<p>I am based in the Boston area, so we generally do hire new college graduates from local (Northeast) schools. However, the company is worldwide, and does national recruiting. We have made offers to college graduates from all over the country. It is sometimes hard to convince someone from the MidWest to move to the high cost of living Boston area. We do have recent graduates from Iowa and Texas, who were both looking to expand their horizons, and are doing quite well. Even though, we had to have a 'driving in the snow" lesson with out young man from Texas during the first snow storm. We even took him shopping for boots, hat, gloves, shovel, etc.</p>
<p>LOL, gsmomma! My husband is from Wisconsin and didn’t think I’d last past the first winter when we moved from Texas to Maine. I LOVED it, though. Ha, I had this idea that it snowed practically 24/7 for months on end, so I was disappointed when it snowed only periodically. We drove up from Austin in my '82 Camaro, which wasn’t the best vehicle for driving in the snow. A couple of times, we almost got stuck driving through blizzards to ski resorts.</p>
<p>I am going to offer a slightly different perspective. </p>
<p>First of all, while I agree that the rankings systems are inherently flawed, the fact that they exist and people read them gives them some value anyway - it can and will have an impact with some people, and that does make a degree from “better” schools more valuable. Maybe not much, but some in industry, and more than people like to admit in academia.</p>
<p>Second, as gsmomma related, different schools have different emphases - I have had similar experiences with MIT grads, that with a BS they are less prepared and less socially adept than graduates of “lesser” schools, but I think a big part of this is that MIT is really oriented towards preparing engineers for grad school, not industry. Conversely, most lower-ranked schools really emphasize practical skills that employers really want and skimp on the in-depth theory that grad schools are looking for. So part of this depends on where you want to get off the academic roller coaster.</p>
<p>I hate to say it, but I HAVE experienced a difference in instructional quality and depth at different schools - I have degrees from two universities and am working on a PhD at a third, and I feel that the instructional quality roughly matched their rankings. I had the misfortune to take the nominally identical grad-level course at all three schools - as an elective while an undergrad (to boost my preparedness for grad school) and as a required-no-exceptions part of my two grad degrees - and the highest ranked school started from the same place but taught and expected much more. I have TA’d similar undergrad courses at two of the schools and have seen similar results at that level as well. There will always be exceptions, of course, but this is what I have seen.</p>
<p>I should also note one other observation that I have had from industry - while my very very large company hires from a wide variety of schools with rankings all over the spectrum, the higher you go in the company the more likely it is that a given engineer will have a degree from a top-25 school. While some of this may be culture or some type of prejudice, the engineers that have really impressed me with their knowledge and skill have all come from schools that were at least in that top-25 range. This may not be an endorsement of the highest tier of schools, but it does suggest to me that avoiding schools below that level may really help your career.</p>
<p>I chose my PhD institution not from its ranking (which is admittedly very high) but because the two engineers who impressed me the most with their skill and achievements either went there or recommended that I did so.</p>
<p>One last thing:</p>
<p>
I do not see how this has any particular meaning. I think it is of interest to the NSF, somehow, but am not sure how it matters to an individual rather than an as a statistical item. An individual can pursue or not pursue a PhD regardless of the institution.</p>
<p>cosmicfish, </p>
<p>I agree that any one who wants can get a PhD if they choose. That stat simply says that individuals from certain institutions are more likely that individuals from others. From that, you can infer what you want. Is it pre-selection? Is it something inherent in the way the institutions teach? Is it something else? Who knows.</p>
<p>I would, just for my own curiosity, be interested in what institutions you’ve attended. You could PM me if you don’t feel comfortable sharing it here.</p>
<p>M</p>
<p>
That is my point, it is a statistic so seperated from the source data and so isolated from other factors that it really has no meaning.</p>
<p>
Undergrad: Penn State
