Engineering schools?

<p>Harvey Mudd and Lehigh are awesome places; I guess you should have a copy of the US News Rankings next to any other set of rankings, just for comparing</p>

<p>Sam Lee:</p>

<p>Actually, you should divide each number by roughly 2 to get a per 1000 undergrads moving through the system rather than per 1000 current enrollment. Say a school has a current enrollment of 1000. Given an average of 5 years to graduate (which is about right nationally), that 1000 represents five graduating years of undergrads and we are talking about 10 years of PhDs. So, if a school produces 100 PhDs divide by 2 to get 5 years of graduates and 5 years of PhDs.</p>

<p>
[quote]
I did meet a girl from Swarthmore at Northwestern when she came to pursue MS in chemical engineering there.

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</p>

<p>Well, I guess she did a little better than a third-rate engineering grad school, huh? I was under the impression that Northwestern has a fabulous engineering school. Actually, 8 of the 30 or so total engineering majors from the last two senior classes at Swarthmore have gone immediately to grad school upon graduation in the last two years (not counting a couple that went to med school). Here are the eight grad schools. I don't know much about engineering PhD programs, but these all look like reputable schools to me:</p>

<p>Johns Hopkins
Carnegie Mellon
Emory
Florida Institute of Tech. (Oceonography)
Univ. of Southhampton (England)
University of Washington
Princeton University
University of Wisconsin, Madison</p>

<p>Two more majored in Computer Science and went directly into Computer Science PhD programs at:</p>

<p>Johns Hopkins School of Engineering
Washington U - St. Louis</p>

<p>
[quote]
So you are telling me when 3.3 people out of 1000 per year at Swartmore go on to do PhDs in engineering somewhere (you don't know if it's MIT/Stanford or some 3rd-tier school), Swarthmore is doing a better job than Dartmouth (1.5 people out of its 1000 students get PhDs)?

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</p>

<p>Please point me to anywhere in my post that I said anything of the sort! I posted nothing at all like that. I simply posted a list of data. Specifically, the number of Engineering PhDs over a ten year period from the NSF database per 1000 students of 2003 enrollment. Actually, the Dartmouth and Swarthmore undergrad engineering programs are pretty similar. Both are ABET-accredited majors in general engineering. At Dartmouth, you receive a B.A. with a major in Engineering Sciences. At Swarthmore, you receive a B.S. with a major in Engineering. Both also have programs for minors in Egineering and joint majors, for example, with Physics.</p>

<p>Personally, I would only recommend an ABET accredited BS - General Engineering program like Swarthmore's or Dartmouth to certain kinds of students. The run of the mill kid here asking about Engineering is probably looking for a more vocationally-oriented specialized mech, or elec. or whatever degree to go straight into the workplace as a working engineer. I think that most often an engineering school (either standalone or a school within a university)would make more sense. </p>

<p>On the other hand, a kid who is undecided between say math, Physics, and Engineering or wants to combine a minor in Engineering with other fields (perhaps with an eye towards management or patent law) or who wants a broad background in all phases of engineering with an eye towards specialization in grad school or who simply doesn't want to lock into an Engineering school, might find something like BS - Engineering program appropriate. Because it covers all fields of engineering and requires a minimum of 12 semesters of engineeering plus 8 semesters of physics, chemistry, and math on top of at least six semesters of humanities and social sciences, Swarthmore's engineering major is brutally difficult -- the most difficult major at a school that is known for heavy workloads. I think it's a difficult program to complete in four years. Wouldn't be my cup of tea.</p>

<p>Anyway, I personally wouldn't place too much importance on PhDs production. First of all, PhDs programs aren't that hard to enter if some doesn't fixated on only the top ranked ones. The 2nd/3rd tier schools are actually trying to get people to study there and we do have shortage of Americans doing PhDs in science/math/engineering/econ. Otherwise, we wouldn't be seeing so many internationals. When I got my acceptance letter from various MS programs, JHU gave me half scholarship even I didn't inquire about it and I was an international student. LOL!</p>

