Engineering: Northwestern vs Cornell

College Search & Selection
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<p>Industrial Engineering happens to be one of the areas in which US News gives a slight edge to Northwestern.</p>

<p>Here are the US News rankings by engineering discipline:</p>

<p>aerospace Cornell=13, NU=no rank
agricultural Cornell = 4, NU = no rank
biomedical Cornell = no rank, NU = 12
chemical Cornell = 14, NU = 17
civil Cornell = 9 , NU = 13
computer Cornell = 9, NU = 17
electrical Cornell = 10, NU = 15
engineering physics Cornell = 1, NU = no rank
environmental Cornell = 9, NU = 11
industrial Cornell = 13, NU = 8
materials Cornell = 7, NU = 5
mechanical Cornell = 8, NU = 17</p>

22

<p>"Same applies to Cornell students."</p>

<p>Tell me where they are and I'll investigate. This is especially true for engineering. </p>

<p>"you must be from the East Coast to think that it's better to be a boring 4-hour drive from NYC than to be a 10-minute bus ride from Chicago."</p>

<p>I'm really talking more about job opportunities and co-op positions, not entertainment. Chicago is a great city, yes, though Cornell is much closer to several other large cities, and as a result they recruit heavily at Cornell.</p>

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<p>Thank you Everyone. I think this information will help me find a suitable school for my early eventually.</p>

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<p><a href="http://ezra.cornell.edu/posting.php?timestamp=622353600%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://ezra.cornell.edu/posting.php?timestamp=622353600&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>if cornell is actually answering "how are the students affected by the high suicide rate here?" in a question and answer session, unfounded or not, it's something to consider</p>

25

<p>"Elsijfdl confirms this anytime a thread about Cornell and northwesterns is brought up."</p>

<p>lol, coming from gomestar who runs and writes a three paragraph defense every time cornell is attacked just to make sure everyone knows it's in the ivy league</p>

26

<p>First off posting grad program rankings isn't that useful...second, how come when I say Cornell's engineering program is the strongest people complain...but when I say that Cornell's average SAT scores are much lower than other Ivy-caliber schools they say that I should only look at scores from Arts and Sciences and Engineering...</p>

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<p>thethoughtprocess-
Those are undergraduate rankings, not graduate rankings</p>

<p>If you go back read your own post, you said that Engineering was the best Cornell college by far, which is not true. Hence, the reference to the Arts and Sciences SATs, which are comparable to Engineering and to Dartmouth, Williams, Swarthmore (within 30-40 points). As monydad points out, some of the other schools at Cornell have lower SATs but they are also some of the best programs in the world in those fields.</p>

<p>It is important for students applying to Cornell to know that the colleges within Cornell have different freshman profiles, but the programs at Cornell are uniformly among the best in the world.</p>

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<p>elsijfdl,</p>

<p>"if cornell is actually answering "how are the students affected by the high suicide rate here?" in a question and answer session, unfounded or not, it's something to consider"</p>

<p>how is it bad if administration answers somebody's question who is concerned about "Cornell's high suicide rate"??? You see how dumb of a statement you made, right? I'd be concerned if they were NOT answering these types of important questions. For what it's worth, the answer again proves you wrong in your earlier post that Cornell makes students want to kill themselves, so thanks for that link!!!</p>

<p>"just to make sure everyone knows it's in the ivy league"</p>

<p>Well I'm pretty sure that everybody here knows that Cornell is and Northwestern isn't. It was already brought up earlier in the thread. </p>

<p>"It is important for students applying to Cornell to know that the colleges within Cornell have different freshman profiles, but the programs at Cornell are uniformly among the best in the world."</p>

<p>Very true. Each program looks at different things for admissions, hence the slight difference in scores for some programs.</p>

29

<p>"NU has access to a large city, though Cornell's location is absolutely gorgeous and has a very hip town with plenty of stuff to do."</p>

<p>Agree with this.</p>

<p>"If it matters, many students make weekend trips to NYC. "</p>

<p>Well somebody is usually going there each weekend, it's probably not hard to get a ride. But it is over 4 hours away. </p>

<p>This does not remotely resemble Northwestern's proximity to Chicago; frankly I wouldn't even mention it if I were you.</p>

<p>It is true though that Northwestern is in a suburb (a dry one at that). The train ride to downtown probably takes a while. But at least there is an Evanston stop, so one can get there.</p>

<p>I've lived in both Ithaca and Chicago, and loved them both, though for very different reasons.</p>

<p>The suicide thing keeps getting dragged out, has long been dispelled. It is true though that Cornell engineering is a very tough school, and is not for everybody.</p>

<p>Problem is, my daughter has friends at Northwestern who have exactly the same complaint.</p>

