Should look at Alabama if cost is a consideration and looking outside of “big 3”.
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REA does not provide a major admissions boost (compared to schools with an ED option) as the applicant is not obligated to attend if accepted. If Harvard is your top choice for whatever reason then it is fine to apply REA there.
As noted above the acceptance rate for any of these universities is in the low single digits. Go for it - but be sure to have a solid backup plan in place.
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HYP might not care about demonstrated interest, but it is probably a sure-fire rejection if you can’t come up with a better reason for wanting to attend than “prestige.”
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If you are interested in Engineering at private schools that meet full need (and you have a lot of need), a more sensible list is something like this:
Princeton (it is the one among HYP with what is typically considered a strong Engineering prog)
Stanford
MIT
Caltech
Cornell
Carnegie-Mellon
Rice
Amherst College (they meet full need for internationals, and you can do a 5-year BSE with Dartmouth. It likely is an easier admit than Yale or Harvard, though – like H and Y – it is not particularly well known for Engineering.)
Check those schools to see how they do with financial aid for internationals.
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Having worked internationally (Asia and Europe), I don’t disagree that having a Harvard (or Princeton or Yale) degree doesn’t give you a leg up over lesser known but excellent US universities. But I think that is limited to business/finance/consulting/law. The reason is for these businesses, they are also sensitive to name recognition on the part of their clients. If you are pursuing science and engineering, IMO the employers will be much more aware of the strength of the science and engineering departments of the US university vs general prestige and name recognition.
I don’t think there is an REA advantage of any of the 3 vs the others. I do think that you should pick the school that you are more excited about as it is likely you will write better essays and short answers for that school.
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My experience is that those who apply to college on the basis of name recognition alone can be disappointed even if they are admitted. There are meaningful differences in campus culture and student experience among these three schools. The quality of life and indeed the overall experience can be higher elsewhere. For example, at Harvard you are likely to get far more of your teaching for grad students that at say, Amherst. It may be that there are some firms that hire only from Harvard, but I am fairly familiar with the hiring practices of US Ibanks and fund companies, and I don’t know of any. My suggestion is to dive more deeply into the schools before you make any decision. As for admissions, in recent years the admit rate at Harvard for kids with SATs of 1600 has been around 10%. Another reason to cast a broader net. Good luck,
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thank you very much indeed
thank you. Very good insight too.
thank you
what is your opinion on brown? @happy1 @minimickey @BKSquared @skieurope
Brown is another great school. Note that they have an open curriculum – few (or no) distribution requirements. You can pretty much study whatever you want.
Like Yale and Harvard, they aren’t particularly well known for Engineering – at least, it is not where their reputational bread is buttered. That is not to say that you couldn’t receive excellent instruction in Engineering there.
These are Brown’s ABET-accredited programs:
https://amspub.abet.org/aps/name-search?searchType=institution&keyword=Brown
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Lots of happy kids at Brown. Teaching quality is high, social life is good. Lower levels of stress and competition due in part to grading system and open curriculum. Highly recommend.
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My information may be dated, but I don’t believe Harvard offers engineering as a major. The Harvard engineering types I know majored in applied math. Princeton has famously good engineering, and Yale has an engineering school but it is not considered nearly as highly as Stanford or MIT. These two are the powerhouses in engineering, though of course it will vary depending on what subfield of engineering you choose. There are state schools with extremely strong engineering programs (Berkeley).
The same holds true for computers specialties. MIT, Stanford are the biggies, along with CMU. Berkeley is good too. Note here that Brown has devoted a lot of resources to math and computer science, and is excellent in these areas. Yale has always been known as a humanities school, and though it is trying to catch up, it is behind HPSM. For the many who are more knowledgable about these areas than I am - please forgive me if this description is not first rate. I pick this stuff up from my kids, who are (or are about to be) math/CS majors/minors.
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thank you
Harvard calls majors “concentrations”, but they most certainly have a bachelor of science, in 4 different engineering areas, through their JP School of Engineering and Applied science(though like Yale and Princeton and MIT it is not a direct-entry program, one just applies to Harvard College).
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