<p>Amnesia,</p>
<p>You have some delusional thinking going on. Just because you go to Princeton you think its that much harder than any state school? I've been to a 2nd tier school, a top 25 engineering state school, and a top 25 engineering ivy league for grad school. The differences aren't as much as you think. A 2.5 is not very good no matter where you go.</p>
<p>But don't worry its your first semester. Grades tend to go up after freshman year.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The topics you cover and the information you learn will be roughly the same pretty much where ever you go. Where someone from Princeton has a disadvantage over someone from a large state school is that while an 80 on a physics test at Princeton may well be low compared to the rest of the class, an 80 at another school may be near the top. There won't be many people at Princeton getting 20's and 30's on tests. Therefore, if the teacher decides to scale the class average to a 75, that 80 at the state U will get a big boost while the comparable grade at Princeton probably won't.</p>
<p>Additionally, the overall difficulty of the information presented, imo, is more dependent on the professor rather than the university.
[/quote]
Ummm, right. When has 50% of a class every failed out of Thermo at Princeton? When has 2/3rds of a class failed Dynamics at Princeton. Is this something that happens often? It happens often here at my lowly state school.</p>
<p>"Ummm, right. When has 50% of a class every failed out of Thermo at Princeton? When has 2/3rds of a class failed Dynamics at Princeton. Is this something that happens often? It happens often here at my lowly state school."</p>
<p>No offense, but I think that's becauase the quality of students is much worse at your "lowly state school" than at Princeton. Red Sox explained it perfectly. The material is about the same. The difficulty of the tests are probably the same also. It's the quality of students that is different. Since you are curved against your fellow classmates, it's harder to get higher grades at a top school. Don't buy into the grade inflation BS.</p>
<p>This thread has been derailed. Two notions are incorrect:</p>
<p>1) Princeton physics tests are definitely harder.
2) We have massive grade deflation.</p>
<p>Therefore, me even bringing up my gpa didn't matter... a 2.5 could be a 3.5</p>
<p>Anyway, we're all engineers.</p>
<p>who says they are harder do you have proof. Just because you go to a top school doesnt mean its harder, In my Comp 2 class I did a research paper on this and looking at and comparing tests that different departments had sent me they were pretty comparable, some were wordered differently and such but they were all to me in general equal. </p>
<p>About the Gade deflation this was part of the research paper also, are you joking me, Ivy league schools practically hand out A's to anybody who tries. According to the priceton website 47$ or now 42% got A's, thats a really high number as the national average is around 19%.</p>
<p>You're missing the point. Princenton students and princenton engineers are far smarter than the national average... if they were to go to any state school that same 42% that got an A at Princenton would've gotten an A at their respective state school.</p>
<p>Amnesia:</p>
<p>Get off of your soap box. Are you telling me that your courses are more difficult than the engineering curriculum at Cal, UMich, Northwestern, CMU, GT etc? I would bet that the top students in those programs can easily hold their weight against your fellow Ivy Leaguers. </p>
<p>The top grad programs (engineering and professional schools) admit kids from ALL types of colleges, not just Harvard, Yale and Princeton.</p>
<p>Case in point: our neighbor's brother just finished his PhD. in EE at Stanford, and was awarded a fellowship for further study this year in Switzerland. Know where he did his undergrad? University of South Florida, in Tampa.</p>
<p>It's great that you are at Princeton, but, geez, give a break to those at other schools....it is just as difficult elsewhere.</p>
<p>My uncle Bill in a head telecom engineer at At&T, want to know where he went to for his undergrad, he went to Suny New Paltz. Probrolly a school you have never heard of before. When he hires new engineers, want to know where he hires from. Not a pool of Ivy league grades even thogh hundreds and hundreds apply, no he hires from state schools and chucks out the list of top schools. Now he is in charge of all engineering hires for At&T telecom division. When he went for his job he beat out ivy leaguers and other alike, its not where you go, where you go means nothing. Its how you put it to practical use, and to be honest top school engineers are great at reading books and solving problem sets, but to solve real-world problems they suck and thats why people shove them into a research lab.</p>
<p>Huge companies really try not to hire real world practicing engineers from these big name schools. they would much rather look to a place where they know they are getting a engineer and not a research person.</p>
<p>Keep thinking your smarter than everybody else, because its just fact that your not and most true engineers woldent be scared to go against a ivy league kid. I know I wouldn't.</p>
<p>Have an inferiority complex much?
