Boston University LEAP Program

[Loquacator]

Again, thanks for the input--it is invaluable. What I'm hearing is that the greatest benefits of attending this program will be from collaboration, independent work, and generally taking initiative. Is it your impression that this is more true in the LEAP program than it would be at some other school, or is this just the nature of the game at the graduate level?

[Tayfax]

LEAPstudent, who is attacking you on Facebook? Our names aren't a part of these profiles. Anyone bothering you on Facebook would have to have previous knowledge of your account on gradcafe, and also be following you closely enough to respond within a day of your post.

[Double-Oh-8]

Thanks to the current LEAP students (fans and critics) for chiming in. I haven't yet heard from BU, so we'll see . . . 

I also applied to UC Davis and Riverside for a second bachelor's in engineering and may decide to go that route. There are certain benefits. Cost being a significant one, but it also makes the progression modular, so I don't fall into the sunken cost trap. After 2 years, at least I'll have a bachelor's. So if I decide I don't want a Master's, I'm not stuck having completed Phase I with nothing to show. If I decide I want a Master's, I may be able to get into a "better" school; "better" meaning more appropriate or specific to my interests given what I'll have hopefully learned during those 2 years. I do recognize this impulse to flee my current job into the warm embrace of something more. I just hope that something more isn't a fantasy paid for with an inflating bubble of debt. 

[leapdropout]

As I see it, the reason you might enroll in LEAP is that you really, really want to be a MECHANICAL OR ELECTRICAL engineer.

 

I would like to echo absolutely everything LEAPstudent and anon_leap said about LEAP for CE. I feel like I could have written both posts myself. Luckily I cut my losses and dropped out after one semester in favor of this: https://generalassemb.ly/education/web-development-immersive. (See also: http://bootcamper.io/)

 

I can’t imagine recommending LEAP for CE to anyone wanting to be a software engineer. If you are already a competent programmer and absolutely insist on getting a piece of paper that says you earned a degree, you can just take a few classes at a community college and apply to a computer science program anywhere (hopefully at a cheaper state school). If you are not yet much of a programmer and are looking to LEAP to give you the skills to be a software engineer, you will NOT find what you are looking for here.

 

I got my bachelor’s degree from a large state school but found the quality of education at BU to be abysmal in comparison. I could write a book of example after example of incompetence in teaching and administration here. To this day, I have not seen what the requirements are for Phase I but it seemed that they were different every time I talked to my advisor (who gave me attitude about having already sent me said requirements, even though they change every few weeks). If you look at the curriculum, you will see that there is a heavy emphasis on hardware in the department. The few software classes they do have look really good in the course description/syllabus, but in my experience/from what I’ve heard, in reality they completely suck.

 

The more software engineers I talk to, the more I hear that you do not need a degree to get into this profession. Any employer will care way more about your programming skills than your education and BU will just waste time that you could have spent working on skills you will actually need to get hired for even an internship.

 

You will also incur an outrageous amount of debt—even with a scholarship, expect to pay AT LEAST several hundred dollars a month for a couple decades after you graduate. Do not forget about interest. Also, while the department made it seem like there was a good chance of getting a scholarship for phase II, my impression once I arrived was that this was rare. 

 

You might also want to know: the department furthermore told me that many LEAP students participated in co-ops, but once I arrived the career counselor told me BU doesn’t actually really have a co-op program—I would have to inquire to companies on my own to see if they offered co-ops. 

Edited March 24, 2014 by leapdropout

[ghanada]

ok, I haven't been actively following this thread for some time now, but I kind of feel a need to jump in here. I am a graduate of the LEAP program (Fall 2009 to Summer 2012) and had an AWESOME experience. You can find my previous posts as early as page 3 (October 2011). Let me preface by saying that I was doing LEAP during the Helaine era and I had at least 50-70% scholarship the entire duration of the program. I also started in BME, but ended with EE. So you can take everything I say with a grain of salt, as I have not been on the BU campus for almost 2 years now. 

 

It sounds like there is a lot of negativity about LEAP over here. But I hope the people following this thread consider individually who the program is for. For myself, I wanted to do get a PhD in BME so that I could be in industry research labs or startups designing medical devices. I had a neuroscience undergrad background and 0 shot in getting into a decent BME PhD program so LEAP was a great transition program for me. If any of you are interested in continuing onto a PhD after the Masters (in any eng field), I think LEAP is perfect for that. LEAP prepared me very well in terms of courses, let me do extensive research work and write a 200 page thesis, for which I am writing up 2 first author publications from. It was absolutely instrumental in getting me acceptance into some top engineering schools. I now attend University of Michigan (top 10 in all engineering fields), am leading a 2.5 million dollar research project, writing high impact publications (Science/Nature type), and have multiple interests in people offering me jobs when I graduate from startups to postdocs to government agencies (Army, DoD, etc). I am in line to finish this PhD in lightning fast pace of a total of 3 years. 

