Brown has a brand new engineering building that is fantastic - I’ve not been to Northwestern, but the facilities at Penn and Cornell do not compare. It’s also a close knit department that is incredibly supportive of undergrads.
This discussion was created from comments split from: Brown Engineering vs. Other Options.
Per Cornell, we used to live about an hour away and liked to visit Ithaca (albeit not during winter). It’s a nice town, and I’m sure the campus is pretty and interesting. But for many students, it is difficult to get there. And if they prefer big cities, it might not be their cup of tea.
ABET accredited engineering majors at Brown do have general education requirements, though fewer than at other schools (4 humanities and/or social studies courses).
There are a lot of people from, shall we say, certain cities who simply cannot fathom living any any other sort of setting. That’s my guess.
What are the flexibilities? Give examples. Be more specific.
I would help to post some ranking information. From 2019 Best Undergraduate Engineering Program ranking:
Cornell University is ranked #9
Princeton University is ranked #12
Northwestern University is ranked #14
University of Pennsylvania is ranked #24
Brown University # 38
All five universities are in the top 50.
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/engineering-doctorate
Yes, but Northwestern University is NOT Ivy League. Brown university and Cornell University are ivy league. You can’t make Northwestern University ivy league. Brown and Cornell have more respect over Northwestern University.
Ha! I’m from a big city. But the poster who said it’s hard to get to from certain places is correct. Ithaca Airport has direct flights to/from Detroit, Philly, and Newark. So anyone not from those areas or not driving distance to Ithaca has to get connecting flights in one of those cities.
@IncorE206, ABET is not as prescriptive as most suspect. It does not name math, physics or engineering courses, nor does it specify what general education classes need to be. If you want to know the criteria, it would be far easier for you to simply read it than it would be for @retiredfarmer to specify flexibilities. I’ve linked it below.
As for Ivy respect, it’s an athletic conference. There are plenty of schools that are direct peers with most of the Ivy League schools, including, rightly or wrongly, but not limited to Chicago, Rice, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Berkeley, Michigan, and yes, Northwestern. I’m sure I left off many.
@IncorE206
Most people can’t name all the Ivies. The ones that can probably also read USN rankings and they would know Northwestern has been ranked higher than those two for quite some time. Northwestern also blows Brown out of the water in graduate rankings. I am not convinced Brown is just somehow more respect simply because of the athletic conference it’s in.
OP, can you give us the breakdown of COA?
RE #20:
“…but the facilities at Penn and Cornell do not compare”
FWIW Cornell has been steadily improving and building its facilities., Recent relevant building projects: Upson Hall (Mechanical Engineering ) Renovation (2018), Gates Hall (computing & Info Systems)( 2014), Physical Science Building (houses Applied & engineering Physics)(2010), Weill Hall (houses biomedical engineering) (2008), Duffield Hall (nanoscale science & engineering) (2004), Renovations are planned for virtually every other building on the engineering quad.
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The facilities at Cornell have or are all being updated. Don’t let the facade of some of the buildings fool you, the guts and labs in most of those engineering buildings are now new.
@brantly I’m happy to report that Ithaca airport once again (after a 20+ year gap) has direct flights to/from Wash, DC. United is now flying 3 nonstops a day to/from Ithaca out of Dulles Airport.
A couple of things. If Brown doesn’t have ABET certified civil engineering, then that should unfortunately take Brown off the list. Otherwise, I think it would be a great fit for you. Their engineers seem to have no trouble getting either jobs or grad school placements after graduation and the open curriculum allows more flexibility to pursue other interests. Remember, however, you should also check what kind of credit you might get at any of those schools for AP or dual enrollment classes. Those might exempt you from a lot of the general education requirements anyway and allow you to pursue other areas of interest.
Cornell is known to be very intense and a bit of a pressure cooker for engineering. if you’re not committed to engineering, you might not want that kind of an atmosphere and it might deflate your gpa that you would carry over to whatever major you ultimately selected.
My nephew graduated from Northwestern in engineering. Had a wonderful experience. Loved the program (although his focus was in a different area). His girlfriend who he met at Northwestern is an environmental engineer. Even with studying engineering, he still found time to dj at the radio station, head up a project with Engineers Without Borders and travel to the country to install a new water system, go to concerts, stay physically active etc. etc. I haven’t visited the campus myself, but Chicago is a great city, although cold. If you like your visit, you shouldn’t feel restrained from selecting that one!
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@esperantisto256, congratulations! As we told our daughter, do not get hung up on Ivy League designation; it does not mean the best education and environment for YOU. That said, Cornell’s engineering programs are world-renowned. As an alumnus, yes, it can feel like Ithaca is in the middle of nowhere, but there is so much to do in this vibrant small city. Friends used to arrange carpools to get back to Philadelphia, New York, New Jersey, etc. Probably I know the least about Northwestern, but from what I hear it’s pretty amazing in its resources in the sciences. I love Brown and Providence, but my sense is it’s not the best choice for engineering; Penn would be better in this regard. Wishing you the best!
Follow the money, go to Northwestern. They are all top 20 schools and will set you up well in life (minus potentially crippling debt). BTW, it’s not “in the city,” but Chicago is easily accessible via public transportation. Evanston is a pleasant small city with plenty of amenities for college students and the campus is lovely. Congrats on your acceptances.
I disagree ABET certification is NOT flawless anyways. I guarantee you that most who graduated with ABET degrees won’t think about pursuing their Master in Engineering. Because the United States made that it only requires an ABET undergraduate Bachelor of Engineering degree for licensure which is flawed.
I can and there is only 8 ivy league schools.
Harvard University
Princeton University
Yale University
Brown University
Columbia University
Dartmouth College
Cornell University
University of Pennsylvania
Other schools could have Ivy League rankings but can’t be Ivy League. The numbers in the 2019 best engineering schools don’t lie. Cornell and Princeton is ranked higher than Northwestern University than that is what it is going to be.
However, many schools would not aspire to Ivy League engineering rankings beyond those of Cornell, Princeton and Columbia.
Licensure being based (primarily) on an accredited BS degree versus an MS degree makes perfect sense. The BS degree is where all of the fundamentals you want an engineer to know are covered. MS and MEng degrees, being typically only 2 years, do not have time to cover all of those fundamentals. Even if there were time, the typical purpose of an MS or MEng is to specialize in a subfield of the discipline, so accrediting such a degree doesn’t make a lot of sense.
ABET does accredit some master’s degree programs. Such programs have the burden of showing that the graduates satisfy all of the required outcomes for an accredited baccalaureate program in addition to those prescribed for the master’s program. For this reason, these programs are few and far between and tend to be part of a 5-year BS/MS program so that the school can ensure that the students entering it have already fulfilled the ABET baccalaureate requirements. They tend to be non-thesis programs.
Alternatively, an ABET-accredited MS program can admit students without an ABET-accredited background if they have a process in place to show that such students’ educational background is functionally equivalent, which is also a daunting task. A program such as that would be a vehicle for students without such a background to, in a sense, be retroactively accredited and eligible for licensure.
Source: https://www.abet.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/faq-for-masters-review.pdf
All that having been said, plenty of students in the US decide to pursue master’s degrees. They just usually do it because they want to specialize, open up different career paths, or get a pay increase. They don’t generally do it for licensure.
Further, in some fields, such as civil engineering, licensure is such an important aspect of practice that I would have serious concerns about attending a program that is not accredited. ABET isn’t perfect, but it is the best option available and is pretty much universally-used for the purpose of licensure. I wouldn’t just dismiss it in fields in which licensure is important.