best undergraduate engineering school

<p>Where Harvard and Yale ? Your list will never be complete without them :)</p>

<p>Collegehelp, as much as I disaprove of the Princeton Review and the "Elo" points, I think the final product of your own ranking is pretty good. Princeton and Rice are a little high if you ask me, but the fact that the difference between #6 (Cornell) and #14 (UT-Austin) is so small makes it a very valid rating.</p>

<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>Jwblu, Are you at all familiar with that study. Objective? It was written by Harvard employees. How can that be objective. As part of the study they were passing judgment on their own school. Where I come from that is referred to as a biased and tainted report. (No one uses it at the H.S. level, neither students or GCs - it is only used by a few here whose schools get rated to their liking).</p>

<p>the ranking is horrible. the only ranking that is legitimate is NRC, which won't release it until after I graduate from college. us news method of ranking by academic reputation score is pretty absurd. Most of the data on princeton review are useless, outdated, and wrong, using that data to make a ranking is similarly useless. </p>

<p>If you ask me what the best undergraduate engineering schools are, i'll say MIT, Caltech, Stanford. Kind of pointless because everyone knows they are good.</p>

<p>I agree, the Princeton Review and the "Revealed Preferences" are excrement. The USNWR is not that good, but the Peer Assessment score is legit. The NRC is excellent indeed, but it is slightly outdated. Hopefully, they will come up with the new one soon. I personally prefer the Fiske rating. No rankings, just a simple rating.</p>

<p>with the exception of Berkeley (some majors), Caltech, MIT, which make undergraduate engineers miserable with uber workload, I think there aren't much difference between top 4~15 engineering schools. Of course, some state schools might lag behind, but their honor programs are truly exceptional in some cases.</p>

<p>"the ranking is horrible. the only ranking that is legitimate is NRC"</p>

<p>jeffl, what is the NRC? perhaps I should already know this.</p>

<p>COLLEGEHELP, the NRC (National Research Council) is an organization of top academics from around the country. They rank top programs...primarily at the graduate level. Here's a link to their site. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/researchdoc/index.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/researchdoc/index.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>The site no longer carries the rankings because they are slightly outdated. But a statistics professor at Texas A&M compiled the date and posted it in the following website:</p>

<p><a href="http://stat.tamu.edu/%7Ejnewton/nrc_rankings/nrc1.html#TOP60%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://stat.tamu.edu/~jnewton/nrc_rankings/nrc1.html#TOP60&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Whoever came up with his/her own ranking on the previous page has WAY too much time
And Alexandre... 1,242 Posts?? C'mon now, you have WAY too much time too.</p>

<p>I know it's kind of divergent from the direction this thread has taken, but I was wondering. What would you experienced engineers make of an undergraduate degree from an engineering program that's within a liberal arts college? (E.g., Swarthmore or Smith.) That's a path that I'm strongly considering, and I was wondering how that would be viewed by future employers/grad schools.</p>

<p>I would hire an engineer from Swarthmore or Smith...no problem. Keep in mind, though, that undergraduate engineers are assigned to very introductory positions. Generally, we look for people with advanced degrees.</p>

<p>hey_la, your question is interesting. Why are you leaning toward Swarthmore for engineering? Can you provide some insight into your own thoughts and reasoning? Is your goal grad school or immediate employment?</p>

<p>My impression was that most of those Swarthmore engineers went to grad school, not work. This could be completely false though. Make sure you can adequately specialize (eg electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, etc), instead of getting some non-specific "engineering" degree. Most employers I'm familiar with want an EE or an ME or a CivE, etc, not some generic "engineer".</p>

<p>Expect course offerings in engineering to be quite limited, vs. what is available at a conventional engineering school. Certain specializations, or even many specializations, are probably completely unavailable.</p>

<p>If your goal is to combine top-flight engineering training with top-flight liberal arts, perhaps some of the larger schools with more robust engineering programs might also sufficiently meet your liberal arts needs. Cornell for certain, but maybe you can work something out at Princeton, Columbia, Stanford, some others. Alternatively, a number of liberal arts colleges have a "3-2 program" with some engineering schools.</p>

<p>For grad school, I see no problem at all with a degree from these schools. The generic training is fine for that, and you can attain the requisite degree of specialization in grad school.</p>

<p>I would recommend one of three options:</p>

<p>1) Small LAC style schools that are strong in Engineering:
Harvey Mudd College
Rice University
Rose Hulman Institute of Technology</p>

<p>2) 3:2 programs at traditional LACs</p>

<p>3) Universities that are strong in Engineering but also in the Liberal Arts:
Cornell University
Northwestern University
Princeton University
Stanford University
University of California-Berkeley
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor</p>

<p>For engineering, the best schools are</p>

<p>MIT, Stanford, Cornell, Berkeley, Princeton, Caltech - in no particular order. I hesitate slightly in plugging in Caltech since it is a relatively unknown school, and also because it not as active as the others in publishing research papers...but for people that know it, they know it's a great school.</p>

<p>Golubb, you are wrong, as usually. When it comes to Engineering, CalTech, along with Cal-Berkeley, MIT and Stanford, belongs in a league of its own. Cornell is a notch below, with Illinois and Michigan. Princetoin is not a top 10 school of Engineering, no matter how you slice it.</p>

<p>believe it or not, Allegheny has a sweet 3:2 program with duke</p>

<p>LOL Golubb, do you realize that almost every post you made is inaccurate (about Imperial, Caltech, MIT, Northwestern, Chicago, Cornell, Princeton, etc etc). Gee, I won't say much if I I don't know anything. Asking won't hurt :)</p>

<p>Alexandre, I would pop up Princeton and push UIUC for undergraduate engineering. But for graduate school, you're right, Princeton virtually has no name.</p>

<p>Wow Alexandre you really have an agenda of pushing U Mich. Just because you are a Michigan alum doesn't mean you have to advocate your school regardless of the topic at hand.</p>

<p>Shizz, it only seems as though I am "pushing" Michigan. But I am not. I defend Michigan when people attack it. Otherwise, I help students narrow their focus. I cannot help it if Michigan is strong in every possible major and is very good at placing its students into high-paying jobs and top graduate schools. As it stands, am I wrong in recommending Michigan to a student interested in Engineering? Is Michigan not a top 10 school of Engineering? So why should I not recommend it along with other top schools of Engineering?</p>