All Schools are Created Equally

[sakky]

<p>

DH went to JSU (a different one than DD)…he is a very successful engineer in his field (power…he’s an EE). If someone applied for a job with his company from MIT, they would be offered the same pay as someone from JSU. And after a number of years of experience…folks would be hard pressed to know who was the MIT grad and who was the JSU grad.

</p>

<p>

But does an engineer really need to know how to prove said equation? Maybe that is the reason why Joe Schmo U engineer can do things that MIT engineer can.

</p>

<p>Right, and that’s probably why nearly half of all MIT students who enter the workforce don’t actually take engineering jobs, instead opting for jobs in consulting or banking. Of those who do take engineering jobs, a significant chunk won’t stay for long, but will work as engineers for only a few years before leaving - typically by obtaining an MBA and then embarking on a different career (i.e. the aforementioned consulting and banking). After all, it is probably true that bachelor’s degree level engineering jobs don’t really require the level of knowledge that MIT would force you to obtain. </p>

<p>

I had several professors (at Georiga Tech) who had PhDs from MIT. Across the board they said the MIT vs GT undergrad are identical. It’s the graduate school that separates itself from the rest. So it’s not just MIT that operates this way, it’s most of the top engineering schools. I have several co-workers from University of Maryland and they experienced pretty much the same as I even though their school/program isn’t top 5.

</p>

<p>Well, I happen to think that actions speak louder than words, and the fact remains that, far and away, the most common undergrad program that MIT grad students came from is - wait for it - MIT itself. Let’s also keep in mind that grad school admissions - in stark contrast to undergrad admissions - are run by the faculty themselves, who are incentivized to admit the highest quality students because they’re going to be stuck working with whoever they admit. If the MIT faculty really viewed the MIT undergrad program as equivalent to GT, Maryland, or other such programs, they ought to be admitting more GT and Maryland undergrads to the MIT grad programs.</p>

<p>Some MIT grad programs are specifically restricted to MIT undergrads only. For example, the highly popular MIT EECS MEng is exclusive to MIT EECS undergrads, and a whopping 75% of them qualify. You can be the greatest GT or Maryland engineering student in history and still never be admitted to that program as a matter of rule. Nor can you be admitted to the MS EECS program either, for that program does not offer a direct admissions pathway. You would have to win admission to the far more difficult MIT EECS PhD program and then pick up an MS as a waypoint degree. The homefield advantage that MIT provides for its own undergrads to its grad school is quite striking.</p>

[Salve]

<p>

I think it’s the amount of effort that a student puts into it that determines how much of an education the student gets. That being said, I also believe the following might be true…</p>

<p>(1) Better schools generally have better resources and better resources makes putting more into your education easier.</p>

<p>(2) Better schools have better student bodies and you will probably have to work harder to keep up with everybody else.</p>

<p>etc.</p>

<p>Still, fundamentally I believe that most of the universities we’re talking about can provide a student with as much of an education as the student can absorb… and probably much more than that. Anybody who thinks there are 4-year universities (publics or well-known privates) with programs which couldn’t teach one more than one could learn in 4 years is an example of somebody who doesn’t need an education wasted on them.

</p>

<p>I have to agree with this. A person gets out what they put in. Yes, a larger school may have a better program, but that doesn’t automatically mean a better education if the person doesn’t go about their fullest potential in it. A person who is at a 4-year state school CAN learn just as much as an MIT grad, it is just how much they are willing to work for that.</p>

[sakky]

<p>

They make the engineering students do proofs? I go to an above average engineering university, and a typical exam involves a few problems testing technique and a few testing design skills. Math classes have a combination of proofs and problem solving. I’ve never had to do proofs in an engineering class, because I don’t think that proofs are really used in engineering.

</p>

<p>Yeah, the engineering classes sometimes make you do proofs.</p>

<p>As for whether knowledge of proofs is actually useful in engineering (presumably in engineering jobs), that’s a different matter entirely. I tend to agree that bachelor’s degree engineering jobs do not necessitate that level of knowledge.</p>

[sakky]

<p>

A person who is at a 4-year state school CAN learn just as much as an MIT grad, it is just how much they are willing to work for that.

</p>

<p>Sure, they probably can, the real question is will they? Like I said before, nothing concentrates the mind like a hanging. Most people don’t accomplish much unless put into a situation where they’re forced to. For example, I know one brilliant guy - a MIT graduate as a matter of fact - who didn’t quit smoking until his girlfriend finally threw all his cigarettes away and threatened to withhold certain, uh, benefits if he smoked again. </p>

<p>But, as I’ve also said, whether bachelor’s degree level engineers really need to develop a high level of knowledge to do the job is a different matter altogether.</p>

[Salve]

<p>

threw all his cigarettes away and threatened to withhold certain, uh, benefits if he smoked again.

