<p>HI, i was wondering what you would rank the electrical engineering departments in general at the following colleges relative to each other :</p>
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<p>General Rankings Employ-ability of Undergraduates Starting Salary for Undergraduates Facilities Reputation Employer Reputation Professors Holistic Environment of University</p>
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<p>It would be much appreciate if you could state your reasons for your response :)</p>
<p>Thank you !! :D</p>
<p>Berkeley, Illinois, Michigan, the others, then Rice. </p>
<p>Though if your goal is industry employment, it will make no difference either way.</p>
<p>oh okay thanks, but are you sure that UCLA shouldn’t be ranked above UIUC ?</p>
<p>EECS majors have no trouble finding a good job out of undergrad here (at Michigan) at all. EE seems to have a relative low (~60-65K) average starting salary here according to the official statistics, but whenever I’ve heard from anyone about how much they’ll be getting (admittedly, only a very small portion of EEs) it’s always been 70K+. </p>
<p>Also, apparently the classes EECS 470 and 427 at Michigan are supposed to be extremely good courses without equivalents anywhere. I haven’t taken either so I can’t really tell you much about them, but that’s what I’ve heard. It’s possibly worth your research.</p>
<p>wow i really didn’t know that, now i must research them, thanks a lot : )</p>
<p>I grouped them:
UC Berkeley</p>
<p>UIUC
UMichigan</p>
<p>Georgia Tech
UCLA</p>
<p>Rice</p>
<p>any reasoning plz ? :S</p>
<p>OK, I’ll play:
<p>My ranking:</p>
<ol>
<li>University Of California - Berkeley. I have never worked with or really interacted directly with any UCB grads, but I have swapped some work product and seen some of what their grad program does and it is pretty strong. My only real critique is that this program is very limited in what they offer - my specialty was not even an option there.</li>
</ol>
<p>2 (tie). University Of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Georgia Institute Of Technology. I HAVE worked with grads of these two programs (BS through PhD) and have been nearly uniformly impressed. I had not previously considered UIUC for grad school until I started working with a few alums, and after visiting the school it became my top choice.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>University Of Michigan - Ann Arbor. Going again on reputation here, but with a little less to go on. Overall strong school, just not quite as strong as the others on this list IMO.</p></li>
<li><p>University Of California - Los Angeles. I have known a couple of UCLA EE grads, and they were strong. Not knock-me-on-my-ass strong, but very solid engineers.</p></li>
<li><p>Rice University. Good but not great from I have heard, but I have had no real knowing contact with anything this school has produced.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Ultimately, ANY of these schools would be an excellent choice, depending on what best suits you.</p>
<p>
Magnetron, could you elaborate?</p>
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</p>
<p>Sure. My reasons are purely personal and have almost nothing to do with the EE departments. I’m sure many great engineers come from both programs. Some of it is my bias toward the broad benefits of learning in a geographic area of art and industry.</p>
<p>I lived in Urbana as a child while my father got his Masters degree. Mom worked in the computer lab while we were there. We moved there from the mountains of California. Cold, flat, desolate. Dad had to put up with a bad advisor and lousy department heads (not engineering). Mom had to put up with creepy computer guys. My older sister had a horrible time in her elementary school. Purgatory must look like Urbana. </p>
<p>I worked in NY with a GT graduate, BS, MS, and taught there for several years as an adjunct. He was probably the 2nd worst engineer I have ever met. He walked around comparing himself to Einstein and other Manhattan Project scientists. His work output was about 20% of most engineers. I spent 6 months cleaning up the mess he left once he was finally fired. I know other GT graduates and, while competent, they don’t stand out from any others.</p>
<p>Individual variation is so high from one graduate to another that judging a research university based on the 2 people you’ve met from that school is simply ludicrous. How can you be an engineer and still lack the common sense to realize this?</p>
<p>Well put James Madison.</p>
<p>I’m not looking for personal experiences that much; I’m looking for a general industry perspective. Thanks for replying all of you ! 
