<p>When it comes to your ranking, you’ve listed all information that either reflects graduate school information or has no actual methodology produced (Gourmans). I never said Brown was best across the board for engineering and if you read my posts about engineering on here you’ll see me consistently say that Brown engineering is strong, respected, and will result in a job or graduate school if that is what you want. Beyond that, there are specific strengths to being in a smaller department that espouses Brown’s philosophy of engineering learning that may make Brown a better place for engineering for SOME students.</p>
<p>In the sciences, first off, Brown’s applied math department and computer science easily compete with Cornell. Secondly, while Brown’s chemistry department is nothing like Cornell’s for graduate students, Brown’s chemistry department was able to provide a head-and-shoulders better experience than what is the norm at Cornell. I say that having LIVED it.</p>
<p>The question was can Brown compete? There’s not a FOOL out there who is in these fields that would say that Brown is not even on the map when it comes to undergraduate preparation in the sciences-- we are, we do compete. Whether or not either of these schools is a better place to be largely depends on what a student is looking for.</p>
<p>I speak from experience, not emotion. I also know more facts about science amongst these schools than you have forgotten, having spent time on curricular panels here at Brown and co-editing portions of the science tour here as well. I have seen exit data not released to the public, etc etc. And most importantly, I’ve actually been an active member of a scientific community.</p>
<p>In about 14 years I’m the only person from my school to get into Brown-- not saying that’s impressive for me or bad for Cornell, what I’m really trying to say is I got plenty of reporting back from science students at Cornell.</p>
<p>As someone who now studies program evaluation pretty heavily, don’t make the mistakes of using bad “statistics” to draw conclusions. These methods are only as good as their data and assumptions, and most of them fail on one, if not both of those points. In some cases, the reports are not only outdated, but have never published any methodology, yet you accuse me of “emotion” over “fact”.</p>
<p>Learn to read your sources.</p>