</p>

<p>Haha, I like the “uh… benefits”. I do agree with you though, being put in a situation that requires concentration in learning will probably bring more benefits. That still isn’t to say though that someone from a state school could have the discipline.</p>

[sakky]

<p>

I think that state schools can be harder than the top schools because the lower ranked schools are trying to earn the top spots and therefore push their students harder. My engineering professor told actually told us that she tries to make tests difficult and teach like we were at Michigan or Purdue. I’m thinking if we wanted to have a difficult exam like they do then we would have gone there. Sheesh!

</p>

<p>Frankly speaking, I think much of the ramping of difficulty within engineering is a white whale anyway. You don’t really need a painfully difficult program to become a top ranked school - a certain school in Palo Alto is living proof of that, where you can obtain a elite engineering education in a relatively relaxed environ in which you don’t have to constantly fret about flunking out.</p>

<p>Therefore, you might request that your professor teach like you were at not Michigan or Purdue, but the even higher ranked Stanford.</p>

[Salve]

<p>sakky, do you know much about Rose-Hulman Institute? I’m just curious because it is said to be a good engineering school… and how would it stand against somewhere like Purdue or UIUC?</p>

[Mr_Payne]

<p>

Frankly speaking, I think much of the ramping of difficulty within engineering is a white whale anyway. You don’t really need a painfully difficult program to become a top ranked school - a certain school in Palo Alto is living proof of that, where you can obtain a elite engineering education in a relatively relaxed environ in which you don’t have to constantly fret about flunking out.

You need an elite student body to become an elite engineering program. The question, of course, is how to get an elite student body. The easiest way is to offer free tuition. Cooper Union/Olin, etc.</p>

[vblick]

<p>

But does an engineer really need to know how to prove said equation?

</p>

<p>No they don’t but in the real world it’s about thinking outside of the box. That’s the difference between JSU and a top school - they force you to think outside the box and that’s what companies want given the choice.</p>

<p>

Maybe that is the reason why Joe Schmo U engineer can do things that MIT engineer can.

</p>

<p>Sure he can, to a certain degree. Once you start working you’ll probably use about 30% at most of what you learned in school (for most degrees).</p>

<p>

If the MIT faculty really viewed the MIT undergrad program as equivalent to GT, Maryland, or other such programs, they ought to be admitting more GT and Maryland undergrads to the MIT grad programs.

</p>

<p>We’ll they are obviously subjective towards their student body. They should be considering it’s the top technical institute in the world. However, there isn’t much difference between the caliber of student whether it be GT, Stanford, or Berkley. I don’t have any statistics on how many from each get accepted to MIT grad school but everyone I know that has applied for their respective major has been accepted.</p>

[silence_kit]

<p>

But does an engineer really need to know how to prove said equation?

</p>

<p>I’d be surprised if at MIT, calculus courses proved every result they used in class. Calculus is designed to give students practice for doing the calculations and a strong (or weak, if you took AP calc) intuition about the subject. The proofs and formalism are discussed in later analysis courses.</p>

<p>I think that derivations in engineering courses are not a waste of time. Working through it, you gain some insight into why the equation is true. That’s important. However, sometimes it is too hard to do the full derivation, eg. you need a result from physics or math that’s too technical for the level of class you are teaching. In that case, it is fine to skip the derivation but it still is important to motivate as best as you can the result or even provide an after-the-fact explanation. The goal here is to give future engineers an intuition about the systems they will be designing and maintaining. You get none of that when you just regurgitate formulas.</p>

[sakky]

<p>

We’ll they are obviously subjective towards their student body. They should be considering it’s the top technical institute in the world. However, there isn’t much difference between the caliber of student whether it be GT, Stanford, or Berkley. I don’t have any statistics on how many from each get accepted to MIT grad school but everyone I know that has applied for their respective major has been accepted.

