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Anyway, back to the topic, I'm wondering if you guys would agree that overall prestige/reputation of a school would trump a relatively lower ranking of the school's engineering program.
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<p>For undergrad, I would agree, precisely because of the uncertainty problem. Most students don't really know what they want to major in, and furthermore, students who graduate from a particular major often time do not choose to pursue it as a career. For example, there was one girl who graduated in EECS from MIT and ended up becoming a professional dancer and fitness instructor, including a stint as an NFL cheerleader(!) Now, obviously, that's an extreme case, but the point is, there is a distinct possibility that you will end up in a career that has nothing to do with what you majored in. </p>
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Yep, I agree, but I would say that the only other options you'd get at an Ivy that you wouldn't get otherwise are investment banking and management consulting.If you know for sure you don't want to get into that, then what's the benefit of going to an Ivy?
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<p>Numerous other reasons, of which I will enumerate just a few. </p>
<p>*The higher grade inflation at Ivies, relative to most 'engineering-centric' schools, will make you more competitive for grad programs such as law or medicine, or for major awards such as Rhodes or Marshall. {Ever notice that in the US, engineers rarely win the Rhodes Scholarship? I would suspect that, in the US, there are far more Harvard graduates who have won the Rhodes Scholarship than there are total engineering graduates from all of the engineering programs in the country who have won the Rhodes). </p>
<p>Not mutually exclusive with the above, the Ivies offer a greater chance of graduating with *some degree. Maybe you won't graduate from the major you want, but you'll graduate with something, simply because, with the possible exception of Cornell, it's practically impossible to actually flunk out of an Ivy. Think of it this way. Guys like George W. Bush, John Kerry, Al Gore, and Ted Kennedy were all lazy and mediocre students as undergrads (with Ted Kennedy even being caught cheating on exams twice), and yet they all still managed to get their degrees. Heck, Al Gore even managed to graduate cum laude. Bottom line - at any Ivy except perhaps Cornell, you won't flunk out. Maybe you won't get good grades, but you won't flunk out, and so the only people who don't graduate are the ones who choose to leave voluntarily (i.e. Bill Gates). I can certainly think of numerous students at non-Ivy schools, like Berkeley, where quite a few students truly did flunk out and forced to leave involuntarily and hence ended up with no degree at all. </p>
<p>Gore's</a> Grades Belie Image of Studiousness (washingtonpost.com)</p>
<p>Yale</a> grades portray Kerry as a lackluster student - The Boston Globe</p>
<p>*Ibanking and management consulting are really just the most visible portions of the 'shadow network' that is available to Ivy graduates. Ivy grads also dominate the even more rarefied and secretive business networks, such as hedge funds, private equity firms, venture capital, and the like. Heck, I've heard Harvard graduates deride those who go into Ibanking (especially these days) as those who simply weren't good enough to get an offer in one of those other fields. </p>
<p>But it doesn't even have to be these fields either. I would also point to entrepreneurship and startup firms that are almost exclusively network-driven when they are founded. For example, all of the people at Facebook in the beginning days - Zuckerberg, Hughes, and Moskovitz - when the company was founded were Harvard people. Steve Ballmer is the billionaire CEO of Microsoft for one simple reason: he was Gates's old poker-playing pal at Currier House at Harvard. </p>
<p>One can also look at the importance of social networks in the world of academia (as extensive research has been performed on the importance of 'invisible colleges' of former colleagues within academia), in publishing/media (as entire books have been written that discuss the sway of the Ivies in the newsroom of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, TV broadcasting, and other media), and of course, politics. Just think about it - we've had somebody with some sort of Ivy League degree (either undergrad or grad) as either President or Vice President (or both in the case of Clinton/Gore) for a whopping 28 straight years now, and if Obama wins, it will be at least another 4. </p>
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There's no way you're going to tell me the Brown alumni network is somehow stronger than a Penn State or UCLA network. Even out here in California I constantly meet people that were part of the Penn State network. I've never actually met someone that went to Brown or Dartmouth.
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<p>I think it's quite unclear. What you seem to be missing is that the size of a network is not the same as its strength. Otherwise, we should all be going to Ohio State, which has the most students and therefore presumably the largest network of any school in the country. </p>
<p>The real value of any social network is derived not the size of it but rather the strength of each member and the willingness of them to help you. Penn State may have lots of graduates, but if most of them don't occupy strong positions relative to the graduates of some other school, then the network isn't as valuable as that of the other school. It also depends strongly on what you want to do with the network. </p>
<p>I'll give you an example. Berkeley is obviously a Bay Area school and Harvard is not. But if I'm looking for venture capital in Silicon Valley, a Harvard connection is clearly more important, as Harvard (along with Stanford) clearly dominates the SV VC community. In other words, the Berkeley network is inarguably far bigger than the Harvard network in Silicon Valley, but the Harvard network is far more powerful. </p>
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Not really, Mark Stevens went to USC in the 1980s for engineering, back then USC was not even prestigious.
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<p>Ok, but Stevens also went to Harvard Business School (graduating with his MBA in 1989) and only then did he join Sequoia Capital. </p>
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I'm going to bring back the point I made in my first post in this thread. Engineering programs are limited in many Ivy's. Harvard has only bioengineering, applied physics, applied math, comp sci, environmental engineering electrical engineering and mechanical engineering. It doesn't even have two of the two major traditional engineering disciplines: civil and chemical. Go compare to what's offered at UIUC; it's a joke.</p>
<p>I haven't looked at the course offerings closely yet, but there are probably few technical electives offered in the engineering departments.
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<p>Which is where the MIT cross-reg option comes in, which many Harvard students take. I would argue that the combined engineering resources of Harvard and MIT would make UIUC look like a 'joke'.</p>