<p>My daughter's friends say the frat scene at Northwestern is pretty pervasive and influences social life. Cornell also is like that, but to a somewhat smaller extent I believe. This is one of the key features that turned her off from both of these schools.</p>

<p>AS for Ivy League, nothing IMO could be more irrelevant. Unless for some reason you care who your school plays sports against. Now that I think about it, there is a substantial difference in this aspect between the schools. If you care.</p>

<p>The one factor I usually like to point out to engineering types is that, due primarily to the presence of these other colleges that some people here like to look down on, Cornell has about a 50-50 male-female ratio. I know a number of engineering friends who met their mates there. In contrast, many of the tech schools are lopsidedly male.</p>

<p>Northwestern though is also fully coed. I don't know if the theater people in their communications school are willing to hang with the engineers like the pepople in Cornell's Hum Ec school do. But at least on paper there is a decent ratio there too, I recall.</p>

<p>Maybe look at the comparative breadth and depth of relevant course offerings?</p>

<p>Another consideration might be where you want to wind up after college. Both schools will attract national recruiters, however,some engineering hiring has a regional bias. Grad schools probably too, to an extent.</p>

30

<p>"This does not remotely resemble Northwestern's proximity to Chicago; frankly I wouldn't even mention it if I were you"</p>

<p>I agree, though I feel obligated to point out that it's more than possible to take a weekend trip to either NYC, philly, or Boston. I've already been to NYC this semester, and I also went during easter last semester. It isn't exactly a 10 minute drive, but it's more than easy to make a weekend out of it if you're into it.</p>

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<p>"how is it bad if administration answers somebody's question who is concerned about "Cornell's high suicide rate"??? You see how dumb of a statement you made, right? I'd be concerned if they were NOT answering these types of important questions. For what it's worth, the answer again proves you wrong in your earlier post that Cornell makes students want to kill themselves, so thanks for that link!!!"</p>

<p><a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1194020,00.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1194020,00.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>Let's leave the suicide thing at Cornell out of the discussion. The Al Qaeda Suicide Bomber Collective is not even in the top 10 of on-campus recruiters there. Top 20, maybe.</p>

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<p>From this MIT article:</p>

<p><a href="http://www-tech.mit.edu/V120/N6/comp6.6n.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www-tech.mit.edu/V120/N6/comp6.6n.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>"Cornell University is one peer institution that does maintain moderately complete records of their student deaths in response to a common perception that they have a high suicide rate. Cornell had eight students take their own lives in the past ten years. With about 19,000 students on campus, Cornell has a suicide rate of about 4.3 per 100,000 student years for that time period, far below both MIT and national rates. "</p>

<p>As for when to look at the individual colleges at Cornell, vs. looking at the whole:</p>

<p>IMO when considering academics one should be concerned primarily with the characteristics of the individual college you are applying to. Then, secondarily, with the course offerings that the other colleges may additionally provide to you. Also secondarily, the u as a whole can be considered as a population for freshman seminars and for free electives outside of one's college. A minority of courses, for many.</p>

<p>When considering admissions one should be concerned almost exclusively with the characteristics of the particular college they are applying to.</p>

<p>But when considering social issues the whole university is relevant.</p>

<p>Northwestern also has different colleges, perhaps the same is true there. Not that familiar.</p>

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<p>"I agree, though I feel obligated to point out that it's more than possible to take a weekend trip to either NYC, philly, or Boston. I've already been to NYC this semester, and I also went during easter last semester. It isn't exactly a 10 minute drive, but it's more than easy to make a weekend out of it if you're into it."</p>

<p>Well, I can take a weekend away from Northwestern in all those places too. Would it cost me tons of money to do so… probably… but the flight from Chicago to Philly is about 2 hours… so I could just as easily spend the weekend there. Such a point is kind of silly I think. Also, I do believe that Northwestern has an engineering coop too.</p>

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<p>Couple of things - I'd ignore any specific rankings of undergraduate programs and just look at Engineering programs as a whole</p>

<p>Also, statistically engineering IS the strongest part of Cornell - is this not true? If you take the engineering school at NU, I'm sure the SAT scores are comparable. Also, the Arts and Sciences at NU is probably higher than the Arts and Sciences at Cornell if you include all the programs that Cornell differentiates from Arts and Sciences whereas most schools include them.</p>

<p>That all being said I really couldn't recommend NU over Cornell or vice versa.</p>

36

<p>"Also, the Arts and Sciences at NU is probably higher than the Arts and Sciences at Cornell if you include all the programs that Cornell differentiates from Arts and Sciences whereas most schools include them."</p>

<p>1) "if you include all the programs that Cornell differentiates from Arts and Sciences whereas most schools include them."</p>

