Bad idea to transfer from Stevens to Rutgers?

Transfer Students
1

<p>Hi everyone,</p>

<p>This is my first ever posting on CC, so please bear with me if I'm doing anything wrong!</p>

<p>I'm a sophomore (male) at Stevens Institute of Technology in NJ, currently pretty unhappy with the school, and I'm really considering transferring. I was a Computer Engineering major my freshman year, but last semester I switched to something called Quantitative Finance because I wanted to do something more mathematical and less engineery. My GPA is a 3.79. Since switching, I've thought a lot about what I want to do and believe that I would enjoy being an actuary. Anyways, here are my reasons for transferring:</p>

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<li><p>I don't like being at such a small school - there's something like 600 students here. Some people love the school, but they're either geeky types or are in fraternities, and I am neither of those things. The student body is really not very diverse at all personality-wise. I lived on campus all last year and made a few very close friends, but two of them already transferred for similar reasons. I commute now, but it's turned out to be very inconvenient. I'd probably have to live on-campus again next semester, but I hate that idea.</p></li>
<li><p>While I know Stevens is a great school for prospective engineers, I wonder if it has any advantages for people who want to become actuaries. At first I thought Quantitative Finance would be a versatile degree to have, but I'm beginning to realize how obscure it would look to employers (especially from Stevens) and that most students go on to back office roles on Wall Street, which I'm really not interested in.</p></li>
<li><p>My major is extremely credit-intensive (139 credits), and I was told before transferring by advisors that I would be able to finish, but my major is so small here that it's literally been impossible to fit the classes I need to take in order to graduate on time. I worry that I'll need to spend more than four years here, but if I transfer to somewhere with a flexible curriculum like Rutgers I shouldn't have such a hard time.</p></li>
</ul>

<p>My parents are very against the idea of me transferring - they believe I'm 'throwing away' such a good education at a good school, making it harder for me to get a job in the future. But I wonder if the Stevens reputation even means anything for actuaries. I'd most likely transfer somewhere as a Math Major (possible CS Minor). Are my parents right? Is it a bad idea for me to transfer? Any advice is appreciated.</p>

2

<p>If rankings means anything to you, Rutgers is ranked higher than Stevens overall. Rutgers’ Math and CS programs are also much higher ranked than Stevens. To be honest, I have never heard of Stevens before this year while I have known about Rutgers for a while. If you feel that Rutgers is a good fit for you, go for it.</p>

3

<p>Thanks for the response. I was always confused about the reputation of Stevens… it seems to me like 50% of people I talk to are very impressed when I say I go there, because it is indeed selective, but the other half have never heard of the school. I just looked this up and I’m surprised (and rather happy) to see that Rutgers is ranked much much higher than Stevens overall. Are you from New Jersey? That could be it - in NJ, when someone says he goes to Rutgers, nobody is ever really impressed.</p>

4

<p>“If rankings means anything to you…”</p>

<p>All depends on which rankings you’re talking about. If you mean the USNews rankings, they are almost worthless. I’m an engineer and the first thing I want to know when presented with a system, like rankings, is how that system works. </p>

<p>The USNews rankings are based partially on the Carnegie Classifications which don’t really rank schools at all. The rest of what USNews presents as fact is nothing more than subjective opinions from various sources… the schools themselves, guidance counselors (Yeah, I said guidance counselors), etc… </p>

<p>The USNews rankings completely ignore the 800 pound gorilla in the room. The question we all want to know the answer to… </p>

<p>“How successful will my child likely be if they attend this school?” </p>

<p>Unbelievably, there are no metrics in the USNews rankings that measure the success of the graduate. How ridiculous is that?!</p>

<p>A better ranking system to use would be the one from payscale.com. They have a very simple ranking system. No opinions, just facts. They simply present the median salary of early career pay and mid career pay of the school’s graduates, then rank the institutions accordingly. </p>

<p>Stevens is #12 in our Nation when compared to <em>ALL</em> Universities in our Nation.
Stevens is #5 in the Nation when compared to just Engineering Universities.</p>

<p>Rutgers, on the other hand is ranked 123, 208, and 434 for New Brunswick, Newark, and Camden (respectively) when compared to all Universities.
Rutgers doesn’t even make the list for Engineering Universities.</p>

<p>Put into perspective, a larger percentage of graduates from Stevens Institute make more money in their careers than graduates from Harvard, Dartmouth, Brown, Yale, Columbia, UPenn, or Cornell. I assume those names are recognizable. ;-)</p>

