<p>USMMA has a very good program.</p>
<p>vballmom, as I said before, I am not talking about “underrated” in terms of engineering rankings (which are done by engineering deans who obviously know their stuff), I am simply saying that very few people that are not in the engineering fields have ever heard about Harvey Mudd or Rose-Hulman. My dad’s an electrical engineer and he gave me a blank stare when I mentioned those schools.</p>
<p>Yes, i would also say Rose-Hulman and Harvey Mudd but the companies in the industry know these schools…and make sure they are there for career fairs and hire them!</p>
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<p>I’ve had similar experiences with the Cooper Union. We draw many good companies during our career fairs and are well regarded by other educational institutions.</p>
<p>I’d say my school, the University of Arkansas - Fort Smith is quite underrated.</p>
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<p>They are both rated very highly. Private schools are only known to people who live in the area or they are very well known across the nation. Small private schools are not going to be known to people across the country…that doesn’t make them underrated.</p>
<p>Colorado School of Mines (public). There isn’t even a CC forum under the college list for it.</p>
<p>But I think the OP wanted to limit this thread only to schools that grant PhDs, so R-H and Harvey Mudd don’t fit either.</p>
<p>Also, is this thread supposed to be only about underrated colleges with great engineering programs or only underrated colleges known mostly for engineering?</p>
<p>Underrated is a relative term. Some might consider Rice underrated, but it does appear in the rankings of course.</p>
<p>“I think WPI is actually overrated, many people from my school want to go there but it’s way too expensive and actually not too amazing at engineering.”</p>
<p>Pierre, can you please elaborate on this comment^ ?</p>
<p>Haha corny but The City College of New York. Seriously guys, Andrew Grove graduated from here.</p>
<p>It seems that there’s some disagreement on the definition of “underrated.” In terms of undergrad admissions, I think it’s fair to include schools that are rated highly but not well known. I thought the spirit of this thread was to list good schools that a prospective student wouldn’t have considered applying to.</p>
<p>rice university in houston,tex?</p>
<p>civegn, this is just my personal opinion, but I feel at least in the Boston area, WPI gets a lot of hype but actually isn’t that far off from a school like UMass in terms of engineering education. WPI is very expensive and I don’t personally know if it’s worth spending big money to go to a slightly above average engineering school when you can find better schools</p>
<p>Again, this is just my personal opinion. Many will probably disagree with me.</p>
<p>pierre, how do you measure the quality of an engineering program? </p>
<p>And, i would argue that most private schools are too expensive. </p>
<p>Wpi is really only known in massachusetts, and it’s not even that people equate wpi to mit, but it holds it own decently.</p>
<p>UT-Austin is underrated. It has more faculty elected to the prestigious National Academy of Engineering (NAE) than every school except MIT, Stanford, and Berkeley - even up to 4 times the number at some of the schools that always seem to get more attention. CMU, Georgia Tech, Illinois, Cornell, etc. all have less yet are (rightfully) seen as prestigious engineering schools among the best in the world. However, engineering students at UT have a higher probability of taking a class with some of the top experts in the world than schools with less of these NAE members. Many people on here don’t even mention UT when listing top engineering schools!</p>
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[quote=]
how do you measure the quality of an engineering program?
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</p>
<p>I think faculty NAE numbers is a good start. It’s a great proxy for strength of faculty and engineering research.</p>
<p>I’d consider the following as factors that determine a good undergrad engineering program:</p>
<ul>
<li>Depth and breadth of courses within your major / quality of curriculum</li>
<li>Class sizes</li>
<li>Reputation among employers / job placement</li>
<li>Availability of professors outside of class / academic support </li>
</ul>
<p>If you like research, you’d probably include undergrad research opportunities as well.</p>
<p>where can you find the number of NAE faculty a school has?</p>
<p>I agree with ken, class sizes, job placement, professor availability, course choices</p>
<p>however at many of the top engineering schools, professors are often replaced by TA’s the first 2 years</p>
<p>JWT86, I’ve seen UT-Austin a number of times mentioned here for engineering schools. It’s ranked 11th right now and to that is really good considering the number of engineering schools.</p>
<p>Probably the best way to determine what schools are overrated is to compare a school’s reputation (say ranking on USNews) against quantitative measures of quality like the income of graduates and the median SATs of incoming students. </p>
<p>With that in mind, here are some underrated schools: </p>
<ol>
<li> Caltech (laypeople, at least on the east coast, have no clue about Caltech).<br></li>
<li> Olin (no one has heard of it)</li>
<li> Carnegie Mellon</li>
<li> Georgia Tech</li>
<li> USC</li>
</ol>
<p>@Pierre, WPI is probably a peer of Boston College or any top state school (except Berkeley). If people are indeed comparing WPI to MIT or Caltech or any top national school, then I would agree that they are overrating WPI. However, virtually no laypeople have heard of WPI, so I don’t think that WPI is overrated in general. </p>
<p>Yet I don’t see how one can argue that WPI is not underrated by USNews. WPI is in the top 50 national universities by mean SAT scores and per capita endowment (and in the top 10 by average graduate income). Yet we’re ranked 71st. If that’s not “underrated”, I don’t know what is.</p>
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Comparing it against quantitative measures is a good idea, but the examples you give don’t tell people about the quality of the program. </p>
<p>Engineering salaries tend to be pretty flat across the board, and differences are usually due to geographical differences more than anything else. </p>
<p>Median SAT’s don’t say anything about a student after they’ve been admitted, and thus says nothing about the program. What might work is the college equivalent of the SAT… perhaps the FE exam. Of course, the problem is it’s only a pass/fail test in many states and that it’s an optional test for most students.</p>