What are some departments Dartmouth is known for? (for example, it is not known for engineering)
What majors should one attend Dartmouth for, especially over Brown and Duke?
What is the job outlook at Dartmouth in Wall Street companies, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, etc?
bump. Why Dartmouth over brown and duke???
Economics and Government are our best departments. We send tons of people to Goldman, JP Morgan, Google, Apple, Facebook. Now there is an alumni base at all those places who help hire others.
Wow, and the people at Google, Apple, and Facebook…are those engineering majors?
I know Dartmouth is not known for engineering, right?
Not sure why you say it is not known for engineering. Granted it’s not an engineering school like RPI or Olin; it IS a Liberal Arts college after all. But undergrads have access to the Thayer School of Engineering facilities and professors. There’s a lot of students that take advantage of the MEM program after they get their undergrad degree, and it’s usually hovering around the third most popular major.
Dartmouth isn’t going to follow a straight Engineering school curriculum where you declare as a Chemical Engineer, you study Chemical Engineering, and you become a Chemical Engineer, for example. At Dartmouth you take general engineering classes first, and only really specialize in a branch of engineering through your minor or concentration, which keeps you open to “engineering-lite” jobs at Google, Facebook, Apple, and many other industries.
So while I’m not comparing it to engineering schools like Stanford or Berkley or MIT, it does have a solid Liberal Arts engineering program with a lot of undergrad resources. This take on it allows you flexibility if you graduate and don’t want to become a by-definition Engineer, but want to do something that has engineering concepts.The other engineering heavy schools I mentioned are better if you want to BE AN ENGINEER and there’s little chance of not wanting to be an engineer.
Hope that makes sense…
@Tank07 I see…wow, okay, I never thought about it that way. So what do most of the people that get recruited to Google, Facebook, Apple, and other companies major in?
Could be a lot of majors to be honest. Here’s the deal with jobs today - your major rarely matters.
I’ll let that sink in, since it goes against everything people tell you and what you see on tv and in movies. There are a few specialized exceptions, like if you’re designing circuit boards at Intel, you probably should have an Electrical Engineering degree, but the vast majority of jobs out there are just looking for A) something tangentially related and B) people that know how to think, work, communicate, and lead.
Let’s take you (and kind of myself) as an example. Engineering Sciences major at Dartmouth. You will learn how to work in groups, so you know how to work with people and the benefit of diversity on a team. You’ll have to think through problems logically, so you will be able to methodically solve novel problems. But you’ll also be able to communicate effectively because you took English and Literature classes, and you’ll be able to lead because you participated in many clubs that you organized and ran.
I started as an Engineering Major, then switched to Neuroscience before I graduated, What Dartmouth taught me wasn’t just the solutions to problems, because anyone can look up formulas and numbers in a book, but HOW to think through and solve problems, as well as get a well rounded perspective and education that I can now apply to a multitude of industries. Dartmouth taught me to be competent and functional in the real world. Which is why I was able to apply to Google with a Neuroscience degree and now work for a retail company, my two friends worked at Facebook with a Gov’t/Econ major and an Comp Sci/Econ major, and why we have History majors working in investing.
This is kind of a long way to let you know that your major does not define your future career, but your education will. It’s also a subtle warning that what you love and are good at now (Engineering) might change 2.5 years into your college career, so while a college having a strong program in a particular area should be a factor, it should never be THE factor.
Hope this helps, even though I didn’t exactly answer your original Brown/Duke vs Dartmouth question…