<p>Hey Guys,
Right now I am considering some prestigious engineering schools (Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering) and heard that Fu SEAS is great school.</p>
<p>What are the merits of Columbia SEAS, compared to the "powerhouses" of engineers such as UIUC, U Michigan, Georgia Tech engineering? does SEAS have smaller classes and more individual attention than the public universities?
what about opportunities for undergaraduate research and internship opportunities?
which one has more advantage to get in engineering graduate schools? I heard that getting good grades in the public universtities (Especially Engineering) is much harder than getting grades in the private universtities. Is it really true?</p>
<p>Other than that, does the ranking really matter? i want to get decent undergraduate education to prepare the graduate studies. </p>
<p>UI-UC, U Michigan and Georgia Tech are all large public universities... even Georgia Tech, which is the smallest of the 3, have twice as much undergrads as Columbia, and if you only count SEAS, obviously it's going to be even smaller.</p>
<p>So i think you'll definitely get more attention at Columbia.</p>
<p>But I also heard that SEAS is more for "engineers" who want to have very lucrative jobs that require a lot of quantitative skills (i-banking, finance, doctor, etc.) later in life, instead of the traditional engineering students who would like to pursue more advanced degrees in pure engineering. </p>
<p>Of course I'm sure this is just a large generalization and that SEAS has the capacity to take you in whichever direction you want! It all depends you what you make of it..</p>
<p>I'm going to CC this year and haven't even set foot on the Columbia campus yet, so I can't tell you if it's true or not! But that was just my two cents.</p>
<p>I went to CC, but if you think getting good grades in SEAS is a cakewalk, you're kidding yourself. The engineers I know worked their backsides off. The NYC location for SEAS tends to push people towards the finance jobs, but that doesn't mean that there's a dearth of advanced engineering opportunities. In fact, I would use the same argument for CC--English majors become investment bankers too. What sets SEAS apart are the non-tech requirements: SEAS kids have to take a certain number of non-engineering classes and take a few core classes. It's an engineering school, but there is an emphasis on the liberal arts.</p>
<p>I'm in seas, and cerberus is on the money, it does well placing engineers (perhaps not as well as stanford and MIT), but it isn't far behind, if at all. Two of my best friends who are pretty smart landed jobs with nasa this summer, one is a sophomore and one is frosh. seas places well on wall street for sure, and I assume they do pretty well for med/law school also. To me choosing columbia is a no brainer, the students at seas and really smart and qualified by any metric, they benefit from being surrounded by columbia college kids who have very different interests and foci. It's better from one angle and no worse from another. For the chance that you hate new york it's a different issue and you shouldn't have applied to columbia in the first place.</p>
<p>Depends on the situation.
Job recruiters may weigh SEAS higher than a public university, so a 3.5 at Columbia may be weighted the same as a 3.8 at Michigan. Grad schools may operate differently--particularly law schools.</p>
<p>Maybe you're prematurely worrying about the grades--engineering school anywhere is going to be hard work. It's the quality of your peers, and consequently the curves they set that will determine your grade. Why don't you focus on which environment you're most likely to thrive in, whether it be rural, urban, entirely engineering or a mix of engineering and the liberal arts.</p>