<p>My D was just admitted to Cornell, Brown, Duke(13K scholarship), and Rice(27K scholarship). My D will major in Electrical and Computer Engineering and/or Applied Math. My D plans to study Graduate school. What are some pros and cons for each school, and what are your thoughts?</p>
<p>If you have the money to pay for her schooling without breaking a sweat, choose Cornell. The electrical/computer engineering is great, and there is a lot of engineering recruiting from Cornell. If she will need substantial loans, choose Rice. Still great engineering, not as good as Cornell, but 27K a year in extra debt isn’t worth going to Cornell for.</p>
<p>Totally agree with above post. Duke is not as strong in those areas of engineering as Cornell is. Hard to argue with 27k from Rice, and many say it is like a smaller version of Cornell.</p>
<p>Cornell will also benefit from the incoming flow of resources and connections from the new CornellNYC Tech campus. This will be lead to unprecedented amounts of opportunity, especially in the future.</p>
<p>We found that internal scholarships awarded by schools such as Rice and Case Western did not offer any benefits since these schools adjusted grant awards downward. Our selection criteria were to graduate from a highly respected school debt free. My son has one year remaining and is well on his way.</p>
<p>We also found that Cornell gives substantially more credit for outside scholarships than all of the other schools he was accepted to.</p>
<p>^ Also a good point. If you have a low EFC, the scholarship won’t matter as much since Cornell will meet the entire need.</p>
<p>Just to give you a balanced perspective here, Duke’s ECE is every bit as strong as Cornell’s and offers just as much research opportunities since it’s smaller. Don’t be fooled by the UNSWR Graduate Edition.</p>
<p>Here’s what the authority on doctoral programs, the NRC, has to say:
[NRC</a> Rankings Overview: Electrical and Computer Engineering - Faculty - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“NRC Rankings Overview: Electrical and Computer Engineering”>NRC Rankings Overview: Electrical and Computer Engineering)</p>
<p>Duke: 10-40
Brown: 12-36
Cornell: 13-43
Rice: 22-56</p>
<p>Duke’s location in the Research Triangle makes it ideal to find engineering jobs since it’s a high activity R&D area with lots of tech and biomed companies. It literally has no competition since UNC doesn’t have an engineering program and NC State’s engineering program is inferior and has much weaker students.</p>
<p>If it’s research opportunities you’re after, you’re going to be hard pressed to find the same type of personalized attention in an engineering program as you"ll get at Duke.</p>
<p>[Pratt</a> Research Fellows Program | Engineering at Duke University, Pratt School](<a href=“http://www.pratt.duke.edu/pratt-research-fellow]Pratt”>Pratt Research Fellows | Duke Pratt School of Engineering)</p>
<p>You can see examples of the different Pratt Scholars and the type of research they’ve been able to. A lot of these students are headed to graduate school at the best programs for their disciplines(MIT/Stanford/CMU/etc.).</p>
<p>You can’t go wrong with any of these options honestly. Duke is excellent at letting their engineers double major in another engineering subject other than primary or a natural science or a liberal arts subject. For instance, double majoring in Economics is extremely common and a pretty marketable combination for the job market.</p>
<p>I’d go with Cornell or Rice on this one. Duke and Brown’s engineering program are not in the same league (except for Duke’s BME). A flawed ranking that puts UCSB’s and University of South Carolina’s ECE programs above MIT’s is not to be trusted.</p>
<p>BTW: You only posted the S-ranking. The R-ranking has Cornell at 17-32 while Duke is at 30-58.</p>
<p>They’re all great choices, you can’t really go wrong with any of them. If I was picking though, I would pick Cornell.</p>
<p>Cornell or Rice because of the scholarship, for ECE, as norcalguy said.</p>