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<p>CU is free, but it’s not “3rd best.”</p>
<p>It’s arguably not even the “best” engineering school in NYC…</p>
<p>“Engineers at top privates such as MIT, Stanford, Princeton, etc. have more flexibility than ones at state flagships should they choose to branch out in non-engineering fields (e.g. i-banking, consulting, etc.).”</p>
<p>“Also, they don’t face the same degree of grade deflation as their public counterparts, which could hurt their chances at med, biz, or law schools…”</p>
<p>How do you know this?</p>
<p>Courtesy of sakky’s reference:</p>
<p>Even at M.I.T., the U.S.'s premier engineering school, the traditional career path has lost its appeal for some students. Says junior Nicholas Pearce, a chemical-engineering major from Chicago: “It’s marketed as–I don’t want to say dead end but sort of ‘O.K., here’s your role, here’s your lab, here’s what you’re going to be working on.’ Even if it’s a really cool product, you’re locked into it.” Like Gao, Pearce is leaning toward consulting. “If you’re an M.I.T. grad and you’re going to get paid $50,000 to work in a cubicle all day–as opposed to $60,000 in a team setting, plus a bonus, plus this, plus that–it seems like a no-brainer.”</p>
<p>[Are</a> We Losing Our Edge? – Printout – TIME](<a href=“http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1156575,00.html]Are”>http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1156575,00.html)</p>
<p>^Interesting and true, but tangentially related to flexibility and grade deflation.</p>
<p>Yep…I’m an MIT grad and did consulting for almost 2 years before I got a real job. Anyway…the schools mentioned above are all terrific, but I don’t want the high-schoolers here thinking they need to go to one to become a “high caliber engineer”…because they certainly don’t.</p>
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<p>At Stanford, it is a well-known trope that as long as you put in a bare minimum of effort, you won’t fail. You won’t get top grades, but you won’t fail either. </p>
<p>Contrast that with other engineering schools that shall remain unnamed that seem to absolutely sadistically delight in flunking out through weeders as many students as possible. In many cases, the students weren’t merely flunked out of engineering, but out of the greater university entirely. Most schools implement rules that demand that students have a certain GPA, both cumulatively and per semester, above a certain value to avoid academic probation/expulsion, and those rules are enforced without regard for major. If your GPA is depressed because you’re battling in the thick of the engineering weeders, the registrar staffers don’t care. All they care about is that your GPA does not meet the stated threshold.</p>
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<p>Do you think that the bare minimum is enough for them to get better grades at other engineering schools than at Stanford… except at MIT? </p>
<p>Just talked to one of the kids for about 30 minutes, she was Intel finalist last year and at Harvard now. My questions were whether she was regretful not going to Yale and not applying for MIT last year. None of those kids I know went to MIT if they had chances to go to HYPS, well P is getting bad too.</p>
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<p>I would say that the bare minimum would get them better grades at Stanford than at, places like Georgia Tech, Purdue, Michigan, UIUC, or Berkeley. Like I said, the bare minimum at Stanford will probably get you a C, whereas that same effort at those other schools will probably flunk you out. It’s practically impossible to flunk out of Stanford.</p>
<p>If you flunk out, employers don’t care why. You either have a degree or you don’t, and if you don’t, they don’t care why you don’t. All they’ll see is that you don’t have a degree.</p>
<p>Well, most of Stanford students did well at high schools, compared with their schoolmates who went to the others. I can’t imagine those who did poorly in their high schools and make no effort and passing those schools you mentioned.</p>
<p>Yet students do flunk out of Caltech and MIT (which is why I specifically excluded MIT from the above discussion). The same logic you invoked ought to apply: MIT and Caltech students clearly did well in high school, yet some of them will still flunk out. </p>
<p>But not at Stanford.</p>
<p>Sorry I forgot about Caltech. </p>
<p>Is that the essence why so many try so hard each year to get into HYPS, instead of others? They don’t have to do too much at those schools and have better future after graduation?</p>
<p>Caltech and MIT should be excluded from the discussion. As I said before, I have not seen anyone personally who had a chance at HYPS but went to MIT or Caltech.</p>
<p>Frankly, yes; those are important rationales. Again, while it may be difficult to get top grades at those schools, if all you want to do is slide by, you can do so and still graduate with a brand-name degree. </p>
<p>As a case in point, consider both George W. Bush and John Kerry, both of whom have freely admitted to being unmotivated and unexceptional students while at Yale. Bush joked when he returned to Yale in 2001 to provide the commencement speech that those graduating Yale seniors who were C students “you too could become President.” Kerry said: “I always told my Dad that D stood for distinction”. Al Gore was also a notably unmotivated student in his first two years at Harvard, when “many of his St. Albans classmates remembered how during his senior year he often put off studying for exams until the night before” and “spending a notable amount of time in the Dunster House basement lounge shooting pool, watching television, eating hamburgers and occasionally smoking marijuana”. Yet the fact remains that they not only graduated, but went on to highly successful political careers; one becoming President, one becoming a long-serving Senator and almost becoming President; and one becoming a long-serving Senator, then Vice President, almost becoming President, and then winning the Nobel Peace Prize, an Academy Award, and a Grammy. </p>