<p>Out of the appromixately 40 people in my chemE class at Northwestern, I knew four went to do PhDs--santa barbara, caltech, wisconsin, and stanford. But I wouldn't say they are the smartest in the class. I knew two really sharp ones went to work for business consulting firms. A school known for preprofessionalism like Northwestern is not gonna produce tons of PhDs. But most have no problem to get jobs. That's my two cents.</p>

<p>
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school known for preprofessionalism like Northwestern is not gonna produce tons of PhDs.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Right. And how would a 17 year old find out which colleges specialize in pre-professional career tracks and which send a very high percentage to PhD programs?</p>

<p>One way would be to look at a list of per capita PhD production. If you see two comparably excellent schools, one with a much higher per capita PhD production, then one very real possibility is just exactly that difference in emphasis -- pre-professional versus academic career paths. A student looking for the pre-pro might look at the schools with good academic reputations, but lower on the per capita PhD production. </p>

<p>This wouldn't apply to engineering so much, but looking at that academic versus pre-prof. slant could be a key consideration in deciding between, say, Northwestern and U Chicago -- two excellent schools in the same metro area that are quite dissimilar in "style".</p>

<p>For a cost-effective undergraduate engineering education, do not overlook what your state university system offers. In many cases, you will get a top-tier education for a fraction of the cost of other alternatives.</p>

<p>mikemac,</p>

<p>I went to the ABET website and looked for accredited biomedical engineering schools and found that several schools ranked in the top ten for BME such as MIT, U of Washington, Georgia Tech, and UMich aren't ABET accredited... </p>

<p>My question is, why do people still go to those schools for that major if ABET is so crucial? And how do they get such a high ranking without ABET? Or is the site just not updated and they really are accredited...?</p>

<p>If anyone else can help explain I'd appreciate it, thanks!</p>

<p>crazy14, biomed is a pretty new field so the ABET acreditation may not be so important. Certainly it **IS] for the established areas such as civil, EE, mechanical, etc.</p>

<p>If you look at the requirements for grad schools you'll see they care about ABET. For example, this comes from the U of Wisconsin Biomedical Engineering Grad School website: "To be admitted to the program, applicants normally are required to have an undergraduate degree in engineering (biomedical, chemical, electrical, industrial, mechanical, etc.) or physical science from an ABET-accredited program or its equivalent." Since biomed is new there's probably some wiggle room, but if you're from one of the other engineering branches you're likely sunk.</p>

<p>From the quote, they said: "ABET-accredited program or its equivalent".
What other equivalents are there?</p>

<p>"One way would be to look at a list of per capita PhD production. If you see two comparably excellent schools, one with a much higher per capita PhD production, then one very real possibility is just exactly that difference in emphasis -- pre-professional versus academic career paths."</p>

<p>And another very real possibility is that one school has a higher proportion of engineering majors than the other school does. Which says nothing about the breadth and quality of offerings available to a student who wants to get a PhD down the road. </p>

<p>"A student looking for the pre-pro might look at the schools with good academic reputations, but lower on the per capita PhD production. "</p>

<p>And possibly come to completely wrong conclusions, if they haven't taken into account the above-cited defects inherent in this methodology. Some school might appear to be low in engineering PhD production on this ranking, when in reality every engineering graduate in their program goes on to get a PhD. This would happen if there are a high proportion of non-engineering majors attending that same university. </p>

<p>For this reason these listings in their current form, as you repeatedly trot them out without warning of this significant deficiency, are misleading or worse.</p>

<p>Mony:</p>

<p>How is real data any more misleading than the typical response on these threads which is usually something like...and I quote....''I think Stanford ranks the second after MIT in engineering."</p>

<p>I mean, don't you find it rather misleading to suggest that it would be possible, with no information about a particular student, to suggest an absolute #1 or #2 ranking? #1 or #2 by what measure? Where is CalTech? Where are all the other great engineering schools? I wouldn't try to identify the #1 school in any field. It's impossible.</p>

