<p>So since MIT is Harvard's baby brother, any "elitist" (for lack of a better word:)) student who wants to get into engineering would go to MIT.</p>
<p>Harvard's website seems to praise their engineering program; given the rivalry between MIT, would they be more adept to accept a student into their engineering program?</p>
<p>Since Engineering Science is not a popular major at Harvard, is it "easier" (even just a tiny bit) to get into?</p>
<p>Just curious, been through their website:D.</p>
<p>Which major you choose isn’t very relevant.</p>
<p>Pretty much everyone that Harvard accepts goes there, although MIT is certainly one of the few places to which Harvard regularly loses accepted students. But if Harvard is only producing 20-25 engineering graduates a year – and that is about right – that means that Harvard isn’t accepting more than 30 applicants per year who look like they may want to be engineers. It’s more than that, actually, since I sure the engineering program at Harvard has real attrition from freshman to junior year. So say 40 or 50 applicants. If Harvard wanted more engineers regardless of its standards, it would accept more prospective ones, and that hasn’t happened.</p>
<p>MIT accepts about 1,500 people from a pool of about 17,000 applicants. They aren’t all engineers, of course, but lots are. Do you really think Harvard gets a lot fewer than 500 applications from potential engineers? That Harvard’s engineer applicant pool is a lot weaker than MIT’s? That some of those extra people MIT accepts who don’t enroll there aren’t the people majoring in engineering at Harvard (just as some of the MIT people are among the 400 or so people Harvard accepts but don’t enroll)?</p>
<p>In the world I have observed, it is far more common for people to be accepted at MIT and rejected at Harvard, or to be accepted at both (or of course to be rejected at both – the most common outcome), than for them to be accepted at Harvard and not MIT. (The few cases I have seen of that all had relatively easy explanations, too – a legacy at Harvard, or someone who had no real business applying to MIT in the first place.)</p>
<p>In other words, no, I don’t think it’s easier for potential engineers to get into Harvard as compared to MIT, or anywhere else for that matter.</p>
<p>One thing I will say- if you do choose to apply to Harvard for engineering, make sure you are able to answer the question “Why Harvard’s Engineering and not MIT’s” when the interviewer asks you it. I’m not sure if all Harvard interviewers ask that or not, but a lot of my friends (who were also applying to Harvard’s engineering) who applied to Harvard said they got the same question as did I (in my interview).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Are you trying to say that people would turn down MIT’s engineering for Harvard’s? I honestly don’t think this is a likely case…</p>
<p>I would think most Harvard applicants would go for government/political area, not engineering. I think it’s possible (likely?) there are <500 applicants going for Harvard engineering. Of course I really have no idea, but just hypothesizing. Engineers going to Cambridge would, IMHO, go for MIT engineering 98%ish of the time.</p>
<p>There are about 150 or so people each year concentrating in engineering sciences, whereas only 80 or so major in chemistry. I don’t think engineering, or any science concentration for that matter, is very much underrepresented here at Harvard. There’re definitely more people majoring in biology than in almost any other department.</p>
<p>But as GreedIsGood said, it doesn’t really matter what exact concentration you declare during admissions since it’s not unusual at all for people do switch from engineering to, say, mathematics or some other science field later on, or vice versa.</p>
<p>The vast majority of Harvard applicants have a science or math orientation at the time of application – at least that’s what alumni interviewers tell me. That certainly includes the potential engineers (the majority of whom are going to be doing MBE anyway).</p>
<p>Also, how many people interested in engineering apply to Harvard and not to MIT? I would guess very, very few. No one makes a real choice between the two at the application stage. Maybe some people who are accepted early at MIT and don’t bother applying to Harvard . . . although in my experience they go ahead and bother. And there is no evidence anywhere that MIT enrolls more students cross-admitted between the two colleges than Harvard. What evidence there is goes the other way.</p>
<p>I need to revise my previous estimates based on what xrCalico23 said, since I was remembering some things wrong off the top of my head. As of now, there are 150 engineering majors at Harvard, spread across 3 classes, but only 35 students graduated last year with an engineering degree (not 25, as I thought I had remembered). That suggests to me that (as everywhere) there is significant “melt” from engineering between freshman and senior years, and that the initial potential engineering cohort is probably more like 60-70 people (with more than that accepted).</p>