<p>[Yale</a> grades portray Kerry as a lackluster student - The Boston Globe](<a href=“http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/06/07/yale_grades_portray_kerry_as_a_lackluster_student/]Yale”>http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/06/07/yale_grades_portray_kerry_as_a_lackluster_student/)</p>
<p>[Gore’s</a> Grades Belie Image of Studiousness (washingtonpost.com)](<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A37397-2000Mar18]Gore’s”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A37397-2000Mar18)</p>
<p>I would venture to say that if those 3 men had attended MIT or (especially) Caltech instead of Harvard or Yale, they wouldn’t even have graduated at all given their lack of work ethic. Now, to be fair, maybe if they had gone to the more difficult schools, they would have worked harder. We’ll never know. What we do know is that, as college students, they were far more interested in enjoying life than in studying, yet they all graduated anyway.</p>
<p>If those three were at MIT, MIT would probably have kept them if MIT had known what they did in the future. That is exactly the case at HYPS: each student may have potential, especially those who got Cs or Ds. 
HYPS don’t crush them with poor grades. How much do you remember what you learned right after final exams? The training of having confidence and having good grades are more important.</p>
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<p>Well, given the culture of MIT, I doubt that they would have shown them any favoritism whatsoever, under the notion that if they’re not willing to put in the work, they aren’t deserving of an MIT degree. {Whether that would be wise of MIT to do so is a different story.} After all, MIT has flunked out plenty of other luminaries in the past, perhaps most famously, Robert Burns Woodward, who was expelled after a single year (although MIT did later readmit him). Woodward would later win the Nobel Prize and be recognized as arguably the greatest organic chemist to ever live. Richard Greenblatt, arguably the world’s first true computer ‘hacker’, flunked out of MIT. </p>
<p>The evidence does not suggest that MIT would graduate somebody, even with middling grades, just because that person seems to have great future career potential. You either meet MIT’s standards required of graduation, or you flunk out.</p>
<p>I still don’t like the notion that you run a college like to run a magnet high school, where most students only chase the good grades. For so many classes I took at various times at different schools, not a single one I was trying to learn something but to make sure to get good grades. I see better studying environments at HYPS, even they produced three of those above.</p>
<p>Well, life is full of unpleasant truths that we have to accept, whether we like them or not. </p>
<p>The root of the phenomenon is that most students know full well that most of what they learn in class, they’ll never use. Let’s face it: most history majors do not become professional historians. Most poli-sci majors do not become professional political scientists. Most math majors do not become professional mathematicians. And, yes, even many engineering majors, especially at the ‘top’ engineering schools such as MIT and Stanford do not actually become engineers, instead preferring to be management consultants or investment bankers. Hence, if you strongly suspect that you’re never actually going to use what is being taught, then what exactly is your motivation to truly learn it? The rationally efficient strategy is to try to attain the highest grades you can for the least possible effort. </p>
<p>Some of the blame can be directed to the employers and grad schools. Let’s face it: most employers care far more about whether you have a degree at all, and what your grades are, then what you actually learned. Adcoms for grad schools such as law and med school are similarly fixated on grades rather than actual knowledge: for the purposes of admission, it is better to take easy courses, or courses on topics you already know, and receive top grades than to take difficult courses and receive terrible grades. They won’t care why you have terrible grades. All they’ll see is that you have terrible grades and reject you accordingly.</p>
<p>I disagree. MIT and Caltech should definitely be included in this discussion. Most people who get into both Harvard and MIT or Stanford and Caltech and are interested in science and engineering tend to choose MIT and Caltech, although some students do choose Harvard and Stanford for financial reasons.</p>
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<p>Stanford University</p>
<p>To add on a small question: </p>
<p>If you are entering engineering, would you go to Berkeley(one of the best engineering schools in the nation) or Cornell (slightly lower than Berkeley I heard)?</p>
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We were talking about grade deflation, not the quality of engineering programs. You will be crushed at both, and feel lucky to get out of them.</p>