Masters: Johns Hopkins
PhD: UIUC</p>
<p>Two publics, one private, all EE degrees.</p>
<p>cosmic,</p>
<p>Thanks! </p>
<p>As for that particular stat, the point I was really making was that it is an objective measure. What it means is another story. USNWR ranking of undergraduate engineering programs is 100% subjective, based only on institutional reputation as reported by other institutions.</p>
<p>I’m looking for ways to further my understanding of the undergraduate engineering experience. Is it better to be at a giant institution like Illinois, that has vast resources and great upper level faculty, but also has massive entry level classes and a relative anonymity to basically sink or swim on your own? Or, is it better to be at a smaller Tech institution like WPI, RPI, or Rose-Hulman where there will be more support, but less Nobel Laureates and fewer cool toys? What about the in betweens like Northwestern, CMU or Hopkins?</p>
<p>So far, I can’t find a lot of information, objective or not, comparing and contrasting the various experiences afforded by institutions and their respective final products, the newly minted engineer.</p>
<p>M</p>
<p>I think the reason you aren’t finding much is because what’s seen as a positive for some is a negative for another. I loved that at CMU nearly every professor in my department felt vested in my education and was genuinely interested in their students doing well. Having an engineering department with 15 people gave me opportunities that I definitely wouldn’t have seen at a larger school.</p>
<p>That said, my roommate for almost all of undergrad could have cared less about interacting with his professors and preferred classes where he could sit in the back and never talk. This worked out for him, since he was in a much larger department where this was possible. Both of us loved the school academically, but a lot of times it was for opposite reasons.</p>
<p>Wow, which department were you in? ME is quite a bit larger than that at CMU. </p>
<p>BTW, glad to hear you enjoyed it. My son is much more like you in preferred learning style than your roommate.</p>
<p>M</p>
<p>I was in Materials Science & Engineering which. My year was the largest they had had in ages (previous years had, like, 5-6 students). It’s currently in the mid-20s/30s per year, which is pretty tiny compared to most other engineering departments out there.</p>
<p>Interesting list, but the methodology is still basically relying on opinion, albeit spread over multiple categories. None of the top three categories of responders were engineers.</p>
<p>I think you’d have a hard time convincing me that an undergraduate in engineering would be better off at Harvard than they would at Cal Tech, CMU, Hopkins, or Georgia Tech, to name but a few on the list.</p>
<p>With that said, where did yo apply?</p>
<p>M</p>
<p>I did some research on the very question the OP raises here, including engineering at New Mexico Tech vs MIT/Caltech/Harvey Mudd vs my local state universitiy, in particular.</p>
<p>The National Bureau of Economic Research did a study on the association of college selectivity and subsequent income, and found that while there is a correlation, it cancels out if the data are corrected for student SAT scores. So the correlation is actually between SAT score and later income level, and also between colleges applied to and income level, but attending an elite school does not increase a given student’s income potential per se. Here is a link to the study: [On</a> the Payoff to Attending an Elite College](<a href=“http://www.nber.org/digest/dec99/w7322.html]On”>On the Payoff to Attending an Elite College | NBER).</p>
<p>One reason this result may be counter-intuitive is that individuals who have attended elite univerisites do often have higher starting salaries and are more likely to advance to higher positions. But what is less obvious is that equally bright students with equivalent ranges of SAT scores are just as likely to have comparable career success, as measured by income level. So you need to undertand the cause and effect: it is apparently not the elite univerisity education that results in higher income, it is the intelligence and motivation of the student, and top students attending state universities will seek out the opportunities and achieve the high grades that will make them just as attractive to employers as the students coming from elite schools.</p>
