<p>At the time that I applied to college I applied to the top Chemical Engineering departments in the country, MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley and Princeton. I was accepted to all of them. I narrowed it down to MIT and Princeton, but during a field trip to CalTech, I ran into the head of CheE Department of CalTech and asked him to compare the two schools. He stated that Princeton was just as good or better than MIT in Chemical Engineering. That is all I needed to know. So I accepted the invitation to attend the top ChE. department in the top Undergraduate school in the country, Princeton over MIT. By the way, the majority of my ChE. classmates did the same. Several, in fact returned to MIT to obtain their graduate ChE. degrees. Your alma mater, Harvey Mudd, was never a thouight, for although a good “technical” school they were nowhere near the level of ChE. at Princeton, MIT, UC Berkeley and Stanford.</p>
<p>rocket, speaking of Aerospace Engineering, here are the latest rankings for graduate departments in that field. I see that Univ. of Illinois and Texas A&M are in the top ten. Good stuff. Texas A&M is tied for 10th and Univ. of Illinois is ranked 7th, together with an Ivy League School. As discussed in the methodology, these rankings were determined by the heads of the departments of Aerospace Engineering at the Universities around the Country:</p>
<p>Personally, I still wouldn’t want to go to Princeton for Aerospace Engineering. Its graduate ranking is derived primarily due to one specific area in AeroE (to my knowledge), and that is modeling… mathematical modeling. Shouldn’t really surprise people that they would be good at that. It certainly isn’t my thing though, so I would be crazy to attend.</p>
<p>@JohnAdams12
wow you are probably the only person who choose Princeton over MIT for engineer program. Is it because you got scholarship from Princeton and not from MIT?</p>
<p>“Your alma mater, Harvey Mudd, was never a thouight, for although a good “technical” school they were nowhere near the level of ChE. at Princeton, MIT, UC Berkeley and Stanford.”-johnadams12</p>
<p>that’s because hmc doesn’t have a chemE major. it is general engineering.</p>
<p>“rocket, wow, so bone has now gone to Univ. of Illinois, Harvey Mudd and is now at Texas A&M for his graduate degree, nice lineage…”-johnadams12</p>
<p>no, bones didn’t go to hmc. “classmate” was figurative.</p>
<p>also, i’d like to point out that my company hires heavily from the top aerospace programs in the country. most “new grads” have a MS or PhD from these schools. how is it possible that a school like hmc could turn out bachelors students with a general engineering degree that also are matched against MS students in their technical basis? (of course, some particulars like cfd and such cannot be matched since those are explicitly graduate skills.) it is because it is a damn good “technical” school. i put the quotes there to mimic you.</p>
<p>…and i have to say that this probably is not just unique to hmc. i think there are several undergraduate institutions that can pull of the same thing… and princeton is not on that list.</p>
<p>one of my roomates at Princeton was an Aerospace Engineering major, accepting Princeton over many top programs around the country.</p>
<p>He accepted a great job at a top Aerospace related company and is currently a very senior executive there. A very well rounded individual, including varsity fencing, I believe that he eventually got an MBA while working for the same company.</p>
<p>CSmajor, as I previously stated, the majority of my ChE. classmates turned down MIT for Princeton…</p>
<p>several went back to MIT to receive their grauduate degrees and, in fact, I see that one is now working there as a Senior Research Physcist in the Plasma Fusion and Science Center - truly one of the most brilliant individuals that I have ever met, skipped a year at Princeton and was a Marshall Scholar, attending Cambridge for a year or two right after Princeton.</p>
<p>even today, the cross-admits between MIT and Princeton are about even, and probably many of those are engineers or in the Physics and Math areas.</p>
<p>rocket, thanks for the info on Harvey Mudd. One of the brightest people I know was a JD/MBA at Stanford during my years there after he graduated in general engineering from Harvey Mudd.</p>
<p>um…crud, I can’t understand crap of what johns’ saying except he’s really defending princetons program, like, the posts are all random and spacey. </p>
<p>hey…um…I think UT’s ranked higher than princeton…also, tied with cornell, by US rankings.</p>
<p>but yeah, whatever, I just felt like throwing that out there for fun. I was just gonna ask about being a mechE and going into robotics. Because I’d prefer doing a mechE degree over a computer/electrical one where I might end up programming all day long. But I do want to do something with robotics. So I figure I’ll specialize, minor in robotics, take some extra classes, join robotics club along with my mechE.</p>
<p>Just some advice on how to do mechE and robotics would be nice?</p>
<p>There are many reasons why scores would be low at a **public state school<a href=“which%20aren’t%20too%20selective%20normally”>/b</a> as opposed to Cornell which would be a private and highly selective school. Same for alumni giving rate… that is a very weak piece of evidence to use, there are plenty of reasons why more ivy leaguers can even afford to give back to their schools a good amount. And GT has about the same stats on graduation length, and GT is a better engineering school than Cornell/Princeton.</p>
<p>Some people like attending big schools, and the big classes are most likely going to be the first or second year classes, and not everyone will even need to take those classes so for the individual the percentage will be lower than 23%.</p>
<p>“and yes, attending a school with 40,000 undergraduates is preferred by many people.”- johnadam12</p>
<p>well, by that measure, princeton has 7500 students…which is 10x larger than my school! wow, i don’t know how you could get any attention. (this is a sarcastic statement).</p>
<p>and i have yet to make my most scalding statement yet: this is a story that has been transcribed from my buddy who just dropped me off at the airport the other day. he recently finished his phd work at umich combustion group with a thesis in hypersonic boundary layer shock interactions.</p>
<p>me: i’m thinking about applying for a hertz fellowship and studying mpd. what do you think about princeton’s mpd group?