much appreciated 
I conclude after a lot of research :
<p>Anyone disagrees please state your reasons?</p>
<p>I agree with you, JamesMadison… but you don’t go far enough. Yes, it is ridiculous for a person to form opinions of an University based on a handful of alums that they know. But it’s also ridiculous to assume one school has a better engineering program than another, simply because some magazines try to assign a single numerical scores to universities in order to rank them. For instance, why does everyone on this thread automatically place Michigan ahead of UCLA? I work with a lot of Michigan alums and UCLA alums since both are “feeder schools” for my employer, and I don’t think the Michigan guys/gals are any better prepared than UCLA alums. In fact, I think UCLA alums are better prepared for research and graduate school (which is consistent with the mission statement of UC schools) while Michigan seems to be more focused on preparing students for industry (their engineering programs seem to have several required courses focuses on professionalism and communication, as well as “capstone” type senior projects). I personally think a stronger theoretical background is more important than coming out of school as a polished android app developer or something like that.</p>
<p>I think UCB is slightly better than all of rest, and Rice is slightly not as strong in ME as the rest; the others fall into a group in the middle, imo.</p>
<p>So yes, I think your ranking is good. But all of these schools are so close (especially the middle group) and they are all very strong in engineering, so I don’t think it would make much difference. This decision would come down to other intangible factors.</p>
<p>
Speaking for myself, there is more to it than just the “2 people I’ve met from that school” - there is also the opinions of others I have known and the quality of the papers I have read. While there is a fair amount of variation, certain schools get “okay, that’s nice” and some get “wow, that’s great!” when they are discussed in various places. When people I respect indicate that they think Berkeley has an excellent graduate program in EE, why should I discount this? And when they refer to other programs as ho-hum or inconsistent, why should I not consider that as well? When I have looked at some academic papers originating from some schools I notice a higher degree of depth and rigor than I see at other schools - can I not consider this to be some measure of the quality of those programs?</p>
<p>FWIW, I have worked closely with a single MIT graduate - her relatively poor showing does not mean that I disdain that school, for the simple reason that it is not the sole input I have. Several of my professors got their PhD’s at that school, and their apparent level of knowledge and professional standing say a lot to me about that school’s ability to educate at the graduate level.</p>
<p>
Because a small sample is better than no sample at all, and in the rare occasions where a ranking matters (admittedly, almost never) an attempt based on incomplete information is better than no attempt at all. It may have a high error rate, but isn’t that part of the reason for getting multiple opinions?</p>
<p>Besides, the OP asked for a ranking. They did not ask for the significance of that ranking.</p>
<p>wow this decision is harder than i could imagine; so should i go on personal taste, instinct and image if the schools are so close when it comes to the quality of their EE departments ?</p>
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<p>“opinions of others I have known” will be based solely on the arbitrary US news rankings with some personal biases thrown in the fold. “quality of the papers I’ve read” is also bogus because a) you don’t necessarily have the background to judge the academic merits of a professor b) you probably have read papers only in a very narrow subfield which does not reflect the quality of the entire department c) even if you are right, this will porbably not factor in to the career opportunities and industry reputation of the school, which by the way is <strong>largely geographical</strong> and in fact has little to do with its international reputation, your personal anectotes, or the papers you have skimmed and deemed unworthy. </p>
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<p>There are objective methods of measuring rigor, such as # of publications, citations, and metrics that combine these two parameters such as h-index or g-index. Your personal assessment of the research output of a university, unfortunately, means nothing. </p>
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<p>They were already smart because they got into an MIT PhD program. They would have been smart even if they had gone to Kansas. The quality of a university’s graduating class has far more to do with the admissions rate than the actual education process within the school. Surely you must realize that.</p>
<p>You’re right - no one knows anything, everyone’s opinion is worthless, the only thing that matters is the numbers.</p>