Engineering...does school really matter?

College Majors Engineering Majors
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<p>Below are 3 links for engineering rankings. The first is the US News undergraduate engineering ranking. I see Harvard at 27. The second is ranking engineering at schools without a phd program. In the third link, go down to US Undergraduate Engineering Programs Ranking to check out individual program rankings. There are lots of public colleges and universities on these lists. I have to believe that people in engineering who are hiring engineers are aware of the caliber of different programs even if a school doesn’t have an elite name.</p>

<p>[2012</a> Rankings of Top US Engineering Programs for Undergraduate Students|Best universities in USA](<a href=“http://www.university-list.net/us/rank/univ-0024.htm]2012”>2018 US Undergraduate Accounting Program Rankings | Top Colleges in USA | Best universities | US News Undergraduate School Rankings and Tuitions - Education Rankings)</p>

<p>[Best</a> Undergraduate Engineering Programs - US Colleges Rankings (No PhD schools) 2011 , Top Universities in US](<a href=“http://www.university-list.net/us/rank/univ-20130044.html]Best”>2016 Best Undergraduate Teaching Rankings - US National Liberal Arts Colleges | Top Colleges in USA | Best universities | US News Undergraduate Rankings - Education Rankings)</p>

<p>[US</a> University and College Rankings (undergraduate) 2012 , Top Universities by US News](<a href=“2018 Campus Ethnic Diversity Rankings - US National Universities | P1/3 | Top Colleges in USA | Best universities | US News Undergraduate School Rankings and Tuitions - Education Rankings”>2018 Campus Ethnic Diversity Rankings - US National Universities | P1/3 | Top Colleges in USA | Best universities | US News Undergraduate School Rankings and Tuitions - Education Rankings)</p>

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<p>BUandBC82,</p>

<p>No offense, but I would put much stock in a random Chinese web page that looks mostly stolen from USNWR, a ranking system which is highly flawed in and of itself.</p>

<p>M</p>

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<p>I actually don’t care too much about rankings. I’ll confess to looking at them, but not putting a lot of stock in them. I got that link from a past post on CC. The site publishes rankings. It’s just a place to look at rankings, nothing more. It said the engineering rankings were from US News. I thought I was making a point about how even the engineering rankings include a wide range of schools, not just the top few “elite” schools. I wasn’t trying to show anymore than that.</p>

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<p>Point well taken. Thanks.</p>

<p>M</p>

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<p>This is interesting, but the list certainly isn’t exhaustive.</p>

<p>M</p>

<p>[Best</a> Engineering Colleges By Salary Potential](<a href=“http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/best-engineering-colleges.asp]Best”>Best Engineering Schools | Payscale)</p>

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<p>Keep in mind the payscale lists only include students that finished their education with a BS. If you wind up getting a Masters, PhD, MD, JD, or any other sort of advanced degree you won’t count for your school’s totals.</p>

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<p>Yes, but it is comparing apples to apples.</p>

<p>So, consider this situation. My S could attend New Mexico Tech for $70,520. He could attend Harvey Mudd for $244,452. That’s a difference of $174,000. We will pay full price where ever he goes. I’m not even sure we could pay for Mudd, but I’m throwing it out there as an example as all of the privates, CMU, RPI, Rice, etc. will be north of $200K. I know there are intangibles, but that’s a HUGE difference for what appears to be relatively similar earnings potential.</p>

<p>Thoughts?</p>

<p>M</p>

<p>P.S. Can anyone tell me how I can use the quote function on this forum? Thanks!</p>

48

<p>eyemgh,</p>

<p>My conclusion, on behalf of my son, was that in-state flagships are the best value for students who are willing to take advantage of the opportunities available. My son was offerred admission to our in-state flagship after completing 10th grade, got in the honors program, and with a merit scholarship to boot, so it was a no-brainer to go there rather than finish high school and apply to elites. He is very happy with his decision and doing well, with GPA 3.91 so far, and aiming for top-tier grad school, so I don’t think he has compromised any future opportunities by not holding out for undergrad MIT or Caltech, for which there would be no guarantee of admission in any event.</p>

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<p>You’d have type in "

[/quote]
" after the quote and "

[quote]
" before the quote.</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>Thanks Ken.</p>

<p>M</p>

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<p>There is a significant level of randomness associated with getting into Stanford or MIT. They both have more qualified applicants than they have space for, by a long shot. A student at my son’s school was accepted at both Yale and Harvard and rejected by Stanford. It is not objective by any measure. With great grades, SATs and ECs, it’s still more likely that an individual will be rejected than accepted at both of those. </p>