5

<p>^ You seem like you went to Stevens. Sorry if I sound like I am degrading Stevens, but I don’t believe payscale.com because I find it hard to believe that Stevens is better than Ivy League schools in terms of salary. In my opinion, the numbers on payscale.com are fudged. Don’t get me wrong, Stevens is a good school, but not even close to the Ivies and Stanford, MIT, etc.</p>

6

<p>Like Maikai said, US News rankings are meaningless. Any system that even attempts to compare Stevens with Rutgers should be ignored. Stevens is a small technical university, and really more of a college; Rutgers is a large university graduating mostly non-technical people. Comparing the two is like asking, “Who is better, Ben Roethlisberger or Derek Jeter?” Obviously, Roethlisberger is a better football player than Jeter, but Jeter is a better baseball player than Roethlisberger. </p>

<p>Comparing departments at a large research university with one at a school with a small graduate school is also folly. These ratings are generally dependent upon the amount of research the professors and the grad students do, and that has little to do with the quality of the undergraduate instruction.</p>

<p>There are countless other things wrong with the US News rankings, but I won’t spend the whole post on that topic.</p>

<p>Employers aren’t going to make their hiring decision about you now or ten years from now based upon the US News ranking of Stevens vs. Rutgers (and I get paid to evaluate executives for companies). They aren’t going to look up who has a higher rating in the computer science department.</p>

<p>Employers certainly won’t be prejudiced against Stevens because it is known for engineering, and you’ll be coming out with a math-intensive degree. Engineering schools are expected to have strong math programs.</p>

<p>I would look favorably upon a graduate of either school (even though I went to Princeton, where we are taught to have an inherent hate of Rutgers). </p>

<p>Transfer from Stevens if you really can’t stand it and aren’t happy there. However, you’re doing very well academically at a school that has a very good name academically. Bear in mind that you probably will lose credits when transferring. Your Rutgers GPA will not include your Stevens GPA – your Rutgers transcript will only list the courses that have transferred, so if your Rutgers GPA dips at all, this could also work to your disadvantage. </p>

<p>I’d say that you shouldn’t mess up a good thing.</p>

7

<p>“You seem like you went to Stevens. Sorry if I sound like I am degrading Stevens,
…blah, blah, blah…
Stevens is a good school, but not even close to the Ivies and Stanford, MIT, etc.”</p>

<p>Didn’t go to Stevens. Didn’t think you were degrading Stevens… until now. :wink: I just saw someone obviously ignorant about the ranking system and gave a quick overview.</p>

<p>Your assessment of schools is very similar to the USNews ranking system… all opinion, no substance… no meaningful metrics. </p>

<p>Any ranking system that doesn’t agree with your opinions must definitely be “fudged”. I suggest you forget everything I said and send your kid to whatever school you “known about for awhile” and forget all those other schools “you’ve never heard of”. :-)</p>

8

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<p>payscale.com is entirely self-reported by students of the school and is probably even less credible than USNWR. At least US News (for the most part) reports accurate statistics on retention rates, admissions, test-scores, etc.</p>

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<p>This doesn’t mean anything. You are comparing a specialized STEM school to institutions whose student bodies are studying anything from African American History to Music. How about comparing Stevens’ alumni salaries to Columbia/Cornell/Brown/Dartmouth engineers? Or Harvard/UPenn/Yale CS grads?</p>

9

<p>askjeeves,</p>

<p>First, you should take another close look at the basis of USNews rankings. They are admittedly subjective. They survey schools, guidance counselors, etc… for their <em>opinions</em>. They don’t attempt to hide this fact. For you to try to claim otherwise is just silly. They don’t even claim that themselves.</p>

<p>Second, the schools need to “self report” their stats to USNews. There has been a stream of schools who have been caught with “fudged” (to use a term from QueensNative) stats. </p>

<p>Nothing is perfect. There are indeed statistical problems with self reporting. If institutions of higher learning are regularly caught “fudging” their numbers, I’m sure individual graduates will too.</p>

<p>So I assume you’re proposing that some graduates over-report their incomes while others under-report? If this were true, a pattern would probably emerge, but it doesn’t. </p>

<p>And as for comparing engineering with engineering… I already mentioned payscale.com does that when I said Stevens was #5. The top four were Harvey Mudd, Cal-Tech, MIT and NYU/Poly. </p>

<p>…or do you believe the graduates from those universities had to “fudge” their numbers to be in the top four? Maybe you’d like to only accuse graduates of particular institutions of overstating their incomes. That would certainly be convenient for your argument.</p>

