<ol>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Caltech</li>
<li>Michigan</li>
<li>Berekely</li>
<li>Cornell</li>
<li>Urbana Champaign</li>
<li>Georgia Tech</li>
<li>RPI</li>
<li>Carnegie Mellon</li>
</ol>
<p>Gellino, I agree that a list that includes Purdue should include RPI. RPI is, as I admitted above, one of the top 20 Engineering programs in the nation. But I think GT is a notch above both Purdue and RPI. Either way, RPI is not "certainly more highly regarded" their either one of those two tp Engineering programs.</p>
<p>UT, Mich, Berkeley, VT, GT, U-Ind-UC, Texas A&M, USC, UC-Irvine/SD are less selective than Stanford/MIT/ect, but still probably just as good. Especially if you can get IS tuition for any of them</p>
<p>Jnons, RPI is not a small school. It has 3,000 undergraduate Engineering students. That's as big as Cornell, Carnegie Mellon and Georgia Tech. Like it or not, an undergrad in such a large college of Enigneering is going to be just another number. And since when does age determine quality? Cal, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Stanford and the University of Chicago were all founded after 1860 and yet, they are all concidered top 10 universities nationally. </p>
<p>At any rate, I reiterate that RPI is a top Engineering program...and it is improving at an alarming rate. But to say that it is certainly more highly regarded than GT and Purdue is, in my opinion, untrue.</p>
<p>shoebox10 - A lot of the schools you mentioned may be less selective overall for admission, but they may be much more selective for specific departments/majors like engineering. Speaking specifically for UT, admission to UT does not mean automatic admission to the architecture, business, or engineering schools. More competitive programs are able to maintain higher standards (if for nothing else because demand exceeds slots.)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don't have it by %, but they are given in the USNWR graduate school engineering rankings. Generally, the top schools also show well up in the % numbers, and of course smaller "boutique" programs that are not necessarily thought of as engineering powerhouses will also be very strong by this measure. I would say it is good to look at the 2 together (% and number). There's certainly a critical mass that comes with having a large raw number, but a high% means it's also not just a few star perfomers on an otherwise average faculty.</p>
<p>JWT:</p>
<p>Thanks, and I agree with your follow-up comments.</p>
<p>Alex, RPI may be improving recently, but has fallen considerably from its heyday in the 1950's and 1960's when engineering was much more popular. Still, if you talk to people recruiting at these companies in industry, RPI is certainly as highly respected as Georgia Tech and Purdue. Age certainly is a contributing factor in how good a school is and if you're talking about student quality wouldn't put Cal, Cornell, JHU in the top 10 schools or if you do, then you're leaving out all but one of Dartmouth, Brown, Columbia, Duke, CalTech. </p>
<p>There seems to be some kind of love affair with Berkeley on this board. I would agree they have many highly regarded grad programs, but even in most brother's hs class of the late '90's mediocre students were getting into Cal OOS from his hs. If you come close to believing the heresay on this board, this seems to have changed considerably in the last few years.</p>
<p>Gellino, when I said top 10, I meant in terms of overall excellence. Student quality is merely one of the many factors that go into determining overall excellence. Faculty quality, department rankings, overall reputation etc... all matter as much as student quality. In each of those three other areas, Cal is among the top 5, Cornell among the top 10 and Johns Hopkins among the top 15 or 5 in the nation. Not many universities can lay claim to such a feat.</p>
<p>More than one mediocre HS student has gone on to do great things. Not everyone takes HS all that seriously.</p>
<p>Faculty quality, department rankings, overall reputation etc are all nebulous and subjective; not to mention that overall excellence is even more ambiguous than any of these. My brother went to JHU and I don't think there's any way he would call it a top 10 school. Cal in front of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford or MIT (at least for undergrad) just seems crazy to me.</p>
<p>There is nothing subjective about having 200 NAS members, winning 50-75 major national faculty awards every year, and having many of your undergrads go on to great success in garnering PhD's of their own.
Lots of UG kids at Harvard are not real happy with it either but nobody questions their place at the top.</p>
<p>Cal is not ahead of Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford or Yale. I never said it was. In terms of pure academics, it is, but in most other ways, it lags them. Overal, Cal is a top 10 university, but definitely not a top 5 university. Johns Hopkins is one of the weaker elite universities, but I believe it lays a legitimate claim at top 10 honors.</p>
<p>I'm an engineering manager in a major high tech company and have hired hundreds of engin grads over the years, primarily in EECS. We recruit from the top "national schools" as well as many great regional schools. Top national engin schools for my company are (in no special order):</p>
<p>MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Michigan, Purdue, Texas, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Illinois, Washington (that's UW in Seattle), Cal Tech, Georgia Tech, UCLA. </p>
<p>There are also several national schools that are viewed as "up and coming" - an example is UC San Diego. U of Washington was in this category a few years ago.</p>
<p>In addition, I have seen surveys of the top engin grad schools regarding where they accept students from. Besides each other (see above), schools like Wisconsin, RPI, USC, Cal Poly SLO, Northwestern, Rice, CWRU, Harvey Mudd and Rose Hulman often show up on these lists.</p>
<p>
[quote]
RPI is certainly a more highly regarded engineering school than Georgia Tech or Purdue. The other school you're trying to refer to is called Cooper Union.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>?? never heard anything like that before</p>
<p>Undergraduate Engineering
Tier 1: Harvey Mudd, Olin
Tier 2: MIT, Stanford, Caltech
Tier 3: Cornell, Berkeley, RPI, Cooper Union
Tier 4: Rose, Carnegie Melon, Michigan, Illinois
Tier 5: Texas, Purdue, Georgia Tech</p>
<p>I know it isn't traditional but I based it off what I felt like was the best undergraduate engineering educational experience at the various schools.</p>
<p>Gatech and Purdue have large research programs and have a slight advantage on RPI at the graduate level. However at the undergraduate level, RPI is in fact on of the top handful in the world. Look at what they do with interactive learning / integration of computers in the way they teach. </p>
<p>RPI UG is at least as good as Gatech and Purdue and likely a smidge better. The class of 2011 should roll in with 1350-1360 SAT (old). Purdue can't match that and Gatech might match it.</p>
<p>Atomic, i'm not sure MIT,Stanford and Caltech can be "tier 2" at anything. Also, CMU belongs on equal footing with Cornell and RPI.</p>
<p>I'm not sure either but I feel that Olin and Mudd offer a greater undergraduate engineering experience for students unsure about what engineering field to go into. I've talked to professors who attended Mudd for undergrad and then one of those three for grad and they say the undergraduate experience at MIT, Caltech, and Stanford in engineering isn't as all around good as the one at Olin and Mudd. Although there are obvious exceptions. Students wanting to specialize in one engineering field would obviously not find small colleges better than large research schools.</p>
<p>I don't think it is possible to compare LACs with research universities. On the one hand, they offer excellent instruction and faculty to student communication but on the other hand, they have very limited academic and professional offerings. There's a good reason why the USNWR ranks them separately.</p>
<p>My personal groupings for Research programs:</p>
<p>Cal, Caltech, MIT and Stanford</p>
<p>CMU, Cornell, Georgia Tech, Michigan and UIUC</p>
<p>Northwestern, Princeton, Purdue, Rice, Texas-Austin</p>
<p>Columbia, Duke, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Penn, RPI, UCLA, UCSD, USC, Wisconsin-Madison</p>