<p>I know that columbia and upenn may be regarded more as 'good schools' in public due to their 'ivy league' status. however, their engineering programs may not be as stellar as UIUC's. I'm leaning more towards columbia or upenn because I don't really like the atmosphere of a HUGE public school. Though the excellence of UIUC's program still leaves me in doubt.</p>
<p>do those dubious and fallacious engineering rankings matter in job placement? like when there are two applicants, one is from a 'top 5' eng. school and the other's from 'top 30' eng. school, would the employers favor the 'top 5' applicant more?</p>
<p>i'm also planning to attend a grad school outside of US, probably in europe. do they care about engineering rankings too in admissions?</p>
<p>(oh God those rankings have brainwashed us all)</p>
<p>Has anyone ever given up 'ivy league' pretentious universities for public-strong-in-engineering universities e.g. UIUC, purdue, GTech, etc?</p>
<p>thank you so much and merry christmas folks!</p>
<p>Your education and job prospects will be virtually the same at either school, if you choose to work in an engineering related field after graduation. </p>
<p>On the other hand…financial issues aside,
I recommend that you attend an ivy-league university if you have the opportunity.</p>
<p>i bet you wouldn’t have a problem with the rankings if the ivy league schools were ranked 1, 2, 3 . . .</p>
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<p>i guess i don’t know if UIUC’s computer engineering program is overrated or not–i’ve only gone to college at UIUC, so i can’t really compare it to other schools.</p>
<p>i do know that ECE 190, ECE 391, and ECE 411 (most of the CompE core at UIUC) are all solid classes. ECE 391 and 411 have large open-ended projects accompanying the courses. Both give you the opportunity to put in a lot of work and learn a lot.</p>
<p>or whatever, go to columbia or upenn to indulge your ivy-league fetish.</p>
<p>Illinois has the 3rd highest rated computer engineering program in the country (only behind MIT and UC-Berkeley) and is in the top 10 for virtually every type of engineering. Other programs at Illinois are excellent such as their business programs. Illinois is also a state. Internationally, I think that Illinois has a better reputation than UPenn or Columbia in the engineering field. Unless you really want that “ivy-league” diploma (which is just something on paper you can brag about for the rest of your life), I think you should go to Illinois unless you get more money from Columbia or UPenn which makes tuition cheaper at those schools.</p>
<p>Ditto to silence_kit–employers from Nvidia and Google will drool at you when you talk about what you did in ECE 391 and 411 at UIUC during interviews. I have classmates at ECE in the U of I who have graduated and gone on to work for consulting and finance companies such as Merill Lynch, DRW trading, Goldman Sachs and Deloitte. </p>
<p>I used to have doubts about U of I’s engineering prestige myself until Junior year when the ECE curriculum really got intense while the job offers started coming in.</p>