<p>For cross admit information, I only know of Olin and Stanford that were chosen over MIT from our HS in the last 3 years (everyone else admitted to MIT enrolled there).</p>
<p>Considering programs, size of school, undergrad/grad ratio, undergrad student body composition, location, environment - there is no school like MIT IMO. In the engineering realm, the standard list of peer programs or programs that emulate MIT IMO are: Cal Tech, Mudd, CMU, Stanford, Rose Hulman, Georgia Tech, and RPI. The other top EE programs are UC Berkeley, Illinois, Michigan. </p>
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For those students who are really attracted to MIT's campus culture, I've found these students often are also happy at many other schools, including Caltech, Carnegie Mellon, Cooper Union, Harvey Mudd, Olin College, RPI, and the University of Chicago.
<p>Purdue is a great engineering school...but the feel of the school is completely different from MIT or Caltech. That being said, Michigan is also a strong Midwestern engineering school - ditto Case Western, as someone mentioned before, and also Rose-Hulman.</p>
<p>Although not necessarily relevant to this particular OP, Johns Hopkins has a renowned biomedical engineering program.</p>
<p>zfox001: At Caltech, they are called "pranks"; but at MIT they are "hacks." =) And personally, nothing can really trump the Cannon</a> escapade...</p>
<p>Case is not as good as Michigan, Illinois or Purdue though. I'm looking into aero eng and i've never heard of RPI. it doesnt seem like its a very good school.</p>
<p>^^ RPI, or Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, was founded in 1824 in New York. It is the oldest, continuously operating school of science and engineering in the English-speaking world: Rensselaer</a> Polytechnic Institute (RPI) Home Page.</p>
<p>the doctorate schools almost always tend to be better than the undergrad-masters ones though. i would take Purdue over Olin any day of the week.</p>
<p>... and if I were doing engineering, I'd take Olin over Purdue any day of the week. It simply depends on what you're looking for in determining what makes a school "better" for you.</p>
<p>Personally, I would take Olin over Purdue any day of the week except for Saturday (okay that's just kinda me being tired and out of it and needing to crack a corny joke). Seriously though, unless you're like the OP and looking at EECS or something else particularly specific, Olin is a great choice even for those who are looking to do something that might not exactly be engineering, but may be similar. UG is a time to really train critical thinking skills, not neccessarily just pick up on specific knowledge, and Olin does a great job with the first, and an awesome job on the second in specific fields. Unless your future lies in an area that is drastically different, a general engineering degree (which Olin gives) is a great background for graduate study in a huge variety of subjects. Just some food for thought.</p>
<p>I dunno, the thing about Caltech is they do their hacks completely differently from MIT students. MIT hackers have to be sneaky - not only know how to get the hacks up, but also how to avoid people who can catch them. At Caltech, hackers call ahead to the administration who clears the area before hand.</p>
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Mudd was pretty awesome and the merit money was pretty nice too, from 10,000 a year to full tuition. It had a similar feel to mit but on a much smaller scale. Academics seemed to be just a notch less, tho Mudders would disagree.
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<p>How would someone who isn't in college yet know whether the academics were a "notch less" if he/she didn't actually understand the material presented. I'm not saying they aren't a notch less, but just questioning the qualifications of a prefrosh to make such an observational statement.</p>
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Case is not as good as Michigan, Illinois or Purdue though. I'm looking into aero eng and i've never heard of RPI. it doesnt seem like its a very good school.
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<p>Wrong. Case's and RPI's undergraduate engineering/science programs are seen as being as good or better than Michigan's, Purdue's, and Illinois'.</p>
<p>At Caltech we don't call the administration ahead to "clear the area." By the Honor Code, pranks must be identified with contact information, etc. in case something goes wrong. If we pull a prank against another house, we notify their house President first to make sure nothing important to them gets (permanently) damaged. It has nothing to do with being less "stealthy" - I've certainly done my share of sneaking around in the middle of the night. It has everything to do with being a conscientious member of the community.</p>
<p>Interesting, that's not what I heard. However, the point of a hack is that it doesn't permanently affect anything (because at that point, it's vandalism). Why would you have to call ahead to the house President (perhaps this is what I heard as administration)? If they know you're going to pull a hack, wouldn't they up campus police in the area?</p>
<p>Depending on the student and what they wanted to do, I would also certainly consider Cambridge (UK), and Imperial College, University of London as playing in the same ballpark as MIT.</p>
<p>I'm pretty sure the President wouldn't call the police because generally even being pranked is pretty fun. Telling them is just so they know who to contact if something goes wrong, which can definitely happen (there are lots of peripheral things that could get damaged in the process, many of which are valuable, and we just want to be safe). Also, the campus police is surprisingly amenable to pranks.</p>