 

I absolutely owe all my current success to LEAP. Without a doubt. I agree that LEAP might not be the best fit for someone specifically trying to do software engineering and go straight into an industry job. But I think your mileage may vary. I had a lot of LEAP friends in BME, Mechanical, Materials, and EE. All that graduated found great jobs upon completing the Masters and a handful of us, including myself, continued onto a PhD or med school successfully. I only knew a handful of people in CE, but those that I did know had no problems finding jobs. Everyone in my cohort had a positive experience and thinks the LEAP program was necessary to get to where we wanted to go.

 

I honestly don't think BU is any better or worse than other large, R1 type institutions of its size. In fact I would say my alma mater, UCLA, in general is run more poorly and cares less about its students. If you have been to these types of institutions before, you know you get low individual attention and have to figure out almost everything on your own. You know class sizes are huge and often taught by research professors whom don't care about teaching. You know there aren't a lot of programs set up to help you get funding or have special jobs set aside for you. It's the nature of the beast. In return you get a well recognized name brand school, and lots of opportunities to get hands on training in prestigious labs. 

 

Anyways, I am sorry to those that had a bad experience with LEAP and you are absolutely right that it probably isn't the best idea for specific types of career paths. But I do want to shed some positive light on the program in general and hope that others that are reading this will realize that negative individual experiences might not be a reflection of the entire LEAP population. 

 

If anyone wants to ask me questions about LEAP, BU, or Boston in general, feel free to message me. I always try to help out others with guidance when possible. 

[amouse]

Do you guys have any tips on the statement of purpose?

 

Was it geared towards on 'why you made decision to join Leap and what you want to get out of it' or is it more ' i want to research Topic X and work with professor Y'? 

 

In terms of the recommendations, did you guys get your boss to recommended or concentrate more on former professors? 

[MB123]

Do you guys have any tips on the statement of purpose?

Was it geared towards on 'why you made decision to join Leap and what you want to get out of it' or is it more ' i want to research Topic X and work with professor Y'?

In terms of the recommendations, did you guys get your boss to recommended or concentrate more on former professors?

I focused more on the first question, but touched on topics I'd be interested in researching.

For my recommendations, I got both my boss and a former professor. I'm only a few years out of school so it was easy to reach out to an old professor. I'd imagine it would be more difficult to get an old professor if you have been out of school for awhile.

Of course, I still haven't heard back yet, so these may or may not be good tips lol.

Anyone else still waiting? I applied back in early January :/

[DMGirl]

I haven't heard anything either. I applied for EE on December 19th and would like to take summer courses. I hope I hear back soon.

[Mechanical_Leaper]

I found this topic while doing some Google-Fu on the program, its been a very informative read. 

 

I was accepted into the LEAP Program in Mechanical Engineering for this coming Fall. I was not given any Fin Aid so I am contemplating whether or not the cost of attending and incurring what is an enormous amount of debt will be worth it.

 

If anyone reading this that has either completed the program or is currently attending that has taken out debt to pay for it, can you speak to your experiences doing so, I would greatly appreciate it. This potential debt pile is blocking my view of the future, so it would be nice to get some perspective. 

 

Thank you and good luck to all others who are waiting to hear back or are in a similar position as myself and working on coming to a decision. 

[MB123]

I haven't heard anything either. I applied for EE on December 19th and would like to take summer courses. I hope I hear back soon.

Me too!

Good luck, hopefully we will hear back soon.

[Tayfax]

Do you guys have any tips on the statement of purpose?

 

Was it geared towards on 'why you made decision to join Leap and what you want to get out of it' or is it more ' i want to research Topic X and work with professor Y'? 

 

In terms of the recommendations, did you guys get your boss to recommended or concentrate more on former professors? 

 

The statement of purpose was difficult to structure, but basically i tried to tie my motivation for applying together with the reasons why my prior education made me a good fit. At first I had a section that mentioned individual professors, but I decided to take it out since I felt it might reveal my relative lack of knowledge pertaining to their work. 

 

For recommendations I went to former professors.

[musiccity32]

I am a current leap student in ME and I'll be finished with the M.Eng.(Phase II) this fall. Like ghanada I feel like I need to chime in.

1) In regards to Phase 1 course requirements (keep in mind this is for ME):

Take them at a local community college or state school. I did two semesters at a community college and took Calc II, Calc III, Physics I, Physics II, Linear Algebra, Statics, and CAD. That saved me about $40,000 and I was able to work at my old job part time. I should have stayed in Nashville to take Diff. Eq., Dynamics, and some type computer programming. BU requires their MATLAB course, but you can take any intro to programming and it will transfer. Do this and you will save tens of thousands of dollars. The rest of the Phase I ME requirements can be taken at the closest state school. If you follow this advice you can apply to many different programs, not only BU, and save money. Some schools may require a couple more courses, but you will save some cash in the long run!!