<p>Finally, as for the NSF study of PhD productivity, I think this is of interest, as schools with superior undergradute teaching will arguably better prepare students for PhD’s. However, recognize that the top-ranked schools in this study, Caltech, Harvey Mudd, and MIT in the top three, and also New Mexico Tech in the top 20, are all engineering schools. So naturally they will have a higher rate of science and engineeering PhD productivity than state schools where only a small fraction of students study science and engineering. In fact, for many decades, MIT stood at #2 on the NSF list after Caltech, but in the past decade or so, MIT has branched out and increased enrollment of humanities majors, thus they have fallen to #3 on the list, not because they have gone downhill, but simply because science/engineering majors make up a smaller fraction of the undergraduate student body.</p>
<p>I examined the New Mexico Tech course catalog and syllabi in detail, and from the currilculum, it looks like a good school. There is a physics professor at Caltech who earned BS, MS, PhD all from NMT. However, the 4-year graduation rate at NMT is a paultry 23%, the retention rate is 71%, and the school is basically open admission for any high school student with a GPA of 2.5. Source: <a href=“http://www.nmt.edu/images/stories/registrar/InstResearch/CDS2011_2012.pdf[/url]”>http://www.nmt.edu/images/stories/registrar/InstResearch/CDS2011_2012.pdf</a>.</p>
<p>Triceradad, thanks for the study link!</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd is high on the number of students that go on to grad school because they only offer a general engineering degree.</p>
<p>I spent some time talking to a NMT student over PMs. His conclusion was that the education was good, but there were too many students who were unprepared for the rigor or just simply too delayed in Math to really make an honest run at Physics or Engineering. There are Freshmen taking trigonometry. As a comparison, you can’t even apply to Olin without having taken Calc AB and Calc BC in high school. He attributed this lack of readiness to the New Mexico public schools.</p>
<p>It is an interesting exercise. It’s always takes a little extra courage to buck conventional wisdom.</p>
<p>M</p>
<p>P.S. what was you final list at the conclusion of your search?</p>
<p>NeuroE,</p>
<p>I haven’t even opened the link, but it makes much more sense already, as does your final conclusion. We have a little extra advantage with the Western Undergraduate Exchange. It opens up some of the adjacent states to “good deals” too.</p>
<p>Good luck. Thanks!</p>
<p>M</p>
<p>I’m not so sure about the methodologies underlying the Business Insider list or the accuracy of the comparative ranking in USNWR for engineering programs. Does USNWR really rank Harvard Engineering as the #3 in the US? Many of the universities in the listing are shown as NR “not ranked” according to USNWR but I know that’s inaccurate. I’m sure that Rennselear does a good job in engineering but I’m surprised at their top 4 ranking in Business Insider.</p>
<p>One word answer…No.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You might be surprised at the deals you can get for some private schools. I was able to go to CMU for cheaper than my brother went to one of our in-state publics. You can also look at honors colleges at other large publics since they tend to be more generous with financial aid.</p>
<p>Really, in almost every standard way a good standard university is no worse than a top 3. The education is about the same (you use similar textbooks), prestige doesn’t matter (except if you go into business), and there are plenty of research/internship opportunities.
You really have to understand the real advantages of a top school do not lie in the standard industry world.</p>
<p>Business Insider had Harvard as the number 3 university. It also ranks its engineering higher than probably warranted.</p>
<p>M</p>
<p>Another caveat is that our EFC is high, so the only financial aid he’ll get will be merit aid. That essentially boils down to comparing programs at their full price.</p>
<p>M</p>
<p>I personally like my method of stalking people’s public profiles to see where they went to school and the jobs they had/have. Remember all those JPL control room photos from the recent Mars landing? The captions at the bottom had most of those people’s names. I found vast majority came from state schools like Boise State, Penn State, UC-Irvine and the like. Now I did find two people from Cal-tech, though you’d think there would be more considering JPL’s affiliation with the school. Oddly enough, no MIT, Cornell, Berkeley, or CMU grads; for that matter, most of the top schools were absent. Did find one Stanford and one Hopkins. </p>
<p>The other approach I’ve had success with is doing a Google search for linked in profiles using quoted school names and majors. For example search field ‘LinkedIn “University of Maryland” “Aerospace Engineering”’ </p>
<p>I found it to be a real eye opener when it came to figuring out just what kind of pathways are out there in engineering.</p>