<p>M</p>

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<p>There is no widespread evidence to support that last claim. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. The correlation to success is to SAT score and where you apply, NOT to where you actually go. </p>

<p>M</p>

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<p>There’s another consideration, assuming you can afford both, opportunity cost. It’s one thing to ponder whether or not an elite school is worth $175,000 more than a good value state school, but what if you invested the money saved. At 6% interest, that $175k becomes over $3,200,000 in the 50 years between 18 and 68. Earn 9.4%, the average return of the DJIA since 1900, and you’d have $15,500,000. In my mind, there had better be a pretty tangible difference in the programs to justify that, hence the OP, does it really matter where you go?</p>

<p>M</p>

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<p>Here are the schools of the top ten government contractors CEO’s. I use these companies as a representative sample because their work is primarily science, engineering, and technology focused, so we would expect the people at the helm to be quite the successful technical people. MIT is in one person’s profile.</p>

<p>Lockheed CEO
BS Slippery Rock University (Summa Cum Laude)
MS Engineering Management NYU Poly
MBA Columbia</p>

<p>Northrop CEO
BS/MS EE MIT
Executive MBA UCLA</p>

<p>Boeing CEO
BA Yale
MBA Harvard</p>

<p>SAIC CEO
BS EE Virginia Military Institute
MBA Golden Gate University</p>

<p>Raytheon CEO
BS Industrial Engineering, Cal Poly SLO (Magna Cum Laude)
MBA Golden Gate University</p>

<p>General Dynamics CEO
BS Naval Academy</p>

<p>Hewlett-Packard CEO
BA Princeton
MBA Harvard</p>

<p>Booz Allen Hamilton CEO
BS Electrical Engineering UPenn
MS/PhD EE UIUC w/minors in math and nuclear physics</p>

<p>CSC CEO
BA Ohio University
MBA Drexel University</p>

<p>DynCorp CEO
BS EE Lafayette College</p>

<p>While we’re at it, lets pick some modern era American scientists.</p>

<p>Persi Diaconis
BS City College of New York
MA/PhD Harvard</p>

<p>Alan Guth
BS/MS/PhD MIT</p>

<p>Donald Knuth
BS Physics Case Western
PhD Caltech</p>

<p>Gordon Moore
BS Chemistry UC Berkeley
PhD Chemistry Caltech w/minor in Physics</p>

<p>Allan Sandage
BS UIUC
PhD Caltech</p>

<p>Charles Hard Townes
BS Physics & BA Modern Languages Furman University (Summa Cum Laude)
MA Physics Duke University
PhD Caltech</p>

<p>Craig Venter
College of San Mateo (community college)
BS Biochemistry UC San Diego
PhD Physiology and Pharmacology UC San Diego</p>

<p>James D. Watson
BS Zoology University of Chicago (19 years old)
PhD Indiana University (22 years old)</p>

<p>Steven Weinberg
BS Cornell
PhD Physics Princeton</p>

<p>Edward Witten
BA History Brandeis University w/minor in linguistics
UW-Madison Economics dropout
PhD Physics Princeton</p>

<p>Neil deGrasse Tyson
BA Physics Harvard
MA Astronomy UT-Austin
M.Phil./PhD Astrophysics University of Texas but transferred to Columbia University</p>

<p>It seems to me that places like Caltech are where you go AFTER your non-elite undergrad degree.</p>

<p>My point is, that while perhaps everyone on this list could have gone to one of the “top 3,” the fact that they didn’t speaks volumes about the different journeys one can take to be successful. As well, even with today’s fierce competition, did the education at schools like Lafayette or Furman go down in quality? I basically believe that these people have proven that it matters less where you went to undergrad and matters more what you did afterward.</p>

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<p>Thanks!</p>

<p>M</p>

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<p>I had received a generous offer from RPI and asked if CMU could match it. I probably could have gone to my state school or another state’s honor college with a merit scholarship for cheaper than CMU, but I feel the extra bit of money was well worth what I got out of it.</p>

<p>I’d also say going to an “elite” school can have different benefits depending on who you are and what sort of luck you have. I’m at Caltech now working on my PhD, and I wound up collaborating with a former PhD from our lab that was in industry for a few years. He’s now at JPL and has introduced me to a ton of people up there. They’ve basically told me I need to graduate ASAP, so I can get hired by them.</p>