</p>

<p>That’s interesting - I know numerous Berkeley engineering students who applied to MIT for grad school and didn’t get in. Nor could they get back into Berkeley either, for Berkeley offers little if any homefield advantage for its own undergrads, and if anything, offers homefield disadvantage - as an example, Berkeley ChemE’s are proscribed by rule from applying to the ChemE grad program. So instead they ended up at eng grad school at UCLA and other such places which, while decent, isn’t the same as MIT or Berkeley.</p>

<p>I believe Pepper White once observed that the easiest way to get into MIT grad school is to attend MIT for undergrad and then apply to stay there. The upshot is that one of the greatest advantages that the MIT undergrad program provides that no other school cannot is greater access to MIT grad school.</p>

[bruno123]

<p>MIT now makes most of its exams and HW assignments available on Open Courseware. It suffices to take a look at it to have an idea on how deep MIT courses go. </p>

<p>BTW, many college instructors now use MIT on-line material in the courses they teach outside MIT. Many of them however find out that their students are unable to cope, or realize they themselves are not qualified to teach the material at that level.</p>

<p>In other words, the real limiting factors that make JSU different from MIT are quality of the student body and technical/scientific qualification of the faculty. The latter in particular also applies to many LAC’s, even when they have a superior student body.</p>

<p>As a final comment, from an international perspective, US undergraduate classes (MIT included) are normally considered shallow by European standards. That doesn’t mean they are “easy”. In fact, US students have more lectures, more assignments and more exams than their counterparts in a top British school like Cambridge or Imperial College for example. Moreover, at places like MIT, assignments and exams are tough. The depth of the taught subjects is however lower. For example, some freshman classes in the US would normally be taught in High School in Europe and several ordinary undergraduate classes in Europe would be master’s level classes in America. That is particularly true in math specifically.</p>

[BCEagle91]

<p>I was at lunch with three recent MIT grads and part of the discussion was the dumbing down of the EECS curriculum at MIT - lowering the difficulty of requirements for graduation and coming up with easier versions of courses.</p>

[silence_kit]

<p>

As a final comment, from an international perspective, US undergraduate classes (MIT included) are normally considered shallow by European standards. That doesn’t mean they are “easy”. In fact, US students have more lectures, more assignments and more exams than their counterparts in a top British school like Cambridge or Imperial College for example. Moreover, at places like MIT, assignments and exams are tough. The depth of the taught subjects is however lower. For example, some freshman classes in the US would normally be taught in High School in Europe and several ordinary undergraduate classes in Europe would be master’s level classes in America. That is particularly true in math specifically.

</p>

<p>Are you saying that undergraduate courses at European universities teach at a higher level of sophistication, but expect less out of their students? Or are you saying that the quality of instruction is overall better?</p>

<p>

I was at lunch with three recent MIT grads and part of the discussion was the dumbing down of the EECS curriculum at MIT - lowering the difficulty of requirements for graduation and coming up with easier versions of courses.

</p>

<p>What sort of dumbing down did they talk about? I don’t think it is terrible to make general major required classes a little easier, but they definitely shouldn’t touch the difficulty of the advanced electives.</p>

[BCEagle91]

<p>“What sort of dumbing down did they talk about? I don’t think it is terrible to make general major required classes a little easier, but they definitely shouldn’t touch the difficulty of the advanced electives.”</p>

<p>We were talking about a less theoretical version of their algorithms course (typically Corman, etc.) in meeting graduation requirements.</p>

<p>“Are you saying that undergraduate courses at European universities teach at a higher level of sophistication, but expect less out of their students? Or are you saying that the quality of instruction is overall better?”</p>

<p>Take out ethics, diversity, required science courses outside of your major, social science, arts, humanities out of the undergrad curriculum and you have more time for courses in the major.</p>

[Canadian_EE]

<p>“As a final comment, from an international perspective, US undergraduate classes (MIT included) are normally considered shallow by European standards. That doesn’t mean they are “easy”. In fact, US students have more lectures, more assignments and more exams than their counterparts in a top British school like Cambridge or Imperial College for example. Moreover, at places like MIT, assignments and exams are tough. The depth of the taught subjects is however lower. For example, some freshman classes in the US would normally be taught in High School in Europe and several ordinary undergraduate classes in Europe would be master’s level classes in America. That is particularly true in math specifically.”</p>

<p>I attend a Canadian university where classes are taught in French. Most of the student body has been through a typical North-American curriculum in high school, but there are still a lot of students originally from France. It’s crazy how they do a lot better in math classes than local students seeing as they have a lot more baggage in that area.</p>

[RacinReaver]

<p>

Well, I happen to think that actions speak louder than words, and the fact remains that, far and away, the most common undergrad program that MIT grad students came from is - wait for it - MIT itself. Let’s also keep in mind that grad school admissions - in stark contrast to undergrad admissions - are run by the faculty themselves, who are incentivized to admit the highest quality students because they’re going to be stuck working with whoever they admit. If the MIT faculty really viewed the MIT undergrad program as equivalent to GT, Maryland, or other such programs, they ought to be admitting more GT and Maryland undergrads to the MIT grad programs.

