<p>We have been trying to figure out how the academic rigor of engineering programs at some universities compare with each other. While there are sites such as campusdirt and studentsreview that poll students on the course load and how hard the curriculum is, these sites include students from a variety of majors.</p>
<p>My son is interested in attending a university that has a wide variety of majors (not primarily engineering), so here is our list (in no particular order):</p>
<p>Carnegie Mellon
Washington Univ in St Louis
Princeton
Cornell
Rice
Duke
Northwestern
Penn
Stanford
Tufts</p>
<p>According to the sites listed above, the order (from most to least rigorous for all majors at these unis would be ):</p>
<p>I'll second Flavian that engineering will be rigorous no matter where you go. All the schools on your list have extremely rigorous engineering programs...CMU likely came up first in your difficulty ranking for all majors since a great deal of the students are engineers; Penn probably ranked last since a great deal of the students aren't.</p>
<p>For rigor in engineering, I would say (from the most to the least):
1. Cornell
2. CMU
3. Stanford
4. Rice/Northwestern/Duke
5. WashU/tufts/Princeton/Penn</p>
<p>i think most of them on there are about same in difficulty of obtaining high grades, tufts is probably the easiest one to get high grades. WUSTL is probably second easiest.</p>
<p>Harvey-Mudd/Cooper Union are harder than Cornell/Michigan. We've got people who transfer out to Cornell/Mich and say it's def. easier. A fair rigor ranking in my opinion would be:
1) MIT/Cal-tech
2) Berkeley/CooperUnion/Harvey-Mudd
3)Cornell/Mich/CMU</p>
<p>I don't think Pton/Penn/Stanford/John Hopkins are really that much harder than places like V-tech/Minnesota/Colorado for engineering. Unless you're speaking of specific programs such as biomed. engineering (john hopkins' biomed program is on par w/ MIT and equally hard); these universities are all about the same in rigor.</p>
<p>Kid looked at the faculty stats. ie where graduated from, various honors and awards, research specialty. </p>
<p>He also looked at the number of grad students- extrapolating that the higher the number grad students, the better the school; Since to support a large grad school, you must have corresponding professors that are deep and wide in quality and quantity. </p>
<p>A third criteria would be the number of recruiters seeking to hire graduates. </p>
<p>Fourth criteria is the number of foreign students; Logic goes like this, If you. the foreign student, have to pay full tuition, would you want to go to a second or third best school? And because the foreign students are the best of the best for that country, this sole criteria alone really ratches up the domestic student quality while at the same time limits its quantity. There is another level of competition besides what you see within the United States.</p>
<p>Your son will have no cakewalk in any Engineering program that you list. Because there is more to it than difficulty of courseload, you should have him consider the many other factors involved, too, although this is one to keep in mind (sort of in the middle/back in importance).</p>
<p>I think all of those schools are good except CMU.
CMU because it's not too strong in the liberal arts. I met a guy majoring in math and EE, who told me that it fares relatively badly in the liberal arts, so I stopped pursuing it. But take this with a grain of salt, while looking into it further.</p>
<p>If your son has any chance at the other schools, then he is better off trying to get into those.</p>
<p>Here is a ranking by engineering, based on US News and what people say here:</p>
<p>Stanford
Cornell
Carnegie Mellon (it does have great CS and Computer engineering, so it may or may not be better than Cornell)
Northwestern
Princeton
Rice
Duke
Penn
Washington Univ in St Louis
Tufts</p>
<p>It's rough, and interchangeable (I'm not sure of the exact comparison of Northwestern, Princeton, and Rice).
I think Stanford, Cornell, Northwestern, Princeton, Rice, Duke and Penn are excellent schools, engineering or not.</p>
<p>As I review the annual beg mail from my alma mater, a landgrant school, I wonder how privates' manage to teach and supposedly excel in all areas. I believe my state schools can not be good at everything, nor is it their mandate to be good at everything, and at those things that they are good in, they are subsidized by the state and private industry. </p>
<p>Which brings me to the thought: If the school is good at everything, can it really be very good at anything? Conversely, if the school is very good on some things and can it also be good at everything? </p>
<p>Of course I am bias towards CMU since that is where our S is attending. Their expertise is technical and performing arts. Providing a broad base of varied disconnected knowledge is not their game. Providing deep and interconnected teaching is their mission. (L. da Vinci Effect).</p>
<p>Itstoomuch, I would say that it comes down to money. Lots of money. A school that gets lots of money and is willing to spend it really can be good at everything.</p>
<p>Case in point - Stanford. Stanford is good at lots and lots of things. Maybe not everything, but pretty darn close. </p>
<p>Or how about Harvard? About the only thing Harvard is relatively weak in is engineering. Yet with a ranking in the 20's, even the relatively weak Harvard engineering is still pretty decent. It's no MIT but it's still better than the vast majority of other engineering programs out there. Harvard certainly has the money to greatly improve its engineering program. More importantly, Harvard has lately shown the desire to improve engineering by spending that money. Money and more money will certainly take a program quite far.</p>
<p>as far as the "CMU is bad for liberal arts" comment. Well, I would say it is the weakest college, but....We have incredibly good CS/Engineering/Science/Drama/Arts/Buisness/Creative Writing so....I would say it's not just an engineering school. It's a relative thing. </p>
<p>I know that things like psychology, which aren't tech or arts, are still good here. </p>
<p>Also, if you're looking at those sites, I would say that engineering is a difficult major here (and everywhere) but CS seems to have the largest workload. The artish majors are always in studio (or up until 3 am working) but...they don't have 6 finals. It's a different type of work.</p>
<p>I turned down Duke to come here, but I did a summer program there and visited a few times, so I can say that the curves there tended to be extremely low...ie the classes were very difficult, but a decent number of good grades were also handed out, so the rigor is hard to judge.</p>
<p>sakky, except Harvard (or any school prestigious relative to the given rival) would not have to spend much as a less prestigious school, as prestige is a form of compensation in itself - akin to the tradeoff between higher pay vs. higher prestige in working at a small or large company, respectively.</p>
<p>Exactly right, ashernm, which is another one of Harvard's core strengths. Harvard has a great brand name that can be leveraged. Fair or not fair, that's how marketing works. You stoke your brand name in one category and you can use that band name to muscle your way into another category. It's like Calvin Klein developing a mystique in chic high fashion clothing, and then using that mystique to get into selling high-end perfurmes and watches, which is exactly what has happened. It's like Giorgio Armani building its reputation for flair from selling men's suits, and then branching out into eyeglasses and jewelry, which is exactly what happened. Good branding is powerful. Good branding works. Good marketing branding can give you entree into adjacent product categories. </p>
<p>As another example, MIT started life as a premier engineering and trade school. MIT then later leveraged its great engineering brand name to build other departments, first with the pure sciences and mathematics during the 30's-50's, and then with the social sciences, most notably economics in the 50's, and linguistics in the 60's.</p>
<p>Of course, if you overexpand too quickly, you can hemorrhage the brand.
I was thinking about a few weeks back: What would the Harvard brand be worth in dollars? It may not even be possible to evaluate it, and perhaps I'm too elitist/intellectual/obsessed with colleges, but Harvard seems like the strongest brand around even though (or maybe especially because) it's not commercialized. </p>
<p>I happen to think that Harvard is the most commercialized brand of higher education out there.</p>
<p>However, Harvard obviously isn't going for the mass market. High prestige. Exclusivity. High quality. That's the brand image that Harvard evokes. It's like the Tiffany's of higher education.</p>