<p>At least with a list of 50 schools, all with some proven track record in producing engineering graduates, kids might spy a few options -- in various locations, various sizes, various styles, and various degrees of admissions selectivity.</p>

<p>If you were looking at a college for engineering, wouldn't you research the size of the engineering department? Surely nobody picks a engineering college without doing even that most rudimentary investigation. Your particular example doesn't hold up in the real world. Some of the schools in the 50 on the list I posted have very small percentages of engineering undergrads. For example, Swarthmore only graduates about 20 engineering majors a year. But, historically, about 1 in 5 of those go on to get engineering PhDs. That's why it shows up on the list above schools that have huge engineering programs</p>

<p>I frankly don't really care if someone trying to choose a college based on someone's arbitrary "ranking" is misled, because that's such a flawed strategy for college selection in the first place. Does it matter if "Stanford is #2 to MIT" if you have a full scholarship to UMich-Ann Arbor? Or that MIT is #1 if you don't want to attend a dedicated tech school? Or that Caltech is number whatever if you don't have the test scores and transcript to have a prayer of getting in?</p>

<p>The only real value to this forums is to offer as wide a list of suggestions as possible so that each student can begin to do their research. It really accomplishes nothing to just rattle off the schools they've already heard of.</p>

<p>Interesteddad...</p>

<p>I'm a hiring manager for a major aerospace company and I don't like your list. The reason is because there are many fine schools that are not represented on it, and some of the ones that are represented, are not on our list of preferred schools. We have internal real-world data on the performance of 10s of thousands of engineers for a large number of schools...we <em>know</em> what schools produce outstanding engineers....there is no guess-work.</p>

<p>Still, if you take your data as just a normalized list, rather than a ranking of some sort, then I have no issue with it.</p>

<p>It's thought-provoking, and programs that have a high proportion of future doctorates are unique, distinctive, and must do a good job giving a theoretical and research grounding to baccalaureate graduates. But the "they must be doing something right" comment strikes me as being a bit too normative. The PhD is not necessarily the appropriate or practical terminal degree for most practicing engineers. </p>

<p>I wonder how many engineers, even academic engineers, would consider PhD production to be the correct measure of an engineering department's "rightness?" Or, more to the point, the "rightness" of a program for a young person in high school interested in an engineering career? I don't know. Given the applied and professional nature of the engineering field, one might argue that graduates earning an MSE or attaining a PE (or some similar measure), may be an even better measure of "doing something right." PhD attainment seems to me to measure the number of people choosing a rather narrow (albeit prestigious) sector of the engineering profession.</p>

<p>Most engineers either go into the work force or pursue a terminal Masters of Engineering degree. Compared to the pure sciences, very few go onto doctoral studies. Such lists are not indicative of anything and posting them to get a rise out of everyone here serves no purpose.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Still, if you take your data as just a normalized list, rather than a ranking of some sort, then I have no issue with it.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>It would be stupid to use a list of undergrad PhD production as a ranking list. Just like using the USNEWS ranking lists to choose a college is stupid.</p>

<p>For example, we might have two high school students interested in engineering. One wants to complete his degree and go to work for your company. Another, wants to use undergrad engineering as a stepping stone to a PhD and a research oriented field in academics. Most likely, those two students could be attracted to different schools. Some schools are more vocation oriented, others more research oriented. Some probably do quite well serving both types of students.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Compared to the pure sciences, very few go onto doctoral studies.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Actually, engineering is one of the most popular fields for PhDs. accounting for about 9% of all PhDs awarded between 1994 and 2003. The only fields that produced more PhDs over the most recent 10 year period are (rough numbers):</p>

<p>non-science education: 50,000
Biological sciences: 37,000
Psych: 29,000</p>

<p>Engineering: 24,000
Chemistry: 12,000
Physics: 6,000</p>

<p>Caltech Is Number 1</p>

<p>rogracer,</p>

<p>I would be interested in your opinion regarding schools you may recommend for either aerospace or mechanical engineering. My son is a high school junior and we are doing the college tour this summer.</p>