<p>Huh? what programs are you talking about? Cornell's CAS has all the traditional programs as far as I know.</p>

<p>2) I haven't seen any rankings or anything, but I doubt Northwestern's Arts & Sciences College is more highly regarded than Cornell's, overall. I would have assumed the opposite, actually, by a trivial margin. But I don't really know.</p>

<p>"Also, statistically engineering IS the strongest part of Cornell - is this not true? "</p>

<p>When I was there, the average SATs of Arts & engineering were about the same, or Arts was a trivial amount higher.But the Arts profile was similar verbal vs. math, whereas engineering was more skewed towards math. This changes from time to time. Also the acceptance rate to Arts was much lower than engineering's aceptance rate. I think this is still the case.</p>

<p>I think this bears on the characteristics of the incoming students, but does not in and of itself make a particular school "strong". To me, one should consider the characteristics, programs and offerings of the school itself, not merely the SATS of its incoming class.</p>

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<p>moneydad,</p>

<p>NU's engineering school has one of the highest, if not the highest, female-to-male ratio among all tech schools in the nation--30% vs national average of 20%.</p>

<p>Your D's friends probably have valid complaints. The "engineering first" and "design & communcation" expose freshmen to engineering design (they actually deal with real programs for real industry clients), working in small teams, and open-ended problems early. The course material is mixing mechanics, physics, linear algebra, differential eq and computer programming all in a 4-course series. This multidisciplinary approach is unlikely encountered much in HS and some students may take more time to get used to. Before that curriculum, freshmen usualy just take the basic science/math/english writing courses. I am not sure how much time they actually put in for the 2 design courses but anytime you have a design project class, it's likely time-consuming. This is a tougher schedule than when I was a student htere. NU wants students to step out of their comfort zone (no longer just reading books, writing papers/taking exams) and have more hands-on experience early but busier schedule is inevitably the trade-off.</p>

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<p>I think, thethoughtprocess, what you are missing is due to a lack of familiarity with Cornell.</p>

<p>THe special purpose colleges there are not carve-outs of topics that are generally taught in Arts & Sciences programs. They are whole special-purpose colleges in and of themselves. You will not find Agriculture or Hotel Administration being taught in most Arts & Sciences Colleges. But at Cornell a student with interest in these specialized fields can attend a college wholly devoted to them. Their curricula add to the traditional offerings in Arts & Sciences, but do not detract from them.</p>

<p>THe curriculum in the College of Arts & Sciences is very typical of this type of institution I believe. Probably broader than most, actually.</p>

<p>THe most prevalent effect of the other colleges is not subtraction of offerings from Arts & Sciences, actually it is duplication of these offerings, in some similar but not-quite-identical form, at the other colleges.</p>

<p>Where there is overlap. ie the same subject being taught in different colleges, mostly you would be taking the version offered in your own college. But there are defintely times when the duplication can be advantageous; ie when you have a scheduling problem taking the version in your college you might be able to take a similar course offered at one of the other colleges. </p>

<p>For example, a physics major in the College of Arts & Sciences might find that some very similar courses in the College of Engineering happen to fit into his schedule.</p>

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<p>"NU's engineering school has one of the highest, if not the highest, female-to-male ratio among all tech schools in the nation--30% vs national average of 20%."</p>

<p>Actually Cornell's engineering school has traditionally made similar claims in this regard; I have no idea what these stats are now.</p>

<p>But based on my personal experience I don't think that is as important as having a balanced M-F ratio in the university/immediate vicinity as a whole. I feel this way because most people I knew hooked up with people in their dorm, moreso than from their classes.YMMV.</p>

<p>Finally, it's "monydad", not "moneydad". No relation was intended. Although with tuition payments ever looming, it's more and more feeling the other way.</p>

40

<p>"Well, I can take a weekend away from Northwestern in all those places too. Would it cost me tons of money to do so… probably… but the flight from Chicago to Philly is about 2 hours… so I could just as easily spend the weekend there. Such a point is kind of silly I think"</p>

<p>In defense of Gomestar- few college students are going to fork up $$$ to fly to these places. Many Cornell students live there though, and on a given weekend you can frequently find someone driving home and get a ride. This is feasible when the places are 4 hours away, less so when they are 10 hours +.</p>

<p>The distances between interesting places in the Midwest seem to be more spread out. The only place I remember driving to was the Wisconsin Dells. And some turkey farm in Indiana? </p>

<p>But Chicago is a major, great city and is right there. </p>

<p>It is also THE destination city of the midwest. all regional players will head there, regardless of the maybe greater distance. If you want to end up in the midwest this is the place to be.</p>

<p>Though I wound up there, in Chicago, from Cornell..</p>