</p>

<p>It could also be that a number of students have ongoing research at MIT, and there’s a much smaller start-up cost to have them stick around for their PhD. They’ll be ahead in courses, they’ll already be established in the area, and have projects in mind from working with the professors already. Obviously they’d be safer bets than someone from any other school. Heck, I was told by a number of professors at my undergrad institution that if I wanted to go there for my PhD I could show up on the first day of classes without an application and be accepted.</p>

<p>If MIT students are equal to a number of other universities, and they don’t have a policy against taking their own students, then you should expect MIT to have the highest admit rate into its own grad school due to its ability to have much greater knowledge on its own grad school applicants.</p>

[BCEagle91]

<p>“are run by the faculty themselves, who are incentivized to admit the highest quality students because they’re going to be stuck working with whoever they admit. If the MIT faculty really viewed the MIT undergrad program as equivalent to GT, Maryland, or other such programs, they ought to be admitting more GT and Maryland undergrads to the MIT grad programs.”</p>

<p>The proper metric would be the admit rate from other schools; not the number of students admitted.</p>

[sakky]

<p>

The proper metric would be the admit rate from other schools; not the number of students admitted.

</p>

<p>Sure, but since we lack the admit rate from other schools, we have to use the number of students matriculated (not actually admitted) as an imperfect proxy. After all, I suspect that many undergrad engineering students from GT or Maryland who actually get into MIT for grad school will probably go - certainly more than the number who will stay at GT or Maryland for grad school. </p>

<p>Let me put it to you another way. Note the grad school destinations of EECS undergrads from Berkeley. While there are some top grad schools - including MIT itself - there are also some lesser-tier grad schools that appear such as San Jose State or UC Davis. While some of those students may have had specific reasons to want to go to San Jose State or UCD, I suspect that many of them would have wanted to go to a top grad school such as MIT, but just didn’t get in. Certainly, only a small minority of Berkeley EECS undergrads went to top-tier grad eng programs, as compared to MIT EECS undergrads, where about half enter MIT’s homegrown MEng program, and that’s not even counting those who went to some other grad program or decided to forgo grad school entirely. </p>

<p><a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major2006/EECS.stm[/url]”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major2006/EECS.stm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>The same could be said for other schools such a GT or Maryland. Do you think any of them can boast of a 50% admit rate to MIT grad school? </p>

<p>

If MIT students are equal to a number of other universities, and they don’t have a policy against taking their own students, then you should expect MIT to have the highest admit rate into its own grad school due to its ability to have much greater knowledge on its own grad school applicants.

</p>

<p>Greater knowledge works both ways, for with greater knowledge, the school will know both how good and how bad a particular applicant really is. For example, if a particular applicant who was an MIT undergrad had a sordid personal conflict with some faculty member, the MIT grad-school adcom would surely know about it and reject him accordingly. That applicant might be able to conceal that blemish if he was from another school. </p>

<p>Yet the fact remains that MIT admits lots of students into its grad programs from its own undergrad program. So whatever information it is receiving about its own undergrads is clearly positive. </p>

<p>

It could also be that a number of students have ongoing research at MIT, and there’s a much smaller start-up cost to have them stick around for their PhD. They’ll be ahead in courses, they’ll already be established in the area, and have projects in mind from working with the professors already. Obviously they’d be safer bets than someone from any other school. Heck, I was told by a number of professors at my undergrad institution that if I wanted to go there for my PhD I could show up on the first day of classes without an application and be accepted.

</p>

<p>I agree - but those are all reasons to prefer MIT for undergrad, if for no other reason, than to gain an edge for admission into MIT for grad school. After all, as others have said, if MIT’s advantage over Maryland or GT is in its grad school, and you want to go to grad school, then you want to obtain any advantage you can towards gaining admission.</p>

<p>However, I also agree with the sentiment others have expressed which is that if all you want is a regular bachelor’s degree level engineering job, you don’t really need to go to MIT, or any top-ranked engineering school for that matter. Doing so is overkill. The true value of an MIT engineering degree is leverage for grad school or, ironically, in the pursuit of non-engineering careers, such as consulting or venture capital.</p>

[pierre0913]

<p>“I wouldn’t say that. IIT is a very good school and actually does have comparable coursework, research, and professors as MIT. At one time, IIT was actually competing with MIT for the top spot.”</p>

<p>Umm are you thinking about the University of Illinois? IIT is a very good engineering school but it isn’t really competing with MIT (or has been). </p>

<p>I’m going to Clemson University next year and I picked it over Virginia Tech or Purdue. I’m not gonna regret my decision but I’m just curious what you guys think about the quality at a good engineering school like Clemson, Auburn, UMass, Pittsburgh compared with a top notch school like Purdue or Virginia Tech. (not comparing MIT to Joe Schmo U anymore)</p>