<p>Yeah! It’s a conspiracy. That’s it!!! Everyone who went to Stevens got together at a reunion, gave an evil snicker as they rubbed their hands together in a sinister manner and agreed they would all visit the payscale.com website and overstate their incomes.</p>

<p>…yeah… that must be it. :-p</p>

10

<p>Wow, you seriously need to grow up and calm down. No one is accusing Stevens of fudging anything, so maybe you should stop putting words into people’s mouths.</p>

<p>Anyways, payscale has been proven to be a pretty shady site. There is virtually no repercussion against people misreporting salary statistics. I’m quite certain that there is much more incentive for schools to accurately report statistics given the “death penalty” that US News imposes. For you to try to claim that there payscale is more legitimate than US News reporting SAT scores and admittance rates is pretty ridiculous.</p>

11

<p>bettercallsaul,</p>

<p>I’m very calm. If you read anything else into my writing, you’re mistaken. You do have me on the age thing. I’m a 50-something electrical engineer and still waiting to grow up. :wink: My son will be starting college (physics major) and I easily imagine myself in his position… then I look in the mirror. ;-)</p>

<p>I must say your post struck me as funny. You claim nobody is suggesting people are over reporting salaries, then you prove my point for me by doing it yourself! You wrote: “Anyways, payscale has been proven to be a pretty shady site. There is virtually no repercussion against people misreporting salary statistics.”</p>

<p>That’s a pretty big claim, by the way. Really? Payscale.com has been PROVEN to be a pretty shady site? I’d really like to see whatever data you have on that. </p>

<p>Help me understand what you (or anyone else) think the motivation to lie on payscale.com would be. This is a site people visit for competitive salary data for their careers. Salary data is requested from visitors before competitive salary data is provided to them.</p>

<p>A person would over-report their compensation package to what end? The information is anonymous. It’s not like you’d be impressing anyone. </p>

<p>The graduate salary data is simply a result of mining the data provided by the professionals who visit the site every year. There is no specific “college survey” that anyone fills out, so there is no specific opportunity to “help your school” by lying. In fact, lying about your compensation package would just screw up the very data you’re most personally concerned about.</p>

<p>I’m an open minded guy. I often say I reserve the right to be wrong. If you have reasonable data to back your claims against payscale.com, I’m very interested.</p>

<p>As for the legitimacy of sites, I made so such claim. I claim the data from payscale.com (or the ROI data from Bloomberg, for that matter) is more useful data than the data on USNews. </p>

<p>I don’t care about the exclusivity of a school, the average SAT scores, or any of that. I care about one thing: How successful might my child be if he goes to a particular school? This can only be answered by one metric. That would be how successful past graduates have been. USNews simply does not track/offer this data.</p>

12

<p>

[/quote]
First, you should take another close look at the basis of USNews rankings. They are admittedly subjective. They survey schools, guidance counselors, etc… for their <em>opinions</em>. They don’t attempt to hide this fact. For you to try to claim otherwise is just silly. They don’t even claim that themselves.

[/quote]
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<p>Wow. I didn’t realize that SAT scores, admittance rates, and the other OBJECTIVE measures I referred to were subjective. Nice try though.</p>

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<p>Well aware of it. However, we can argue that there is a greater incentive for schools to accurately report statistics, given the penalization for schools that are caught (see GWU). As far as I know, PayScale does nothing of the sort.</p>

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<p>Proof please.</p>

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<p>I was going to concede to this point until I stumbled upon their absurd methodology:</p>

<p>"Bachelor’s Only: Only employees who possess a bachelor’s degree and no higher degrees are included. This means bachelor’s degree graduates who go on to earn a master’s degree, M.B.A., M.D., J.D., Ph.D., or other advanced degree are not included.</p>

<p>For some highly selective schools, graduates with degrees higher than a bachelor’s degree can represent a significant fraction of all graduates.</p>

<p>Careers that require advanced degrees, such as law or medicine, are not included. Also, we explicitly exclude majors that are no longer bachelor’s level degrees (e.g. pharmacy)."</p>

<p>Completely absurd. Given that the majority of “top schools” (top 100 or so) already send about 20-25% of their alumni to graduate schools upon graduation, and when you factor in the other alums who go back to school after a few years work experience, the data set they are using to rank schools is neglecting a huge pool.</p>

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<p>Well technically I could and it wouldn’t be that big of a reach. I appreciate the suggestion.</p>