2) Only go to BU if you get aid!!!! I received a scholarship for Phase I and the M.Eng program and I will still have around $60,000 worth of debt and I don't pay rent! If you go to BU and live in the city it is expensive!

3) If you are going in to industry get a Co-op or internship. This is important. It seems to me that the LEAPers who have done this got jobs right away. Also, most BU graduates work in the northeast so that's where their connections are. Keep this in mind if you are not going to get a PhD and want to go into industry. I'm from the Boston area originally so this isn't an issue for me.

I think it's a good program, but like all schools you get what you put in. I'm amazed when we are getting assignments/tests/projects back and the professor says the low grade was a 37 or something else extremely low. Tuition is way too expensive to dick around.

On a side note, if you want to be a software engineer don't go back to school. Take a couple coursers.org or edx.org classes, buy a book, go to a boot camp and save yourself some money.

[DMGirl]

I just got an email saying I was admitted to LEAP for EE! I'm ecstatic!

[mizi]

Accepted to Biomedical today! "victory dance" Good luck to all those waiting

[mizi]

ok, I haven't been actively following this thread for some time now, but I kind of feel a need to jump in here. I am a graduate of the LEAP program (Fall 2009 to Summer 2012) and had an AWESOME experience. You can find my previous posts as early as page 3 (October 2011). Let me preface by saying that I was doing LEAP during the Helaine era and I had at least 50-70% scholarship the entire duration of the program. I also started in BME, but ended with EE. So you can take everything I say with a grain of salt, as I have not been on the BU campus for almost 2 years now. 

 

It sounds like there is a lot of negativity about LEAP over here. But I hope the people following this thread consider individually who the program is for. For myself, I wanted to do get a PhD in BME so that I could be in industry research labs or startups designing medical devices. I had a neuroscience undergrad background and 0 shot in getting into a decent BME PhD program so LEAP was a great transition program for me. If any of you are interested in continuing onto a PhD after the Masters (in any eng field), I think LEAP is perfect for that. LEAP prepared me very well in terms of courses, let me do extensive research work and write a 200 page thesis, for which I am writing up 2 first author publications from. It was absolutely instrumental in getting me acceptance into some top engineering schools. I now attend University of Michigan (top 10 in all engineering fields), am leading a 2.5 million dollar research project, writing high impact publications (Science/Nature type), and have multiple interests in people offering me jobs when I graduate from startups to postdocs to government agencies (Army, DoD, etc). I am in line to finish this PhD in lightning fast pace of a total of 3 years. 

 

I absolutely owe all my current success to LEAP. Without a doubt. I agree that LEAP might not be the best fit for someone specifically trying to do software engineering and go straight into an industry job. But I think your mileage may vary. I had a lot of LEAP friends in BME, Mechanical, Materials, and EE. All that graduated found great jobs upon completing the Masters and a handful of us, including myself, continued onto a PhD or med school successfully. I only knew a handful of people in CE, but those that I did know had no problems finding jobs. Everyone in my cohort had a positive experience and thinks the LEAP program was necessary to get to where we wanted to go.

 

I honestly don't think BU is any better or worse than other large, R1 type institutions of its size. In fact I would say my alma mater, UCLA, in general is run more poorly and cares less about its students. If you have been to these types of institutions before, you know you get low individual attention and have to figure out almost everything on your own. You know class sizes are huge and often taught by research professors whom don't care about teaching. You know there aren't a lot of programs set up to help you get funding or have special jobs set aside for you. It's the nature of the beast. In return you get a well recognized name brand school, and lots of opportunities to get hands on training in prestigious labs. 

 

Anyways, I am sorry to those that had a bad experience with LEAP and you are absolutely right that it probably isn't the best idea for specific types of career paths. But I do want to shed some positive light on the program in general and hope that others that are reading this will realize that negative individual experiences might not be a reflection of the entire LEAP population. 

 

If anyone wants to ask me questions about LEAP, BU, or Boston in general, feel free to message me. I always try to help out others with guidance when possible. 

 

I just got into BME this afternoon (sweet) and stumbled on your informative post! I'm also a bruin and I felt as you did attending such a large public school. It seems like you had a great experience attending LEAP, I was wondering, what made you switch to EE? I'm also thinking about taking classes along the lines of medical device design. You mentioned you started with the same ambition. What happened? thanks

Edited April 4, 2014 by mizi

[tramxme]

Accepted, no aid...I think i'm going to decline =(. Congrats on those who decided to attend. Best of luck!!!!!

[leap_2014]

Hey all, I got accepted into BME for this fall and I'm deciding whether or not to go. I'm pretty confused about the transition from Phase I to Phase II, could someone clarify the process for me? 

