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<p>Each department has to meet certain requirements to meet ABET criteria. I don’t know of any mechanical engineering department that offers the kinds of courses required to get an ABET certification in Materials.</p>
<p>Here ya go, racin-
[Mechanical</a> Engineering and Materials Science : Rice University George R. Brown School of Engineering](<a href=“http://engineering.rice.edu/content.aspx?id=1192]Mechanical”>http://engineering.rice.edu/content.aspx?id=1192)</p>
<p>In looking at the Rice info, it looks like it is 2 different majors housed in the same department. Leading to either a Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering or a Bachelor’s in Materials Science. Mech is ABET accedited but I couldn’t fine anything about Materials Science in the ABET info for Rice(which I’m not sure if that is the same as Materials Science and Engineering or not?). Maybe someone can clarify that?
At Virginia Tech, there are 2 separate departments=Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering-both show up as accredited on the ABET search. So, it is a little confusing.</p>
<p>Wow, well, color me surprised. I wonder why Rice hasn’t gotten their MSE program ABET approved yet. Though I suppose at least they put the word Materials in the name of the department. It’s probably similar to EECS or ECE departments out there. Thinking about it I could swear I also remember seeing some ChemE/MSE departments, as well. Actually, my own department is now Applied Physics & Materials Science, so there’s yet another version you can get!</p>
<p>(Generally the only difference between Materials Science, Materials Engineering, and Materials Science & Engineering is the focus of the classes. Generally, materials is considered to be based on four basic parts: structure, performance, properties, and processing. Engineering programs tend to be focused more on performance and processing, while science ones do the other two.)</p>
<p>I’ll second Lehigh integrated business and engineering, a very difficult honors program for their top students.</p>
<p>Take all recommendations of MIT with a grain of salt. It’s obviously the best engineering school, and outstanding for many other subjects, but nearly impossible to get in. Best not to fall in love.</p>
<p>Alabama has more than 50% of freshman class from out of state. OOS has been growing tremendously thanks to reasonable cost and huge OOS scholarships for top students. They just built an enormous science and engineering complex with state of the art facilities. While most schools are cutting, Bama is spending like crazy thanks to football dollars and federal grants. The senator from Alabama, a 3x Bama grad, is ranking republican on the appropriations committee, the folks who decide how to spend the earmarks.</p>
<p>DS, a high stats student, was admitted to several of the elite schools you listed, yet chose to attend Alabama. He totally loves it.</p>
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<p>In the case of Berkeley, the EECS department offers three options:</p>
<p>EECS - ECE: ABET accredited for electrical engineering and computer engineering.
EECS - CSE: ABET accredited for computer science and computer engineering.
CS (Letters and Science): Not ABET accredited.</p>
<p>Regarding “lumpers” versus “splitters” in general, it appears that many “lumper” cases involve at least one subject which is too small at the given school to have its department (often, something like aerospace, naval architecture, materials, or nuclear is lumped into something else like mechanical – though not all mechanical engineering departments have courses or faculty interest in those subareas).</p>
<p>Electrical engineering, computer engineering, and/or computer science do seem to be the exception (Berkeley, MIT, CMU, UIUC, etc.), in that they are often “lumped” (although not always completely – CMU has ECE “lumped” but CS “split”) despite each subject being large enough to have its own department.</p>
<p>^The CS professors at CMU split off more because they wanted more autonomy than anything to do with ABET. I’m told that for CS ABET approval is not really a big concern.</p>
<p>Some misconceptions about ABET upthread.</p>
<p>First of all, ABET accredits programs, not departments. A department can have multiple programs, and a program can belong to multiple departments. </p>
<p>If you want to know whether a school has an accredited program in an area, the easiest way to find out is going to [ABET</a> -](<a href=“http://www.abet.org%5DABET”>http://www.abet.org) and using the accredited program search tool. </p>
<p>ABET accreditation is not important for CS </p>
<p>I’d be a bit skeptical of a computer engineering program that was not ABET accredited, though. This wouldn’t be a deal-breaker for me, but it would cause me to look very closely into the quality of the program.</p>
<p>For most other fields of engineering, lack of ABET accreditation would be a deal-breaker.</p>
<p>There are some very good CS degree programs without ABET accreditation (e.g. Stanford, Berkeley L&S CS, CMU), but also some very limited ones (e.g. Amherst).</p>
<p>For CS, ABET accreditation merely indicates a decent minimum standard; an ABET accredited CS degree program may anywhere from decent to excellent. One that is not ABET accredited may be anywhere from very poor to excellent, and needs more careful evaluation individually.</p>
<p>There is a niche area, patent law, where ABET accreditation of the degree program is advantageous for CS majors.</p>