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<p>Lol. Given your needless defensiveness of Stevens and the hostility you have displayed on this thread, it wouldn’t be a surprise if you were an SIT alum.</p>

<p>I don’t think anyone here is discrediting Stevens as a good school. US News is a flawed metric, but PayScale is almost just as bad if not worse.</p>

13

<p><a href=“mailto:LOL@maikai”>LOL@maikai</a>. NO ONE is choosing stevens over dartmouth, yale, harvard, etc. just b/c some bogus online ranking you dug up says that stevens grads are getting paid more than ivy grads WITH BACHELOR DEGREES ONLY. Please.</p>

<p>ridiculous. i can’t even imagine when your electrical engineer friends ask about why you sent your kid to XYZ school, the one thing you’re going to say is “because payscale said so.”</p>

<p>have fun getting laughed out of the room.</p>

14

<p>Also to clarify, I am not directly accusing Stevens of inflating its statistics. So please cut it with the attacks. I just do not think that PayScale is using a reliable data sample, or a legitimate enough assessment, to qualitatively rank schools by salary. I can appreciate that your sole concern for choosing a college is based on “how much money one will make,” but I’m afraid that you’re going to have use a much better source and assessment than PayScale. US News is definitely a flawed metric, and I agree that their methodology in ranking schools is not very comprehensive and subject to bias. However, I don’t believe that PayScale does a much a better job.</p>

15

<p>askjeeves and icheetah90,</p>

<p>My argument is not specifically about Stevens. It could have been any institution ranked ahead of others. My beef is with the USNews ranking system itself. I really don’t give a care about what you think of Stevens. </p>

<p>You accuse me of being hostile. I suspect you perceive hostility because you really don’t like what I’m saying. There is no intended hostility in my writing. I’ve been writing with a smile on my face and things like my conspiracy comments were made with a “tongue in cheek” joking attitude. I suspect if you weren’t so hostile yourselves, you would have appreciated the humor.</p>

<p>My point is, and has always been, that the USNews ranking can not answer the main question a parent has: “How successful might my child be if he attends this school.” I believe this is the third time I’m repeating that.</p>

<p>SAT/ACT scores, GPAs, etc… are indeed a SUBJECTIVE measure when considered in the context of my question. Yes, they are a direct measure of the school’s exclusivity, but the school’s exclusivity does not, in any way, guarantee a graduate’s success in their field. It is therefore a subjective, or implied, measure of the school’s performance.</p>

<p>Neither of you have shown how payscale.com (or other ROI-type ranking systems) fails to offer a decent metric in this regard. </p>

<p>Talking about advanced degrees needed to become a pharmacist, a doctor, a lawyer, or whatever, does not address the context of our discussion. We’re talking about engineering schools. Advanced degrees are not the norm for engineering. If one finds it difficult to make their point within the context and confines of a discussion, they can’t change the context until they can. That is not making a point… that is going off on a tangent.</p>

<p>You go to such lengths to cherry pick passages from the payscale.com ranking system explanation, but apparently don’t spend one moment on the same from USNews. If you did, you’d see they openly admit the subjective nature of their ranking. Here’s the link for your convenience:
[How</a> U.S. News Calculates Its Best Colleges Rankings - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2012/09/11/how-us-news-calculates-its-best-colleges-rankings?page=2]How”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2012/09/11/how-us-news-calculates-its-best-colleges-rankings?page=2)</p>

<p>I’m sure you have a lot of respect for high school guidance counselors, but I fail to see why their opinions should matter so much when ranking a college or university. ;-)</p>

<p>You’ll find a very significant portion of the USNew ranking is totally subjective… opinions from a survey. USNews DOES NOT measure the success of the graduated student in any manner! </p>

<p>As for metrics… any data from Carnegie is subjectively utilized, since Carnegie’s intention is NOT to rank institutions, but rather classify them. Professor salaries? … really? … and weighted at such a high percentage, while faculty to student ratio is only given a weight of 5%?! </p>

<p>The USNews ranking system is significantly flawed and does nothing to answer the true main concern of parents… how their children might fare in their careers after graduation. IMHO, the payscale.com (and other ROI based services) do a far better job of answering this question.</p>

<p>I realize this flies in the face of your accepted paradigm, but I suggest you drop the knee-jerk hostility and ridicule and objectively analyze the two systems in the context of this discussion. </p>

<p>Disagreeing with someone does not make them your enemy or worthy of ridicule. Ridicule is the weapon of a feeble mind.</p>