<p>Which schools do companies recruit engineering grduates from?</p>

<p>Would you also be so kind as to offer input about the engineering programs at U of F, U of Maryland, Tulane, Case Western, Vanderbilt? I realize that not all these schools have aerospace engineering programs, but still would like your input.</p>

<p>Many thanks in advance for whatever info you can share with those of us trying to learn.</p>

<p>~gnusasaurus</p>

<p>Like monty, I, and some others already pointed out, the serious flaw of interestedadd's list is that the engineering PhDs production number was normalized to the enrollment of the entire undergrad instead of number of engineering majors. That list is therefore garbage and hence not even worth being discussed here. When we have a list with PhD production normalized to the number of undergrad ENGINEERING students, then we can start talking about pre-pro vs academics...etc.</p>

<p>The point that I and several others made was perhaps misunderstood.</p>

<p>We didn't say that engineering accounted for few of the total PhDs granted in the U.S. Rather, we said it wasn't a common thing for engineering undergrads to aspire to. The vast majority will elect to NOT get a PhD.</p>

<p>The other question, somewhat related, is how many of those "popular" PhDs granted over the last however-many years were to U.S. undergrads and/or people who would otherwise be joining the U.S. workforce. I thought it was conventional wisdom that larger-than-average proportion of engineering PhDs are granted to foreign professionals (who are on a different career track than what the average CC reader is contemplating).</p>

<p>
[quote]
We didn't say that engineering accounted for few of the total PhDs granted in the U.S. Rather, we said it wasn't a common thing for engineering undergrads to aspire to. The vast majority will elect to NOT get a PhD.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>That is true of every field; it seems self-evident.</p>

<p>The highest per undergrad production in the country is Caltech, where about 40% of graduates (rough numbers) get a PhD.</p>

<p>The next two highest are Swarthmore and MIT, where as many as 25% of grads go on to get a PhD. Harvey Mudd is right there as well, above 20%. Harvard is around 20%, also very high.</p>

<p>It falls off rapidly from there, with places like Duke at around 10%.</p>

<p>Academic field: ALL<br>
PhDs and Doctoral Degrees: 1994 to 2003 from NSF database<br>
Enrollment from 2004 USNews<br>
Formula: PhDs divided by undergrad enrollment times 1000 </p>

<p>1 California Institute of Technology 828
2 Swarthmore College 513
3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 505
4 Harvey Mudd College 467
5 Reed College 394
6 Carleton College 394
7 Harvard University 386
8 Oberlin College 384
9 Yale University 351
10 Bryn Mawr College 342
11 Haverford College 330
12 Princeton University 328
13 Amherst College 320
14 Pomona College 316
15 Williams College 315
16 Grinnell College 298
17 University of Chicago 290
18 Rice University 288
19 Wesleyan University 286
20 Stanford University 269
21 Brown University 263
22 Wellesley College 263
23 Smith College 236
24 Kalamazoo College 227
25 Cornell University, All Campuses 222
26 University of Rochester 215
27 Duke University 210
28 Juilliard School 206
29 Earlham College 206
30 Vassar College 206
31 Mount Holyoke College 205
32 Bowdoin College 203
33 Barnard College 201
34 St Olaf College 200
35 Dartmouth College 199
36 Macalester College 195
37 University of California-Berkeley 193
38 Bates College 176
39 College of William and Mary 175
40 Lawrence University 175
41 Occidental College 174
42 University of Pennsylvania 174
43 College of Wooster 170
44 Trinity University 169
45 Brandeis University 169
46 Hendrix College 169
47 Beloit College 167
48 Knox College 166
49 Davidson College 164
50 Case Western Reserve University 164</p>

<p>Note: Because Chicago had a massive increase in the size of their undergrad enrollment in recent years, this chart probably understates their number by about 25%.</p>