<p>Have you seen these new rankings of engineering schools based on return on investment? The list is compiled by Affordable College Online, a nonprofit organization. It reminds me of the President's speech urging that colleges be ranked on the value they provide for students.</p>
<p>Top</a> Colleges for Engineering Majors - ROI | Affordable Colleges Online</p>
<p>These are the top ten:</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd
Caltech
Stanford
Yale
Columbia
GMU
Cooper Union
Dartmouth
UC - Berkeley
MIT</p>
<p>The use of Payscale data muddies the return part of the equation. “Engineering schools” may have varying mixes of engineering versus other majors. If they are using only engineering majors, that still leaves the varying mix of types of engineering majors (chemical, civil, electrical, mechanical, etc.) muddying the comparison.</p>
<p>The cost side is even muddier. College pricing varies individually to a great extent, and not necessarily transparently. Average cost is not a reliable indicator since different schools may have students from different family income backgrounds as relevant to financial aid calculations. For an individual student, an actual net price from a financial aid offer (or net price calculator result if at the application or searching stage) would be more accurate to use, but would not allow the organization to make a “top ten” list.</p>
<p>Considering cost in terms of average time to graduation makes superficial sense, but perhaps less so when time to graduation is likely more related to the student’s ability, motivation, and preparation than the it is to the school. A top student will probably graduate in eight semesters or fewer at any decent school; a marginal student will probably take extra time at any school (that s/he is admitted to), if s/he graduates at all.</p>
<p>The ROI they use needs some work. Two of the schools, GMU and UVA, give a “return” of almost 20x the money spent on tuition, whereas most of the schools on the list are in the range of 10x return. If the goal is to make school look like an investment, then the % return is an important factor. Strictly investing, I would send two students to GMU.</p>
<p>I thought that Cal Poly Slo and was the best ROI engineering school since it is so low cost for in state.</p>
<p>These schools seem to be a bit on the prestigious side. It’s possible that the metric they’re using fails to take into account various confounding factors:
<p>I’d also bet that there are other ways in which they might have done the calculations to add more emphasis to short-term cost; the outcome here seems to be weighted more heavily towards long-term benefit, which may not be an appropriate weighting for some students.</p>
<p>If you are a NMF, it is tuff to beat A&M, that is on the US News & World Report top 20 list of Engineering Universities, av salary of $67k (over $100k for Petroleum engineer) and gives you more than free tuition in scholarships. [Survey</a> Results](<a href=“http://moses.tamu.edu/ccsurveyreports/SSResults.aspx]Survey”>ERROR)</p>
<p>I suppose if you have a low EFC, then the higly ranked need blind universities would have a pretty good ROI too.</p>
<p>I’m a little surprised to see GMU on that list. It’s engineering program isn’t as well known as the other school’s engineering programs.</p>
<p>And let’s be clear about what engineering disciplines we’re talking about at George Mason University. George Mason’s engineering program is very limited; no mechanical, no chemical, no materials science. And the Bioengineering department does not have ABET accreditation.</p>
<p>^
They do offer a mech minor but you are right that it is very limited in scope. They only offer around 9 majors and don’t offer mech, aero, materials and other standard ones. </p>
<p>The CS and computer engineering department is solid though. Probably one of the reasons why they made this list.</p>
<p>But if GMU made the list, then so should Virginia Tech. Their in state tuition on average is slightly lower and the engineering department is excellent.</p>
<p>GMU did something smart with their engineering school. Instead of duplicating what other colleges were offering they tailored their engineering programs to specialize in fields that are in high demand, particularly in the surrounding Northern Virginia tech corridor and DC area, where their students have top internship and job opportunities. GMU’s Volgenau School of Engineering departments include: Applied Information Technology; Bioengineering (new); Civil, Environmental and Infrastructure Engineering; Computer Science; Electrical and Computer Engineering; Systems Engineering and Operations Research; and Statistics. There are multiple majors within many of those departments. By focusing on rapidly growing fields and capitalizing on their location and relative youth as a university (perhaps not obligated to keep up programs with less robust growth as some older universities may be), they are turning out graduates that are well positioned for lucrative careers.</p>
<p>Re: #10</p>
<p>However, that shows the fallacy of using ROI based on groups of majors which have different post-graduation employment prospects. GMU’s numbers may look better because it offers mostly higher demand majors, but that does not necessarily mean that a student will get a better ROI at GMU versus another school in the same major.</p>
<p>This list is pretty misleading. I used to work with a bunch of Mudd graduates since my division manager was an alum and liked to recruit at his alma mater. It’s a great school that produces very good engineers. On the other hand it’s also a small, selective, and expensive liberal arts school whose most popular majors are all STEM majors (42% of their students are engineering majors).</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.hmc.edu/files/institutionalresearch/CDS%2020012-13/CDS_2012-13_Web.pdf[/url]”>http://www.hmc.edu/files/institutionalresearch/CDS%2020012-13/CDS_2012-13_Web.pdf</a> indicates that Harvey Mudd has only 6% in non-STEM majors (which must be taken as off-campus majors at other Claremont colleges, as Harvey Mudd’s humanities and social studies department does not offer a major). Only 3% of graduates majored in biology, normally the most numerous and lowest paid STEM major.</p>
<p>The other STEM major percentages listed are 35% engineering, 26% CS, 18% physical science, 14% math and statistics. So it is no surprise that Harvey Mudd graduates tend to find well paying jobs.</p>
<p>If you can attend top state universities like UCs, UMich, UIUC, Purdue, GaTech, UT (Austin) UW (Seattle & Madison), UMd, UVa, … paying in-state tuition then it doesn’t really make sense to attend “second-tier” private colleges like Cornell, CMU, Duke, Rice, Harvey Mudd, Brow, Cooper Union, WashU … paying full tuition. MIT, Stanford and CalTech are the only exceptions - JMHO.</p>
<p>Weird, I’ve seen Georgia Tech ranked #1 among all American universities for ROI.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t consider Mudd to be a “second-tier” school. IMO, they have the best undergrad engineering program in the US.</p>
<p>The write up on Tufts (at #19) notes a strong advising program. Having just matriculated, my D can attest already to this fact.</p>
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<p>I have family engineering grads from both MIT and Stanford and several acquaintances who were faculty at CalTech. All recommended against attending their respective schools for undergrad. To a person, all said world class graduate programs, but not undergrad focussed with much of the teaching done by graduates.</p>
<p>i thought wpi was considered a good investment!</p>
<p>The ROI when based strictly off the academics can possibly apply to all the engineering-type majors EXCEPT for Computer Science.</p>
<p>Why?</p>
<p>A “2+2” grad…who attends a community college for 2 years and finishes at just about ANY public state university AND who specializes in what is currently “hot in the industry” will still command the same money as a grad from ANY of the schools you name.</p>
<p>Most other engineering majors does not allow for someone to become an expert or be certified in a certain CS technology area that can be partially done at home during free time.</p>