16

<p>I have done research in both financial engineering and actuarial science, so I hope my answer will help you.</p>

<p>First, you are getting a QFin from Stevens. The site says it is a very competitive program and I won’t doubt it or anything. But you have to understand the fact that most programs out there are MASTER DEGREE. That means the kids would have stronger mathematical and computational skills with a specific focus on Financial Engineering. Your program is very likely to be a little bit of Finance plus a little bit of Math plus a little bit of CS. That will be good for an assistant, but they can always hire a CS major to do your job. Stevens’ program is a very good preparatory program for a Master in Financial Engineering but if you are looking for a job, I highly doubt it.</p>

<p>If you want to be an actuary, you have to understand that you have to take certain classes to pass the VEE requirement and the CAS/SOA tests.
Most people pass the first two tests during their college years,
but if you are smart and bright, passing the first four is not a problem.
I’m not sure if Rutgers has an actuarial science program or whether it is under math department or business school. But I have to tell you this, actuarial science is NOT about your degree, its ABOUT how many tests you have passed. Yeah, there might be a tiny difference between a Rutgers and Stevens grad, but nobody is going to look down on you once you have passed all the exams.</p>

17

<p>askjeeves,</p>

<p>You wrote:
“…So please cut it with the attacks…”</p>

<p>It would be useful to know what exactly I have written that you perceived as “attacks.”</p>

<p>You also wrote:
“…but I’m afraid that you’re going to have use a much better source and assessment than PayScale…”</p>

<p>I believe you (and others) completely misunderstand the nature of the payscale site. Unlike USNews, there is no survey sent to people asking them about their schools. </p>

<p>Running through a use example might help. Let’s say an electrical engineer with 8 years experience and a “project engineer” title is looking for another job, or just wants to make sure he’s getting what he’s worth in the market. That engineer will go to payscale.com to find this information. In the process he will answer many questions about himself and his career. It is a somewhat comprehensive questionnaire meant to most accurately match his experience and skill set with other engineers… in an effort to provide the most useful salary information.</p>

<p>The whole point of this engineer’s visit to the payscale site is to get information about competitive salaries for his position in life. This is very valuable information for the engineer.</p>

<p>Why would anyone in this position overstate their incomes? The data is anonymous. No one will be impressed. And it would only skew the very data they value the most.</p>

<p>If the data was garbage and intended to skew the ranking system, I think you’d see a pattern between these types of sites. There are many sites like this. I would think ones that offer college ranking data would be skewed from the ones that don’t. This is not the case. At least not for my career. The numbers from payscale and other salary and job search sites correlate very well.</p>

18

<p>I think you should stay at Stevens. Without getting into the silly arguments about who is better, you are in an extremely strong program in an excellent technologically-based university. The arguments you give supporting transferring are concerned with intangibles - you want to be in a larger school with more students, more social activities, more athletics, etc. These are not the reasons why one should choose a school. While I can’t speak for the Quantitative Finance program in particular (I am an alumnus of both Stevens and Rutgers in electrical engineering and mathematics) I can tell you that in general Stevens alumni enjoy great success and respect in the commercial and professional world. Rutgers is a good large state university but in selected areas (engineering, applied science, and particularly scientific management/quantitative methods in business and financial analysis - fields that Stevens alumni pioneered in the latter part of the Industrial Revolution) Stevens is much stronger in my opinion. If you are interested in actuarial science you should determine what courses and preparation are required to take the exams required in that field as the other commenter noted. Surely the Technology Management school faculty can recommend the appropriate preparation. </p>

<p>I have to say when I was in school I too used to envy my friends in the state university and others who did not have to take the large number of classes and who in general had more parties to attend and an easier academic load. This again is not why one should be attending college. You will realize the value of your Stevens education after you graduate and you are in high demand.</p>

<p>I wish you luck in your decision and your endeavors. You are in one of the best technologically-focused schools in the United States, I would encourage you to stay.</p>

19

<p>I don’t think that where one goes to engineering school has a big impact on earnings potential. I’m not sure what you are asking though. The educational experience at top engineering programs would likely be a lot better. There would be smaller class sizes, better professors, much greater opportunity for research, more difficult and rigorous classes, etc. </p>

<p>By the way, if you don’t trust how US News ranks, you can look here:
[Methodology:</a> Best Engineering Schools Rankings - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/articles/2013/03/11/methodology-best-engineering-schools-rankings]Methodology:”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/articles/2013/03/11/methodology-best-engineering-schools-rankings)</p>

<p>It looks fine to me.</p>