<p>One of my friends and I were at a conference, and we were talking with this dude from Switzerland. One of the responsibilities of his job was helping organize an exchange student type program for graduate students at his national lab (or whatever their equivalent is). When he heard we were from Caltech he immediately offered summer jobs if we wanted to work there. My friend took him up on the offer since one of the top people in his subfield works there. He wound up spending nine months in Switzerland doing research and skiing. In a few months when he graduates he’s going back to continue working there as a postdoc.</p>

<p>These are things that are being in the right place at the right time with the right set of skills. It certainly can happen at less known schools, but it seems to me like it could be a lot harder.</p>

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<p>NeuroEngineer “I was just reading an article about Artificial Intelligence (I know, not exactly engineering…) and the 4ish pioneers in the field were all MIT and Stanford… I mean the kind of experiences amd knowledge you gain at a brilliant place like mit/stanford has to be worth it. If you want do something big, going to those schools is whats best i think. If you wanna be a technical enginee forever working under people and not becoming an entreprenuer or leader in the field, then of course state schools are the place for you. I am personally pretty ambitious and wanna do something cool and original and awesome that impacts the world.”</p>

<p>Okay, so you have four people as an example. Did they get their BS degrees from MIT and Stanford or are they just working there as Phds? If you look up government grants for fundamental research in CS and Robotics you will find significant funding of state schools like Ga Tech and U of Minnesota. Why does cutting edge work only register when its one of your 3 top schools? Fort that matter, why do you assume that state schools don’t generate entrepreneurs?</p>

<p>It appears to me that your mind is pretty well made up. Usually if someone has a preconceived notion they may have a tendency to mentally acknowledge only that evidence that supports their theory and disregard or downplay evidence that contradicts their assumptions. Hopefully you will be accepted to one of your top 3 schools and then be able to judge based on your own outcome whether it was worth it. At a state school I think you’ve set yourself up for less than an optimal outcome, e.g., when you say that you need super talented peers in order to really excel it tells me that you are not self motivated. Those who are self motivated make their own opportunities and you really need that characteristic to do well at a state university and especially as an entrepreneur.</p>

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<p>Here is another resource that has some discussion and research into this issue: [Amazon.com:</a> The Thinking Student’s Guide to College: 75 Tips for Getting a Better Education (Chicago Guides to Academic Life) (9780226721156): Andrew Roberts: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/The-Thinking-Students-Guide-College/dp/0226721159]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/The-Thinking-Students-Guide-College/dp/0226721159). In this book, a professor from Northwestern provides compelling evidence that a motivated student can receive an equally good quality undergraduate education at any of the top 300 or so U.S. colleges and universities. The book is not specific to engineering, so this includes liberal arts colleges. He also tells students exactly what they should be doing to find the opportunities and what actions to take to get this quality education no matter which institution they happen to attend.</p>

<p>The book also has a chapter on grad school, and here, the author states that the rules are different, and reputation does matter, that you want to go to the best PhD program you can get into. However, coming from an elite undergraduate school doesn’t necessarily help you get into a top PhD program, because there are profs from top grad schools in all the state schools and liberal arts colleges who maintain contacts within their fields and can help top students get into the programs of their choice.</p>

<p>Another book, [A</a> Review of Fifty Public University Honors Programs: John Willingham: Amazon.com: Kindle Store](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Review-Public-University-Programs-ebook/dp/B007VCZL40/ref=dp_kinw_strp_1]A”>http://www.amazon.com/Review-Public-University-Programs-ebook/dp/B007VCZL40/ref=dp_kinw_strp_1), reviews what the author considers to be the top 50 public university honors programs. One criteria in the ranking is the schools’ record for earning prestigious scholarships (Rhodes, Fullbright, Cambridge, Truman, Goldwater, etc). The point I want to make here is that author, who includes plenty of citations, shows that the very top undergraduate students in the U.S. who earn the most prestigious national and international scholarships (not going into college, but upon graduation), do not hale exclusively from elite private universities. About half of them graduate from state universities, many of them from the list in this book. So it is a myth that the best and brightest attend the elites.</p>

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<p>Triseradad,</p>

<p>I own both of those. Great resources!</p>

<p>M</p>

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<p>From what I’ve seen, equal students get pretty much equal results, with the exception of the mediocre at elite schools (they tend to be a bit over average).
However, I’d think that this doesn’t really hold for graduate school. Anyone have numbers for that? Grad school programs seem like they vary more than undergrad.</p>