You make researchers sound like janitors, when in fact, they're dreaming up inventions that most corporate engineers spend their lives tweaking. </p>
<p>Let's get a few things straight. Smart people do sometimes go to lower ranked state schools. Stupid people do sometimes get into high ranked privates. But on average, engineers at MIT, Stanford, Cornell, Berkeley, etc. ARE smarter than people who go to lesser ranked schools. Maybe long ago, this wasn't the case, but the ranking system now makes it a self-sustaining process. People think that smart people go to the top-10 schools, so that encourages other smart people to attend and thus you end up with an above average student population.</p>
<p>Most people who come from these top schools don't want to work for companies like Ford or AT&T. People from Stanford and MIT want to start companies or do research or at least work for fresh faced companies that encourage theoretical work and not rote problem solving, like all the new Biotech firms or IT giants like Google. Google, in fact, targets students from Stanford, Berkeley and MIT, and for awhile asked for a minimum GPA of 3.7 for its programmers. </p>
<p>That doesn't mean you HAVE to go to a brand name school to be a good engineer, but academia at least approaches a meritocracy. There's a reason why the top schools are called top schools. </p>
<p>If AT&T is avoiding these people, that's their loss.</p>
<p>
[quote]
to be honest top school engineers are great at reading books and solving problem sets, but to solve real-world problems they suck and thats why people shove them into a research lab.</p>
<p>Huge companies really try not to hire real world practicing engineers from these big name schools. they would much rather look to a place where they know they are getting a engineer and not a research person.
[/quote]
I agree that engineering at Princeton is most likely not any harder than other schools, but you are going entirely too far with the above of statements.</p>
<p>Take two "elite" semiconductor companies, AMD and Nvidia. It's extremely difficult to get a job there and the competition is very intense. Want to know where they recruit at?</p>
<p><a href="http://careers.amd.com/en-us/work_college_recruiting.aspx%5B/url%5D">http://careers.amd.com/en-us/work_college_recruiting.aspx</a>
<a href="http://www.nvidia.com/page/calendar_of_events.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.nvidia.com/page/calendar_of_events.html</a></p>
<p>I'm sure you begin to see a pattern emerging.</p>
<p>Um no, I take janitors to be in much higher regard than engineers the same with doctors and lawyers.</p>
<p>Oh and At&T is worth um close to 8-10 times what both of these companies combined are worth. Yeah.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Ivy league schools practically hand out A's to anybody who tries. According to the priceton website 47$ or now 42% got A's, thats a really high number as the national average is around 19%.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>No college "hands out" grades. You're being completely ridiculous. If 42% of Princeton students get A's then they deserved it.</p>
<p>"Um no, I take janitors to be in much higher regard than engineers the same with doctors and lawyers."</p>
<p>?</p>
<p>I'm sure that's great for the stockholders, but we're talking about engineers. Does your uncle get paid 8-10 times more than what an ATI or AMD offers its engineers?</p>
<p>Um he makes 320K a year. but he is no longer a full time engineer, more managerial. At&T is know for giving the best packages around.</p>
<p>serach ivy league grade inflation on the google.</p>
<p>ivy league grade inflation does not apply to those are engineering majors, but to those who are H&SS majors.</p>
<p>Oh man, you can't pay for entertainment like this!</p>
<p>"Oh and At&T is worth um close to 8-10 times what both of these companies combined are worth. Yeah."</p>
<p>Completely irrelevant. Comparing apples to oranges.</p>
<p>"to be honest top school engineers are great at reading books and solving problem sets, but to solve real-world problems they suck and thats why people shove them into a research lab.</p>
<p>Huge companies really try not to hire real world practicing engineers from these big name schools. they would much rather look to a place where they know they are getting a engineer and not a research person."</p>
<p>This is laughable.</p>
<p>"1) Princeton physics tests are definitely harder."</p>
<p>Compared to who/what? You may very well of received a hard teacher. However, comparing your tests to one other college is hardly an indicator. Princeton does not write the physics test, your professor does. There are undoubtedly professors around the country who will write harder tests and others who will write easier tests. Some will write theoretical tests, others will write tests that ask the student to apply knowledge, and others will write tests that are straightforward and have you simply regurgitate what you learned in class.</p>
<p>"2) We have massive grade deflation."</p>
<p>Without even knowing, I am pretty sure that you don't have grade deflation. In a world where there is a lot of grade inflation, many believe that when there is no inflation that they have deflation. I doubt that your teachers give you a grade lower than your percentage of right answers on a test.</p>
<p>Nvidia was at the job fair at UCI last quarter... and we're nowhere close to top tier :P</p>