<p>What exactly are Ivies famous for (please exclude ‘prestige’)? Are there anything other than social sciences?</p>
<p>They are famous for being some of the oldest universities in the Western Hemisphere and for attracting some of the greatest minds around. That is what they primarily draw their reputation off of.</p>
<p>^But there must be bright minds everywhere and one isn’t guaranteed to meet all the greated minds even though the probability is increased.</p>
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<p>That is certainly true. Bright minds tend to gravitate towards other bright minds, and that is how the Ivies have been able to build up their reputations and portfolios of bright minds. They got a head start! By the time a lot of universities were being founded, the Ivies had already been around for a while and had been attracting those top people. However, there are plenty of other brilliant people at many different schools. Heck, there are even some real gems at relatively unknown schools. There is just a higher concentration of them at Ivies in a lot of fields.</p>
<p>so bone, even though Princeton Undergraduate Engineering has been ranked #12 by the Country’s top Engineering School Professors and Dean’s, including from the State School that you got your engineering degree came from, you still feel that Princeton Engineering is overated eh?</p>
<p>why is this? because you haven’t run into any Princeton Engineers in your middle level engineering job?</p>
<p>Is that it?</p>
<p>you state that Princeton Engineering’s ranking is due to those students eventually ending up in Investment Banking, yet there is no Investment Banking criteria for choosing the ranking.</p>
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<p>bone, so now you are saying that because the Princeton education is more expensive that your state school that the quality of engineers produced by Princeton is lower than your state school?</p>
<p>is this what you are saying?</p>
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<p>happy, in the Math and Sciences area, Princeton has the top Math department in the world and the Physics department is in the top 2 or 3 in the world…</p>
<p>Its Economics department is the top in the U.S. and many others are in the top 5 and top 10…</p>
<p>happy, all Princeton professors are required to teach undergraduate classes.</p>
<p>the Student/teacher ratio is 5:1 compared to about 15 or 20:1 at most state schools…</p>
<p>therefore most undergraduates are taught by and get to learn from some of the brightest minds in the world…</p>
<p>Wow, nice try, Mr. Assumptions. What exactly makes you think I am currently in a “middle level engineering job”?</p>
<p>I said that I, along with lots of other people, feel that Princeton is overrated, at least when it comes to the purely technical side of engineering. You don’t have to agree with me. I don’t really care if you agree with me. The way you are getting defensive makes me think you are probably a Princeton grad and will never agree with me anyway, and the fact that you are trying to insult what job you presume I have just adds to my lack of caring about whether you agree with me or not.</p>
<p>The most important point that I have tried to make over this entire, ridiculously drawn out debate is that rankings, even the ubiquitous US News, are inherently flawed, and are not a sole indicator or the quality of an engineering program (or any other program for that matter). If you can’t even see the logic in that, then I question whether you are capable of objective, logical thought.</p>
<p>For example, did you know that US News, in all their glory, ranks the undergraduate aerospace engineering program at CalTech as the 5th best in the country? Did you also know that CalTech doesn’t even have an undergraduate aerospace engineering program? GALCIT is second to none, but it only offers graduate degrees (after all, GALCIT means Graduate Aerospace Laboratory, California Institute of Technology). There is no BS offered in Aerospace Engineering. If that is how knowledgeable the “experts” are, then I will go ahead and stand by my claim that the rankings are inherently imperfect, and that Princeton is overrated in the rankings, despite still having a good engineering program.</p>
<p>And no, I am not saying that because it is more expensive, it produces worse engineers. I am saying that it DOES produce worse engineers than, say, Purdue, yet is nearly twice the price. You would get more bang for your buck at Purdue. Stop putting words in my mouth and letting your anger cloud your sense of reason.</p>
<p>"bone, so now you are saying that because the Princeton education is more expensive that your state school that the quality of engineers produced by Princeton is lower than your state school?</p>
<p>is this what you are saying?"-johnadams12</p>
<p>i’m going to call foul on this. i went to an “elite” undergraduate technical institution that cost just as much as princeton and i think it is overrated for engineering, besides the few graduate groups that are absolutely fantastic.</p>
<p>"happy, in the Math and Sciences area, Princeton has the top Math department in the world and the Physics department is in the top 2 or 3 in the world…</p>
<p>Its Economics department is the top in the U.S. and many others are in the top 5 and top 10…"-johnadams12</p>
<p>there is a HUGE difference between math/physics and engineering from a philosophical perspective! if you had ever actually worked at a place that had both or went to a school that focused on these areas you would know this! just because a school is strong in math/physics (largely “pure” subjects) doesn’t mean it is good in engineering (largely “applied” subject).</p>
<p>as for economics, wow. that couldn’t be farther from engineering. just because it uses numbers and “systems” doesn’t mean it is even remotely close to engineering. it seems to me you don’t know what engineering is.</p>
<p>EDIT: Boneh3ad - bro high 5!</p>
<p>bone, tell us again about your logic that Princeton’s Engineering department is highly ranked because several of them end up in the Investment Banking area?</p>
<p>and when you answer this, please discuss how the Dean of Engineering at yoru state school that you attended is going to rank Princeton Engineering on Investment Bankers produced several years later and not on the quality of the engineering program and the quality of the faculty teaching at Princeton…</p>
<p>“and when you answer this, please discuss how the Dean of Engineering at yoru state school that you attended is going to rank Princeton Engineering on Investment Bankers produced several years later and not on the quality of the engineering program and the quality of the faculty teaching at Princeton…”</p>
<p>funny that you should bring this up but the previous dean of princeton applied sciences and engineering is the current president at my alma mater, who i’ve talked to a few times. let’s just say that she is blown away at the level undergrads are performing to…</p>
<p>rocket, ah, but that is not the question that I was answering, was it?</p>
<p>I was not asked to compare Physics/Math to Engineering at Princeton, was I?</p>
<p>I was asked to post what other areas other than social sciences Princeton good at…</p>
<p>why not take the time to follow the thread sometimes?</p>
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<p>“rocket, ah, but that is not the question that I was answering, was it?