 

It sounds like you have to reapply for any master's program you want to go in to. I'm thinking I'll apply to the M.S. program when I'm done and hopefully PhD programs eventually. Do you get any sort of guarantee that you'll be accepted into the M.S. program at BU if you finish phase I with some minimum GPA? Or do you just reapply in the same applicant pool as people who didn't do LEAP? How's the transition into phase II? 

 

Thanks!

 

Also if anyone's looking to get housing in Boston starting in the fall, I'm looking around for stuff right now. Let me know if you're interested in some kinda of shared option

Edited April 9, 2014 by leap_2014

[DMGirl]

Congrats, leap_2014! I'll be starting Phase I this summer and I'm looking for housing. However, I'm hoping to find a place by May 12, 2014. Is anyone else planning on taking courses in the summer?

If you maintain at least a 3.2 GPA in the Phase I courses, you are guaranteed admission to the MEng program (Phase II). You will still need to complete an application for the MEng program, but it will be shorter than the traditional application.

If you don't maintain at least a 3.2 GPA, you can still apply for an MEng but you won't be guaranteed admission.

You also have the option of applying to an MS or PhD program instead of an MEng. If you do so, you would have to fill out a traditional, full application.

I hope that clears things up a bit. I hope to see you in the Fall.

[fln]

Congrats, leap_2014! I'll be starting Phase I this summer and I'm looking for housing. However, I'm hoping to find a place by May 12, 2014. Is anyone else planning on taking courses in the summer?

 

 

I am taking electric circuit theory (ENG EK 307)!

[DMGirl]

I am taking electric circuit theory (ENG EK 307)!

Sweet! I'm also planning on taking Electric Circuit Theory, along with Engineering Computation and Intro to Programming this summer.

Were you assigned an advisor and have they emailed you the curriculum planning sheets yet? I'm still waiting on those things and won't be able to register for summer courses until that happens. Also, how is your housing search going? Are you getting a summer sublet?

[leap_2014]

Congrats, leap_2014! I'll be starting Phase I this summer and I'm looking for housing. However, I'm hoping to find a place by May 12, 2014. Is anyone else planning on taking courses in the summer?

If you maintain at least a 3.2 GPA in the Phase I courses, you are guaranteed admission to the MEng program (Phase II). You will still need to complete an application for the MEng program, but it will be shorter than the traditional application.

If you don't maintain at least a 3.2 GPA, you can still apply for an MEng but you won't be guaranteed admission.

You also have the option of applying to an MS or PhD program instead of an MEng. If you do so, you would have to fill out a traditional, full application.

I hope that clears things up a bit. I hope to see you in the Fall.

 

Awesome, thanks for clearing that up! I might take try start over the summer and take differential equations in June, hope to see you there. I'm still waiting on the advisor assignment and the planning sheet too. I'd love to be able to talk to someone about the classes before I have to make a decision...

[fln]

Sweet! I'm also planning on taking Electric Circuit Theory, along with Engineering Computation and Intro to Programming this summer.

Were you assigned an advisor and have they emailed you the curriculum planning sheets yet? I'm still waiting on those things and won't be able to register for summer courses until that happens. Also, how is your housing search going? Are you getting a summer sublet?

 

Looks like we will be classmates

 

I called and was not assigned an advisor yet. I registered for class anyways but as a non-degree student. The graduate engineering office said it would be fine because the credits will just be transferred. 

 

I was living in lower allston, but I am moving to be closer to BU. I got a dorm-like room via graduate housing (http://www.bu.edu/rpm/). It was (very surprisingly) reasonably priced. I got a room for $850 a month with heat/hot water/electric/gas included and it is 5 minutes from the engineering building. 

Edited April 10, 2014 by fln

[Double-Oh-8]

I'm going to create a LEAP 2014-2015 incoming class Facebook group. PM me if you want to be added.

[Mechanical_Leaper]

Was everyone who got in the last few days given some sort of financial aid package? I keep staring down that 62k in loans which is keeping me from accepting their offer of admission. 

[DMGirl]

Looks like we will be classmates

I called and was not assigned an advisor yet. I registered for class anyways but as a non-degree student. The graduate engineering office said it would be fine because the credits will just be transferred.

I was living in lower allston, but I am moving to be closer to BU. I got a dorm-like room via graduate housing (http://www.bu.edu/rpm/). It was (very surprisingly) reasonably priced. I got a room for $850 a month with heat/hot water/electric/gas included and it is 5 minutes from the engineering building.

Thanks so much for the info! I contacted the BU Rental Property Management via email. Hopefully, I'll hear from them soon. I also registered for the courses I want to take in the summer as a non-matriculated student. Hope to meet you when classes start!

To Mechanical_Leaper:

I received the LEAP scholarship: it covers a quarter of the tuition (around $11,000 per academic year).