I’ll be more specific: the standard guarantees a minimum with a high bar, not that they’re the same.
An engineering or CS program that starts with precalculus, concluding Sophomore year with MVC, will not cover the same material as a program where a significant percentage of students took MVC in HS or where all place into Calc 2 first semester freshman year. It’ll be very different in depth, etc.
However, even in CS (without a minimum standard) and further so with anything ABET accredited, the subject itself or the accreditation are a fail-safe wrt rigor. If your code doesn’t work, it doesn’t. If you don’t get an essential concept for a mandatory Mechanics class, you can’t go on.
The college’s overall peer quality or studio/facility quality has the same impact on other majors.
There’s code, and there’s code.
Not all CS grads are minted the same.
A go-getter at a top university doesn’t need to be an outstanding student among their peers, especially at institutions with lots of funding and that are aware all students are exceptional compared to most in their age cohort and treat them all as outstanding.
There’s enough for most of them. I doubt only the top students at CalTech are given opportunities. I know for a fact all students at Yale, Wellesley, or Williams are given opportunities only Honors students or a handful might at other colleges.
Would you rather graduate as a 2.7 English major from Brown or a 3.0 from URI? Graduating with a sub3.0 (being in the bottom 10-20% of your class) from a world famous college may benefit that student the most because they get the benefits of the college services&alumni networks plus usually they annoyingly get a sort of “benefit of the doubt” from outsiders; and whether aptitude or work ethics were to blame for the sub-3.0 GPA, nothing proves they’d have been in the top 30% of their class at a lower ranked college. (Yes I find that annoying but it exists.)
I’ll take other majors: there’s no such thing as an accounting sheet that sorta works. But in a Visual comm class at a lower ranked college you may have 3-4 elegant, creative posters, 50% sorta done sorta don’t work, and a bunch that don’t bother turning anything in (or turn in sth clearly labelled “couldn’t spare a brain cell or more than 10mn for this”). The core group is in the “sorta” category when in other majors they’re weeded out. So top students choosing these majors want the college admission process to be the weedout step so that their classes aren’t bogged down with students whose level would get them weeded out in other subjects.
Don’t know what the numbers are at Caltech, but “93% percent of MIT undergraduates complete at least one UROP”.
Considering the average gpa at elite schools is somewhere north of 3.5, I don’t think you need to worry about those Brown English majors with a 2.7 gpa - they are likely to be thin on the ground.
The thing is, their USNWR rank isn’t necessarily reflective of the quality of work their graduates are prepared to produce.
I know a woman who went to a school that doesn’t grant PhDs, so isn’t widely considered among the heavy hitters. Her older brother went to a top 5 program. When he reviewed her labs and senior project he said that her work was far more robust than what was happening at his alma mater.
This is not to say that all schools are the same. They clearly aren’t. It is to say that it’s not easy sorting through the quality of programs based on their rankings.
There are MANY off the radar schools that are well known for producing top notch practicing engineers. Iowa State, Michigan Tech and Missouri S&T are great examples. There are plenty of recruiters that seek their grads over those from higher ranked schools because they actually learned how to do the work.
The proper nuance is that ABET accreditation means that one chooses between good and better, rather than bad and good, among ABET accredited engineering programs. Of course, any particular student may define “better” in different ways, and not limited to the content of the curriculum that is the primary focus of ABET accreditation. It is also possible that a specific student may find a college to be a poor fit for reasons other than the engineering major curriculum (e.g. too expensive).
I agree, and would add that there are different stylistic ways of meeting the standards set out by ABET. Different approaches will resonate with different students.
Thank you. Exactly.
You don’t need to be in the top 30% to have a high GPA and benefit from everything that college can bring and you benefit even more if the norm makes it easier for you.
(That was my point, thank you.)
Or remember the blowback when Princeton decided only 35% students would get As. They’ve reversed it since.
(Whereas average GPA at State flagships is sth like 3.1.)
Not all schools are the same and for some groups attending a college with resources and opportunities matters more.
I agree that rankings aren’t a good measure beyond groupings of colleges. When I was thinking of peer quality I was thinking of Wooster for instance.
I didn’t mention USNWR or any other rankings so I’m not sure if you’re addressing me or someone else . My point was, there are qualitative differences between CS and engineering programs across schools.
