<p>In my opinion, if someone wants to go into engineering they should go to the best college that they can get into for it. This is because, it is very easy to get into engineering programs at large state school like mine at Penn State. The engineers here (not me), are all very similar in a couple of ways. For one, they are all very certain that within ten minutes of their graduation they will be making a secure six figure salary for their entire lives. They also possess Everest-sized egos about their intelligence, and are very cocky in the classroom. I call this “I’m Smart”. It is my hunch that the “I’m Smart” problem may be a pandemic nationwide at these large state school engineering programs since the students are generally from poorer, less intelligent areas and were all probably the smartest in their class of around 30 people. </p>
<p>These students that are ill with “I’m Smart” disease, see absolutely no reason to prove anything and believe all theories are proven by induction involving 2 base cases, (if 3 is prime and 5 is prime, okay so 7,9,11,13,15… are all prime). The engineers here are required to take no more math than differential equations, yet they are the only students that will openly talk about their fantastic, unreal, and intuitive given math ability. Looking at other engineering programs nationwide, little require proof based mathematics at all. </p>
<p>I also think that at the higher level schools in engineering (MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Caltech, etc), the students level of intelligence has almost put them in an awkward position their whole lives, and they are not about going around ranting about how incredibly good at math they are. Even if a student wanted to do that at MIT, it would not be a good idea since at places like that, you can be certain that anywhere within five feet of you is someone who could potentially make you look like a second grader in math.</p>