<p>So I was lucky enough to be accepted into these three schools as an Engineering - Undeclared Major. Now I am trying to pick between the three. As a side note I am also interesting in minoring in some form of business. Any thoughts?</p>
<p>Out of those three, I’d go berkeley for engineering. It’s consistently in the top 1-10 for all fields of engineering…generally top 5 for most I believe, and I’m pretty sure stronger than cornell or carnegie mellon. Berkeley also has Haas for business, though there is no biz minor - you can try to get into Haas courses. I’m not sure how business works in the others.</p>
<p>There is an important message, which I was not aware of at the young stage of applying to college, which is that while rankings might not be meaningless, it is important to know what they mean to some satisfactory degree prior to allowing them to influence your decision.</p>
<p>One main thing which stands out is that CMU does not strike me as supporting the breadth of engineering involvement as does Berkeley. On the other hand, perhaps Cornell is very well-rounded in engineering? I leave it to engineers to take that up.</p>
<p>A ranking in a specific field like engineering is often muddled and confused with PhD program rankings, faculty ratings, and remember, a higher-rated faculty does not at all have to correspond to singularly better research. It might be swayed by several stars, how “popular” the faculty research is, etc, etc. </p>
<p>I do not believe that graduate/research rankings are at all to be discounted for undergraduates, but I also believe one cannot take them at face value! What seems to generally be most valuable to undergraduates interested in serious academics is that the school offers both a wide variety of well-done classes, has faculty pursuing a good variety of research at a very high level of excellence, and such things, and at some point the ranking system matters neither for undergraduates nor graduates. Undergraduates, because how much extra research prestige a few faculty members raked in doesn’t matter, and graduates because they really care mainly about the small subset of research they’ll work most under.</p>
<p>Of course, the above poster makes a good point about Haas - it is well regarded, and I think it can give you some career boost, although I’d leave it to someone who knows more to say more on that.</p>
<p>It sounds like Berkeley or Cornell is your ideal choice as an engineering undeclared, and you should check the business strength at either program. Both programs seem not to grade inflate very much for engineering, and both are competitive but still will be very good experiences if you go in with the right attitude. They are very different locations, and I would personally consider that when making the choice.</p>