best undergraduate engineering school

College Search & Selection
81

<p>Alexandre, as long as you are prejudiced against me and accusing me of having misplaced elitism, our discussion is not going anywhere, I could insinuate that you have inferiority complex, but why should I? what evidence do I have? Clearly flame throwing doesn't make you closer to the truth. Anyway, I'm not talking about marketing and consumer demand here, that, if I'm not mistaken, is your field where I have no say. However, I am telling you that there should be some weight or consideration if such factor is used by academics from prestigious universities. Why do you think those professors have ruined their career, isn't it only one of your profane judgements?</p>

<p>Have I ever denied that Berkeley or Chicago is as good as Lower Ivies? No. In fact IMO Brown is worse than Chicago, and without Wharton, Penn doesn't have any chance to stand against Berkeley. No Alexandre, with all elitism that I have, I am majoring in a logical field my friend, should you give me objective and logical explanation like what Sakky did, I would not debate the obvious. However, I couldn't accept unreasonable and biased judgements Alexandre.</p>

82

<p>Again, you misquote me. I never said their careers where ruined. My exact workds were ... "And yes, those professors involved with that ranking have ruined their careers as far as people paying attention to their university ranking abilities". In other words, if they wish to get into the university ranking business, most people will probably ignore their findings.</p>

<p>And I know you never denied that Cal and Chicago are as good as the lower ivies. But the fact is, Cal is better than the lower Ivies. Chicago and Michigan are as good as the lower ivies. </p>

<p>And pray tell me, where has my judgement been biased and unreasonable?</p>

83

<p>I really enjoy reading this thread. I would like to hear your opinion.
My son was accepted to MIT but seriously considers CMU for CompSci.
He is interested in AI, Robotics. I know CMU is really good in it, but I doubt that they can
beat MIT. I don't like his decision, but trying to find if his point makes sense.
Thank you</p>

84

<p>Your son cannot go wrong with CMU if his interest remains in Artificial Intelligence. MIT is still a little better, but CMU is right up there. But as a whole, MIT cannot be beaten...especially if he decides to change concentrations. I would seriously advise him to go for MIT, but in the end, it is his choice.</p>

85

<p>Normally, I'm one who hates college rankings...there are too many factors to narrow it down to a single list in my opinion. However, the revealed preferences ranking has to be by far the best one I've ever seen. Though the ranking is by no means perfect, it puts US News to shame, because it is hands down more objective. </p>

<p>The best thing about the preferences ranking is that it puts schools in direct competition with each other, and the winner takes all. Compare this with US News, where part of the ranking is based on peer assessment (sometimes the people doing the assessing know nothing about some of the schools they are ranking). Another flaw with US News is that it uses top 10% rank as a factor...many top high schools don't even rank, and still many others have grade inflation. </p>

<p>As someone whose worked in finance, and has some knowledge of econ. I appreciate the market driven revealed preferences ranking because its based on supply and demand, and takes into account the tastes of consumers (ie top high school students) more so than any other ranking out there.</p>

86

<p>As the OP, I just want to say thanks to all who have taken the time to participate so far, especially the expert heavyweights. I think anyone who reads this thread will come away with a better understanding of the issues and a clearer idea how to think critically about the questions. New angles and new ideas keep coming up...a very helpful debate. I had my doubts initially about the publics for undergrad education but there are clearly those who love them. I had doubts about the private Techs for undergrad but they command enormous respect. I look forward to reading more.</p>

87

<p>Alexandre, do you have any experience in completing an engineering major or graduate focus?</p>

88

<p>How can anyone say that the actions of children who have never been to college and are often caught up in perceived prestige, parental influences and other factors in making their college choice be given much credibility as to the actual quality of a college?</p>

89

<p>No PSquared, I majored in Economics and did my graduate studies in Labor Relations. But my high school had 25 students per class. I was very close with the students of my class as well as the students in the class before me and the class after me. Of those 75 students, 60 went into Engineering and I kept in touch with most of them. Of those 60 students, 6 went to CalTech, 8 went to MIT, and 10 went to Cornell, Cal and Michigan each. Most of the others went to UT-Austin, UIUC and GT. Furthermore, my uncle is an MIT educated professor of Engineering at Michigan. And I know several Engineering professors of Engineering at Cal, Cornell, Michigan and MIT.</p>

90

<p>does anyone feel rose-hulman has a place in engineering among these schools, or would you consider them a tier below?</p>

