teacher ratio is about 12:1.  Thompson hall also has two large screen TV’s for community use, hundreds of DVD’s for rent, two pool tables, an air hockey table, and a foosball table.  Each student gets a personal room and mailbox, and each student gets what is called a suitemate.  Think adjoined hotel rooms.  In each room there is a door to your suitemates room, and each side is lockable.  There are six T3 lines running into the Kettering network.  The internet is fast.  All of Kettering is on an independent network, and so you get many LAN Halo wars going on.  In all, Kettering is a very close knit bunch.  If you want to play Xbox and you know this guy has one, walk in and ask to use it.  That is one of my favorite things about Kettering.

In addition to Thompson Hall, there is also the Recreation Center.  This has everything you could want.  Three basketball/tennis/volleyball/badminton courts, a gym, a pool, three racquetball courts, a squash court, and an elevated 1/8 mile track, set so you can look down as you are running and watch the other courts.  Equipment rentals and guest passes are available at the front desk.  The Rec Center is not open to the general public. 

There are two academic buildings.  The Academic Building is just that, classrooms mostly.  Then there is the C. S. Mott building.  This has all the labs.  There are crash test areas, with dummies, assembly machines, and much more.  To give an idea how much more, one of the extracurricular activities is designing, manufacturing (everything, all components), assembling, and building your very own Formula One race car.  How cool is that?

Since it is in a fairly dangerous city, there is a 24/7 patrol of campus security.  If a car doesn’t have a parking pass, it is towed at owners expense.  It is also possible to get from any building to another through underground tunnels.  If that’s not enough, Flint Police will escort any student upon request.  In addition, all buildings except the Rec Center and Main Office are locked with magnetic keycards, issued to every student.  That keycard is all you will need.  You pay for meals with it, you get in to everything with it.  It is very convenient.  Since many students carry it in their wallet, it is not uncommon to see a student throw their butt up to the sensor to get in.  It is quite funny to see…

On to the meat and potatoes.  Their Industrial Engineering program is 2nd in the country, their Mechanical Engineering program is 5th, and 17th in undergraduate engineering programs, above such schools as the Virginia Military Institute, Coast Guard Academy, and the University of San Diego.  In addition to the top-notch education in fields such as Applied Physics, Biochemistry, and Aerodynamics, you get easily the best co-op program in the country, if not the world.

Kettering is not for the faint of heart.  For purposes of comparison, Michigan State University will take sixteen weeks to go through a single course.  At Kettering, they do it in ten and a half.  This is where co-op comes in.  For those three months, students attend Kettering.  For the next three months, they work, and they keep all the money.  For a Bachelors Degree, it takes four and a half years total.  This means they leave Kettering with two full years of relevant work experience.  And Kettering co-ops everywhere.  General Motors, Pratt and Whitney (an airplane parts company), General Dynamics (a military contractor, specializing in tracked assault vehicles [tanks]), Disney World, Chrysler, the Department of Defense, and some others that are literally so top-secret with the government that you don’t know where they are until you go.  How cool is that?  My brother attends Kettering, and he now works at Dart Container Company.  He has also worked at General Motors and Pratt and Whitney.  At Pratt he made $22.00+ an hour.  In school.  And he keeps it all.  It is awesome.

In summation, Kettering is an amazing facility with an amazing program.  While extremely challenging, it definitely rewards students with real-world experience and a prestigous degree.  Best of luck to you, where ever you go.