Yes, in other words, the accreditation sets a floor - but some seem to think it’s an equalizer.
Yes, of course. But that’s a totally different discussion.
But what does it really mean, good and better? Is that like those cable TV packages that start at Gold, and go up from there?
Not to pick on anyone in particular, but I went to ABET’s website and found that Tennessee State University offers an ABET-accredited CS degree. So does MIT. One is #1 in the world in CS (and almost every other degree it teaches). Another is ranked #331-440 USNWR (for whatever it’s worth), and has average ACT just about half of MIT’s (18).
Again, I am not picking on any one institution. I really don’t know anything about TSU beyond the metrics I just googled, and I’m sure it’s a good school in many ways for many students. But can anyone here honestly say peer and program quality difference between the two doesn’t matter, because ABET?
ABET says they currently accredit programs at nearly 900 colleges and universities worldwide. I’ve not looked into the breakdown, but I presume at least a good half of them are in the US. If the difference between these 500+ institutions doesn’t really matter, as some here hold, we may as well just shut down this site.
Exactly!
I just liked that line and wanted to expand on the idea.
Why don’t MIT grads have all the elite positions? Why do all the MIT alumni out here say they work with colleagues educated at all sorts of schools that are top notch engineers?
This is in NO WAY a statement about MIT, but rather a critique of a system that tries to very granularly rank something that cannot be parsed that finely.
I would agree that Tennessee State and MIT aren’t the same. That’s not what @ucbalumnus said though. The gist was that ABET sets a floor of good enough.
Looking at the top 10 employers of CS grads from Tennessee State on LinkedIn doesn’t read like a tech who’s who as it does for the better programs, but it is populated by some big names like IBM, Amazon, Deloitte, Lockheed, and Raytheon.
Because there’s also CMU. 
Good enough for whom? Good enough for what?
So, hardly good enough for everyone, everywhere?
You can take another look on Linkedin to see top feeders to a few companies on this list.
That’s the difference between “good” and “good enough”.
…Now, I am not saying one must go to one of these top schools to be professionally or personally successful. I can cite Malcolm Gladwell, Dale & Krueger, and Plutarch (“it is not the places that grace men, but men the places”) as much as the next guy.
But I am also very clear-eyed about the transformative role a stimulating peer environment and top-notch undergraduate opportunities can play in shaping student’s future trajectory.
The OP stated that their son “will probably be able to get into one of these big name academic schools” (mentioning Ivies in the next sentence). Given this level of confidence in a process that is this uncertain, I presume her son is not only an athletic, but also an academic superstar of the highest level (though even that is far from an admission guarantee). The question is, would any ABET-accredited program be “good enough” for someone like that.
Good enough for the student who wants to study engineering but cannot access schools like MIT, often due to reasons other than not having the academic strength to be admitted (e.g. parents cannot afford the cost, even after financial aid, or divorced parents who are uncooperative, resulting in no financial aid at MIT and other colleges that require both of their financials). Good enough does not necessarily mean optimal or the best possible, but is often a lot better than not being able to study the desired subject in college at all.
Sure. A degree is better than no degree, all things being equal. But that doesn’t seem to be OPs question.
The question seems to be: “my son can probably get into Cornell, would a sports scholarship at a local directional university be a better choice?”
Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, the answer, in my opinion, would have very little to do with ABET accreditation. Like, if I were compiling a list of factors for a pro-con analysis, that probably wouldn’t even make the list as an indicator of anything. Because, honestly, who isn’t ABET accredited?
My son had qualifications to go anywhere. He didn’t apply to any of the top USNWR programs. He instead focused on programs with small class sizes, that are taught by instructors with terminal degrees, and placed a high emphasis on practically applying theoretical knowledge. He has been lucky enough to have not one, but two jobs on elite, highly selective teams. He holds a patent from his first position. There is no consistency on where his coworkers were educated at either company. None. I’d put his undergraduate portfolio up against students from any school in the world.
No. The OPs point was that there’s no there there.
So, ABET accreditation didn’t make his list either?
…Out of curiosity - what is that about classes taught by instructors with terminal degrees. Is that not the case at pretty much all decent schools? Or are you talking about recitations here?