buddy: well, i know that princeton had a stellar mpd group. however i’ve never worked with that group directly.
me: did you apply to princeton for graduate school?
buddy: no. i only visited princeton every once in awhile while doing my thesis. we had some collaborative work occurring between the combustion labs.
me: what schools did you get into?
buddy: mit, harvard, stanford, umich…yeah i got in everywhere i applied. actually, it turns out that umich has pretty much the best combustion group in the country. they also happen to have given me the most money.
me: what did you think of princeton?
buddy: princeton is like a country club. i hated it every minute i was there. they were so incredibly pompous. they thought they were awesome but they weren’t.
me: did they walk around wearing polo shirts?
buddy: yes, every single one. </p>
<p>then he went on to tell me about how a whole research group collectively moved (in recent years) from some university to upenn. i think it was princeton but i don’t remember exactly.</p>
<p>so it seems, that even the opinions amongst the phd’s who collaborated with work with princeton were not too taken by the general atmosphere.</p>
<p>yes, it did feel like somewhat of a country club and I am glad that people are saying that it still feels like one…a country club that is very competitive and you have to work real hard in your studies…</p>
<p>good stuff…</p>
<p>I also see that your posts continue on only one path - and one path only - to make negative comments about Princeton’s Engineering Program…good luck to you…why you feel that you have to do this is beyond me…but it is what it is</p>
<p>I see that most of your comments are directed towards the Aerospace Engineering Program at Princeton…care to make some regarding the Chemical Engineering Program?</p>
<p>After all, you did admit that your alma mater, Harvey Mudd, had to go to Princeton’s Engineering department faculty and administration to find a Dean for your school to finally manage it properly, didn’t you?</p>
<p>“After all, you did admit that your alma mater, Harvey Mudd, had to go to Princeton’s Engineering department faculty and administration to find a Dean for your school to finally manage it properly, didn’t you?”</p>
<p>well some people are not so happy with that decision. lol. i’m a bit indifferent but i know lots that would have rather kept the previous president or find other alternatives…</p>
What are some LACs that offer good engineering programs?
Is it better to attend a large university if one wants to major in engineering?
Is engineering in Ivies relatively week?</p>
<p>You answered 1 out of the three questions with any relatively helpful insight, and even then it took me and others a long time to even catch what kind of point you are trying to make.</p>
<p>
With the writing skill you are displaying here, it is arguable that you too need to take another writing course because you inadequately answered the purpose of this thread.</p>
<p>Hey, I had a comment to johns’ critique of my internet writing skills? Why do comments seem to disappear?</p>
<p>mmmm, whatever. </p>
<p>Oh, btw, Lehigh has a pretty good engineering program and I believe it’s pretty liberal arts? I didn’t really like the place myself. The Lafayette rivals also. </p>
<p>I kinda wanna ask why you’re looking at liberal arts and engineering mix. I was too when looking for colleges but that was because I wanted to take theatre. Like, RPI has a really good thing if you want to go into pixar if you’re looking into animation with your engineering. Or do you just want to take english classes? Music? There are schools that aren’t necessarily “liberal arts” but can still offer that along with engineering. A&M have something with movies that I remember hearing a lot about. Like, that’s why I never looked much at MIT because I wanted an engineering degree but I wanted art on my side and MITs theatre club is just a small group of techies.</p>
<p>Try to visit places most of all, see what fits you. You’ll be surprised by what you see, the amount of flexibility at some schools over others, it’s pretty shocking. Overall, just go wherever you’ll be happiest, engineering is a tough degree to get at any place and it’ll be easier if you’re happy at the school you go to. Don’t go somewhere just for the name most of all.</p>