<p>Don't know about Princeton, but generally:</p>
<p>Just because incoming students are brilliant does not mean the program offered by a school is as good as another program offered at a different school.</p>
<p>There are some programs out there that are selected by students because the overall university is highly regarded and has other programs of interest, despite the fact that the engineering program is not really top-notch. </p>
<p>I think some of the general rankings are closely related to research productivity. The way some of the smaller programs seem to get the ranking they do is they have really high quality research, but only in a few selected targeted areas. Their coverage of the field of engineering is not comprehensive, either in research or in course offerings.</p>
<p>Engineering is a broad field, and a school that does not cover the field comprehensively can cause truncation of your exposure and possibilities accordingly.</p>
<p>On the other hand, almost any program will cover the basics and offer advanced training in a number of areas.</p>
<p>Recruiting is another area where some smaller programs might suffer. Engineering recruiters want to go where they will be able to interview, and ultimately hire, a reasonably large number of qualified candidates who want to work for them. They might not bother to visit someplace which has few graduates to start, moreover they all want to go into finance, or do research, but almost none of them want to be engineers.</p>
<p>As I said I don't know where Princeton falls in this regard. But I suggest you compare factors such as: actual courses offered each semester by the engineering department, number of engineering faculty, number of areas of engineering specialization offered, number of recruiters who come to campus to recruit for specifically engineering jobs, availabilty of engineering coop programs to get exposure to actual practice, etc. I don't think the rankings you are looking at really address these factors which are actually among the most germane.</p>
<p>Regarding the state schools, some have the reputation of taking in a large proportion of in-state applicants, per their mandate, but then having huge chunks of them flunk out. This is particularly the case in engineering, and additionally huge numbers transfer out to other majors. So the actual graduates of these state U engineering programs, who did well there, are considerably stronger than the U's incoming average student profile. The engineering firm I worked for was dominated by these people, and any number of them were great engineers.</p>