I was not asked to compare Physics/Math to Engineering at Princeton, was I?
I was asked to post what other areas other than humanities is Princeton good at…
why not take the time to follow the thread sometimes?”</p>
<p>how am i supposed to know what you are answering when you have fragmented sentences that make little or no sense with no specific references to what people said? this is probably one of the first times where you clearly defined a passage in which you are responding. kudos.</p>
<p>rocket, again, why not take the time to follow the thread?</p>
<p>I was not asked to compare the Economics Department to the Enginnering department, was I?</p>
<p>this is what happy asked:</p>
<p>"What exactly are Ivies famous for (please exclude ‘prestige’)? Are there anything other than social sciences? "</p>
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<p>“rocket, again, why not take the time to follow the thread?”</p>
<p>well, my mistake. i simply thought that you were continuing your previous string of in-cohesive arguments. like i stated above, you provide little information as to what you are responding to so it is difficult for one to piece together your references/argument. this thread, which i skimmed up until this last 1.5 pages, reads like a stream of people yelling at each other. okay, well boneh3ad doesn’t seem to be yelling but i’m having difficulty understanding your argument since it is spread throughout.</p>
<p>please clarify.</p>
<p>so rocket, when an alias has only one or two posts on this thread and I reply to that alias by posting the name of the alias, are you saying that I provide little information as to what I am responding to?</p>
<p>are you kidding?</p>
<p>then you do a personal attack against me by claiming that I don’t know what engineering is.</p>
<p>why would you behave in this way?</p>
<p>why would you lie when anyone can clearly read what was posted?</p>
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<p>John,</p>
<p>I made the comments about investment bankers based on the fact that the undergraduate rankings are based on factors that could be affect by this. You have since debunked that myth and I have not said literally anything to that effect since you did. Congratulations. Now you should stop harping on it too. The only way it could affect the peer rankings is if some deans were particularly impressed by investment bankers, which I, like you, doubt has any noticeable affect.</p>
<p>But again, let me just say this one more time, I stopped playing up the investment banking thing when you found the description of the engineering rankings.</p>
<p>Now, do you mind addressing any of the other things I said, or are you going to keep jumping back to the beginning of the thread before the debate had evolved to where it is now?</p>
<p>I get it. You graduated with your degree in Chemical Engineering from Princeton, and now someone has said that they think Princeton is overrated, and to make things work, he did his undergrad at a <em>gasp</em> state school (OMG!!!). He didn’t even have to pay $45k a year to get a good education!</p>
<p>Seriously, I never said Princeton engineers were idiots or anything, or that they were incompetent losers. I said that Princeton’s engineering department is overrated in my opinion, and in the opinion of many other people. Why are you so concerned with this? If you are successful, then what does it matter? You could have gone to Redneck Valley State for all I care, and if you were successful, I would still say congratulations. But honestly, if all Princeton engineers have the same attitude as you (which I doubt they do), then you are only serving to prove my point.</p>
<p>bone, please tell us again how you stated that Princeton students that graduate from Princeton with an Engineering degree are no where nearly qualified as those of your state school - that somehow they were not taught engineering properly…that they are at a second tier level, even compared to Cornell’s engineers…</p>
<p>regarding cost of Princeton, I don’t understand why you continue to bring this up, but my guess is that a majority of students that graduate with a Princeton Engineering degree end up paying less than what you paid for your low budget state school degree.</p>
<p>bone, wrong again…when I graduated from Princeton with a ChE. degree, the department was considered the top department in the country, with only MIT and CalTech coming close…no worries there…the quality of our education, including research at the undergraduate level and exposure to the top ChE Professors in the world, and our knowledge of ChE. was second to none, including your state school. This is contrary to what you continue to claim that Princeton Engineers are second rate to the state school engineers.</p>
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