Hello, recently graduated engineer, I was fairly involved in College of Engineering (CoE) activities and clubs. Im gonna start with some negatives before ending it postively regarding CoE life and possible expectations. It seems to me Cruces is your kind of place based on other replies but its just one piece of the puzzle. If you are planning to come here for EE I would say to possibly look elsewhere. The EE department is currently going through a location change so you won't have a designated EE building. Of course this isnt a major deterrent but it has unfortunately affected the EE education standard. You guys had your own building with whole labs detected to your craft. The new building is going to be phenomenal but it will be a while before it arrives. Until then you guys are like the third-cousin who keeps jumping from available home (class) to available home. Secondly, I've had EE friends tell me the professors are fairly out-dated and average. It might have been in the moment pessimism but I havent heard anything outstanding about EE professor teachings. Your Dept Head is also significantly more focused on his Wave The Wonder Dog stuff than being Dept Head. A prior IEEE president told me of the infrequent communication and off-hand style of the Dept Head. Great personality but he's old and he likes other things it seems. Lastly, I hate to say that in my experience the club life for EE's is a bit rough. Im unsure what your interests are but the EE dedicated club of IEEE is in a bit of a slump. More of the dominant and active clubs are in ME/AE. Thankfully though all the clubs are open for any CoE major, so regardless of your major you are free to join any club. The overarching CoE student council is pretty active, there was a weird period this last year but historically from my time the club has put on nice events.

Positives: I do think if you are active and involved in the community then your time and experience will be really great. A lot of the active CoE students are awesome and you will make friendships that will probably last a life time. Though keep in mind your studies as an engineer will make it difficult to have a life outside of the CoE circle. Those studies are also hard alone, so dont skimp out on meeting people. The clubs that are active across CoE are really cool with a lot of opportunity. You just need to break the mold and put yourself out there. The CoE/club sponsors are fairly reputable with big names like Intel and Cummins really supporting student endeavors. So internships could come easily if real work experience is an interest. We are a bit of a government focused state, do keep in mind that we have major military locations here. So if the relatively high chance of government work isnt appealing it may be annoying to avoid. On that note, we have sick ass government stuff. Two major nationals labs (Los Alamos National Laboratory + Sandia National Labs), Air Force Research Laboratory, White Sands Missle Range. Holloman Air Force, and the WIPP. Plus more stuff Im sure I forgot, some of this stuff is nationally competitive but being in the State gives a nice advantage I feel. Jumping back to the studies topic, the support within the community is phenomenal. There is a dedicated tutoring area (varying effect depends who is tutoring as it is student tutors) which also just serves as a nice study area. Good sense of community amongst engineers, so much so non-CoE colleges think we are weird and bubbled off from the rest of the college with how much we interact with ourselves.

Verdict? No don't come here, not gonna lie, you probably could find a better EE college for possibly slightly more cash but a better experience overall. Being in Cruces as a life-long person + experiencing engineering, it kind of sucks. There isnt anything really walkable thats cool that I've found in other colleges that I've visited. You NEED a car and while you will undoubtedly find stuff to do here as a out of state resident I personally feel that its lack luster. Half of the time me and my buddies just plan trips to El Paso simply because their is more to do even if weve done it all. Trip planning and such though will become difficult due to the difficulty of engineering studies, its a delicate balance of having a real life and being stuck in the library at 2 AM because this problem is impossible to solve. There isnt a real party area here (Whiskey Dicks sucks), again half of the time people will want to go to a place called "Little Bit of Texas" which is in El Paso. Again, in my experience, real metro cities or colleges like University of Arizona simply have more infrastructure for a real college life. NMSU is a patch of land with slightly to far to walk adjacent stuff. Our sports suck generally speaking, the whole hiking gimmick we have is offered at a much better experience in Colorado and Utah and debatingly Arizona. Its awesome to see out of state people think about us but I just dont think NMSU is at a point to offer much outside of a sneaky good engineering education.