<p>How do the Ives rank in terms of engineering? Which school have better/worse programs?</p>
<p>They are not top ranked, but are ranked decent. I think Cornell may be the strongest for engineering.</p>
<p>In general, Cornell and Princeton have good to great engineering programs, Columbia has a pretty good one, and the rest of them are all pretty lame as far as engineering goes.</p>
<p>They are not engineering powerhouses but they are certainly not “lame”. For engineers with unrelated interests, I think the Ivies are great. UPenn SEAS and Harvard SEAS are highly ranked (top 20 by reputation) and Yale isi investing . Also, they afford students the opportunity to sorround themselves in an everonment where almost every student is highly motivated and driven students. They don’t offer the expensive facilities and NAE members that top state programs offer but by no means can they be discounted. Ivies also have the resources to offer exceptional financial aid.</p>
<p>One of my best ECE professors at WPI did his undergraduate education at Darmouth College. I think that for some engineerng students, Ivies offer a better educaton than they could get anywhere else. Think about the types of people you would want to start a business with.</p>
<p>All of them are good programs. However, Cornell, Princeton, and Columbia are top ranked ones. Penn are Brown are decent, too. Dartmouth, Harvard, and Yale I do not know much about as far as engineering goes, but I am sure the programs are great. You can’t go wrong with any of them as long as long as you get good grades.</p>
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<p>That, in my opinion, constitutes “lame” when it comes to engineering. For anyone who wants to take a technical path and not go into business or finance or something nontraditional, there are definite advantages to having all the expensive facilities and research.</p>
<p>For the average student who doesn’t fully utilize the resources at the top engineering schools, the difference wouldn’t be that dramatic between the powerhouses and the ivies. For a student who actually does utilize the excellent opportunities at said powerhouses, the difference between them could be quite dramatic.</p>
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<p>But you just admitted Ivies afford more options. What if someone wants to go into investment banking or consulting. The Ivy name opens that door much further than the UIUC name does although I am sure that there are many UIUC grads who can do finance just as well. I think all the Ivies are ranked in the top 50 or so for engineering which means they are fine. Plus some people might do better in a smaller environment.</p>
<p>I mean, I don’t go to an Ivy but I go to a smaller school that is less known research-wise and many undergraduates here do research. I am sure that at Ivies, more students will be doing research since they can admit better students. A prof interviewed me but for some reason he didn’t have $ or something so I didn’t get the job. I think undergraduate education is about having a great experience and understanding engineering fully and getting broad exposure while also potentially doing research on the side. I don’t think research is at the center of UG education since there is always grad school.</p>
<p>Even if you want to do undergrad research, the Ivies do a lot of research that is challenging to even the best undergrads (and have some NAE members as well). And you can interact with the NAE members in graduate school if you are qualified. I still don’t see what students “miss out on” by going to an Ivy for engineering or what advantages being sorrounded by NAE members and expensive equipment confer (Ivies have some too). Since you are advised by one, maybe you can provide me some insight. Surely Ivies aren’t MIT but they are good.</p>
<p>Also, Ivies have exceptionally good FA if you qualify. But state schools and non-elite privates (USC, RPI, WPI, RHIT, RIT for example) have scholarships too. But if you have a lot of financial need, Ivies seem to be the way to go if you can get in (especially HYP, Columbia as well).</p>
<p>Nearby interning opportunities are more important than whether I can tell people years from now that I went to an Ivy League school. So I’d take UT-Austin or even OSU over Dartmouth.</p>
<p>Interestingly, most engineering students at the ivies do not go into engineering. At UPenn, for instance, less than 20% go into engienering jobs. At the Ivies, engineering students all have their eyes on finance and consulting.</p>
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<p>I said nothing of the sort. Ivies have more of the right connections to get you into investment banking or hook you up with venture capitalists to go immediately out on your own. However, the subset of engineers who are interested in that is a very small portion of all the engineers in the country. I know people from UIUC and UMich (for example) who have gone into investment banking as well, so it isn’t like those kinds of schools exclude you from that game.</p>
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<p>On Wall Street? Yes. In business circles? Yes. In engineering? Absolutely not. UIUC is recognized in industry and academia as one of the top schools for engineering. You see a ton of faculty at research institutions from Illinois and a lot of engineers at great companies from Illinois (of course the same could be said about other similar schools like Purdue, Michigan, Georgia Tech, Berkeley, etc.).</p>
<p>You are absolutely kidding yourself if you think Ivy engineering (outside of Cornell and Princeton) opens up more doors than those other big name engineering schools in technical circles.</p>
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<p>This is a lapse in logic. I know many researchers who were unheralded coming out of high school but are fantastic researchers. Quality of research and quality of student, while not entirely disjoint, are not coupled to the point where you have to be one to be the other. Furthermore, it isn’t necessarily the brightest students who are going to gravitate towards doing research, it is the most passionate ones.</p>
<p>As for NAE members, that is just a title. However, it happens to be a title that is given to researchers who have made a profound impact on their chosen field of study. It doesn’t mean that they are necessarily good teachers or anything that the average undergrad will see, but it means that they are absolutely world-class researchers. In other words, if you want to get into research, there is no better place to go than the lab of an NAE member as far as getting shown the ropes by an expert goes. Additionally, if NAE members are usually VERY well known in industry and academia in their field, so getting a letter of recommendation from them is very nice, and their industry connections can really help you. Again, that is only a benefit to undergrads if they make the effort to get involved.</p>
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<p>And for once, Homer28 is supporting my point. ;-)</p>
<p>Ivies are great for getting you into non-traditional engineering fields. For technical positions, they lag behind the major engineering schools.</p>
<p>Harvard SEAS is new (I believe it was finally established in 2005??). But with its math and science reputation, and the medical school (which is great for the BME), the research opportunity should be really good.</p>
<p>Cornell is always the top 10 in the overall engineering problem, nation wide. As far as CS goes, Cornell is always ranked #1 or #2 in the regional ACM competition. I didn’t search on the national rank - too lazy to do so 
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<p>If I am not wrong, Princeton has a small engineering division? So Princeton’s ranking may only appear in certain programs.</p>
<p>Columbia is somewhat a mixed, like UPenn. But Columbia has a long history of “success” in engineering. But I think the business side of the school, and the location also provides additional paths to students.</p>
<p>But if you do want to venture into “nontraditional” paths, Ivies are the way to go, right?</p>
<p>The are A way to go, not the only way to go. As they at, there is more than one way to skin a cat.</p>
<p>Princeton has an excellent program, about top 20 overall.</p>