Below are the 20 most active schools on College Confidential. I think most of us have an intuition about what each university is known for. Texas A&M has football and ROTC. UC Santa Cruz has a slug for a mascot and a beach vibe. All of these schools offer degrees in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). But which of them are particularly known for their excellence in these fields?
Which of these schools are known for their STEM programs?
Texas A&M University
University of Michigan
New York University
University of California - Berkeley
Northeastern University
Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
University of Southern California
University of Pittsburgh
Boston University
University of California - Los Angeles
The University of Texas at Austin
Penn State
Vanderbilt University
Georgia Institute of Technology
Cornell University
Yale University
University of California - Santa Cruz
Indiana University - Bloomington
University of California - San Diego
University of Florida
0voters
After you select schools know for STEM, feel free to comment below about what makes them special. We know there are some big names missing (*cough*, MIT) because they aren’t in the 20 most active on CC. (We’re likely to run more polls in the future that will include more schools.) What other schools do you think of when it comes to STEM?
Note: There are many factors that go into school selection. This questions focuses in on one attribute and students should consider more than just reputation when deciding on a school.
I think you need to break out STEM for this to be useful.
Math (both applied and theoretical) is not the same as bio. No point recommending a U for chemical engineering which doesn’t have chemical engineering. I wouldn’t suggest a non-ABET civil engineering program (that kid is likely going to struggle to find a job) whereas there’s no comparable certification to major in epidemiology or biostatistics-- both fantastic careers for a STEM oriented kid.
That was my vote and I can say it was almost entirely because I have a cousin who got his PhD in Cognitive Science under Douglas Hofstadter. His magnum opus, Gödel, Escher, Bach, was very influential in my career as a programmer.
So by one very narrow criteria (having Hofstadter), I rank IU Bloomington at the top. I won’t complain if I’m the only person who sees things this way. It’s why we have polls!
A college may have a strong biology program with significant depth in the various subfields, but not have any engineering majors at all. Or a college may be very engineering focused, but have little in the way of biology or other science beyond that needed to support engineering study.
I tend to agree. It’s a bit of a catch-all that makes more sense for younger children who are sorting out their interests. By the time they are college age, people tend to have more specific interests. But this poll is really a first cut. Very broadly, which schools seem like good places to start when it comes to this sort of program.
However, when high school juniors and seniors are making college lists and applying, those interested in STEM majors need to be aware of which ones are suitable for the STEM majors they are interested in.
Also, for college frosh, the prerequisite paths can be significantly divergent. For example, the courses a frosh biology major would choose may differ significantly from those that a frosh computer science major may choose (with the exception of some schools with a large STEM core like MIT, Caltech, and Harvey Mudd). So a student who is undecided between various STEM majors needs to schedule carefully to keep the various options open.
What’s the purpose of this thread? Is it to show whether a college is better known for its STEM programs (including all the varieties) or for its humanities/social sciences programs in general?
More or less. It’s not surprising to see Yale hasn’t received any votes because it’s much better known for, say, it’s law school than for engineering. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad choice for STEM. (I know an excellent software engineer who came out of Yale.) It just means that’s not the first thing a person thinks of when it comes to that particular university.
I think you can make an argument for every school on this list (yes, IU) and frankly, most any college in America - short of focused ones like a Bentley/Babson or music schools. But even they will be strong in quantitative areas.
So I’m not sure I agree with or like this sort of segmentation.
Yale has a huge commitment to Life Sciences. It purchased a massive site in the town next door and has consolidated many programs, labs, inter-disciplinary research, etc. into one physical space with room for every conceivable life sciences function including cancer, genetics, etc. Including its hospitals, medical satellite centers and research laboratories, it is the largest employer in the State of CT. Its nursing and medical schools typically rank in the top tier nationally.
Alexander said Yale’s STEM resources are often underrated because of their small size. Sam Faucher ’16, a chemical engineering major who chose Yale over schools with more established STEM programs such as Harvard and Stanford, said college rankings tend to favor schools with bigger STEM programs because the ranking systems use metrics such as the aggregate research output at each school or the number of professors in each department.
But the reason Yale is making a push for expanding it’s STEM program is precisely because it hasn’t rated highly. Perhaps if we run this poll in a few years time we’d find Yale getting more votes.
I entered UCLA as math major, switched to atmospheric sciences, started my career as a programmer and now I’m a community manager.