91

<p>Alexandre,</p>

<p>Let me make a conclusive remark on my side since our discussion is heading nowhere. I would argue that Berkeley graduate school is better than most of the Ivies, yes, but not for its undergraduate school. The only reason why I agree with you that Berkeley's undergraduate school is as good as the lower Ivies is because its first rate faculty and curricula. However, there is no valid reason why Berkeley should be better than the lower ivies, its classes are bigger than most of the Ivies', it has less attention and resource given towards each students, and less strong overall student body. I will not bother to come up with the precise number. Of course you can say that Berkeley is a better bargain for quality education, however, we know that we normally get better service if we pay more, nothing is free in this world as I know it Alexandre. Michigan on the other hand is subpar when I consider it with <em>my measure</em>. While I agree that Michigan is as good as Northwestern, CMU and better than UIUC or UT-Austin, I am not ready to admit Michigan in the Ivies' hall of fame. Not because of my elitism, but because the Ivies' name has successfully attracted top flight student from many states. While the name of Penn or Columbia often attract top students from Michigan and California, UMich would hardly attract top students from California for example. Berkeley has equal standing with the lower Ivies (thanx to its faculty and grad schools), but Michigan still has to prove itself to make such a name. But again, I'm not referring to your case in which you've rejected 4 Ivies' offers for the beatiful scenery of Ann Arbor.</p>

92

<p>benndaman,</p>

<p>I would compare rose-hulman with Harvey Mudd or RPI instead.</p>

93

<p>Here's another suggestion.</p>

<p>One more school you guys might want to think about adding to the list of great tech schools...IIT.</p>

94

<p>Are you referring to Indian Inst. of Tech. or Illinois IT ??</p>

95

<p>The former.</p>

96

<p>Indian Inst. of Tech is great because it takes the top of the cream of Indian students. In terms of curricula, it surpasses MIT and exactly on par with Caltech. Its student body is almost as strong as MIT/CIT (remember that these schools also gathers the best talents of the world), but IIT's faculty and resources as well as graduate schools are subpar to the top 5-6 Engineering schools in the States.</p>

<p>But I'm not sure if IIT admit non-Indian International students :p</p>

97

<p>i don't know, do you goto college rtkysg or have u gone to college? u don't know anything about college, college admissions, or rankings of any level of higher education. alexandre, u seem to know everybody on the planet. a lot of the numbers u put in there for umich are not validated, u just assumed, i've been reading a lot of the stuff u wrote, I have been looking for all kinds of data on umich since i was a sophomore in high school. a lot of your numbers like average SAT of out of state students, engineering students, percentage of student to medical school, are not accurate. I just thought high school students should know this.</p>

98

<p>jeffl,</p>

<p>I don't understand how you can come up with such insults, but I would be glad if you could tell me things that I am supposed to know about college or college admissions? :) and oh btw tell me about yourself, are you another wolverine? What/Which major/year?</p>

99

<p>Rtksyg, you are incorrect when you say that Michigan does not attract top students from other states. Roughly 300 (5% of the undergraduate student body) undergraduates come from California and another 500 (8% of the undergraduate student body) come from NY every year and out-of-state admissions into Michigan is as stiff as it is at some of the lower Ivies. So Michigan does attract many top students from out of state.</p>

<p>Secondly, I did not chose Michigan over 4 other Ivies merely for the beauty of Ann Arbor. I found Providence just as beautiful. I chose Michigan because in Europe and in the Middle East, where I intended to work, Michigan has a better reputation than most lower Ivies.</p>

100

<p>What do you think of this personalized system for ranking engineering schools? For whatever it is worth, I chose 18 schools from the US News list of best undergrad engineering schools with PhD. MIT=1 and Rice=12, accounting for ties in the US News rankings. I also used the "Revealed Preference" elo points and several ratings from Princeton Review that I thought were important indicators of overall quality. The rankings were much closer to what I personally thought they should be for undergrad engineering but with a few surprises. Berkeley and Princeton turned out higher than I thought, Northwestern lower. The procedure might be a useful tool for figuring out the best place for you personally.</p>

<p>SIRF subjective invented ranking formula
SIRF=(elo points/100)+(professors interesting/10)+(professors accessible/10)+(quality of life index/10)+(academic index/10)+(selectivity admissions index/10)-(US News engineering rank)</p>

<p>Different individuals could add other factors that were important like distance from home or size of school or price.
The numbers in the rows are in same order as the formula above. The list is in order according to my SIRF scores. The US News rank is subtracted at the end because a low number = high rank.</p>

<p>Stanford,2694,62,64,89,94,99,2=70.8
MIT ,2624,62,64,89,94,99,1=66.0
CalTech ,2632,61,65,90,89,99,4=62.7
Princetn ,2608,82,81,94,96,99,9=62.3
Berkeley ,2115,70,67,88,92,99,3=59.8
Cornell ,2236,73,72,90,90,98,8=56.7
Rice ,2008,65,68,92,72,96,12=55.8
Illinois ,1974,70,70,89,76,93,4=55.5
Carnegie ,1957,71,76,87,90,98,7=54.8
Michigan ,1978,68,69,90,84,98,6=54.7
Georgia T,2115,61,61,85,71,97,5=53.7
Nwestern,2136,72,73,90,88,99,10=53.6
JohnsHop,2096,64,64,86,86,99,10=51.9
TexAustin,2008,65,68,92,72,96,8=51.4
Wisconsn,1780,71,68,93,81,96,10=48.7
PennStat,1686,63,67,90,73,95,11=45.7
RPI ,1835,61,68,82,74,95,11=45.4
Purdue ,1525,67,69,89,66,74,7=44.8</p>