<p>“if you do choose to apply to Harvard for engineering, make sure you are able to answer the question ‘Why Harvard’s Engineering and not MIT’s’”.</p>
<p>Agree. D was accepted EA to MIT. During her Harvard interview a month or so later, her interviewer (when he found out about her acceptance) told her not to worry – He would make sure NOT to mention it in his report to Harvard. *He *clearly thought her acceptance to MIT might hurt her chances of getting in. Of course, we have no way of knowing if that is the case.</p>
<p>There are a lot of math/science oriented people who go to Harvard or apply to Harvard, but they tend to major in the pure sciences. Even people who would have majored in engineering at a school with a more established engineering program (like MIT) tend to major in pure science if they go to Harvard. And it’s a known fact that ivies look for people to fill all of their majors, so it’s reasonable that it might be easier to get in as an engineering major. This is probably even more true at Princeton, which has a separate admissions pool for engineering.</p>
<p>The only people who might turn down MIT for Harvard engineering are people who value the humanities atmosphere and want to go to a super-prestigious school. Or premeds who major in engineering but don’t plan on it for a career. My feeling is that Harvard engineering is fine as preparation for the more pure science-oriented engineering fields. Material science is one example, as that is more based on physics and chem. I feel studying something like mechanical engineering would be a poor choice at Harvard.</p>
<p>The only other school in the states that I applied to was Boston College - everything else out of the country. I did not apply to Yale or MIT because I’d like to be at Harvard if I want to stay domestic, and if not, then I can spend a year at Boston and reapply to Harvard next fall. </p>
<p>I’m not so sure this is such a great thing to say in an interview? Or perhaps it’s fine?</p>
<p>Thanks for the heads up about why MIT vs Harvard engineering. I’ll work some notes and have a solid answer for the interviewer (yet to be scheduled :(:(!)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, uhh, I guess I’m one of them? </p>
<p>Why? I think collegealum has that covered:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>but I don’t think this statement is valid:
</p>
<p>Both are “super-prestigious” schools.</p>
<p>If you want some real data (it does exist), consider the following:</p>
<p>the rise in the # of applications to Harvard has been attributed, in part, to the increasing interest by prospective students in engineering and the applied sciences.</p>
<p>[Record</a> applications to Harvard College | Harvard Gazette](<a href=“http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/01/record-applications-to-harvard-college/]Record”>Record applications to Harvard College – Harvard Gazette)</p>
<p>Engineering and related concentrations in the engineering school have been on the rise at Harvard (as have secondary fields, or minors):</p>
<p>[SEAS</a> Sees 12% Increase in Concentrators | News | The Harvard Crimson](<a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2010/11/24/engineering-new-concentration-year/]SEAS”>SEAS Sees 12% Increase in Concentrators | News | The Harvard Crimson)</p>
<p>CS is also seeing a resurgence:</p>
<p>[CS50</a> | Stories | Harvard Alumni Affairs & Development (AA&D)](<a href=“http://alumni.harvard.edu/stories/cs50-class-they-cant-wait-to-take]CS50”>http://alumni.harvard.edu/stories/cs50-class-they-cant-wait-to-take)</p>
<p>As for Harvard alumni in engineering … many of them go on to be very successful engineers (or go to grad school at places like Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, etc.). They pursue all types of careers.</p>
<p>[Applied</a> knowledge opens doors for young alumni ? Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences](<a href=“http://www.seas.harvard.edu/news-events/press-releases/alumni-panel]Applied”>http://www.seas.harvard.edu/news-events/press-releases/alumni-panel)</p>
<p>And finally, admission to Harvard is <em>NOT</em> based upon a prospective student’s intended area of study.</p>
<p>And one more note … Harvard & MIT are not “rivals”. In any sense. Students and faculty collaborate on projects, classes, etc. A former dean likes to say that the two institutions complement one another.</p>
<p>Then how do you explain the various “hacks” (MIT students’ jargon) played on Harvard students?</p>
<p>Yes they do compliment each other; MIT was created in response to the industrial revolution. Their class rings are nearly identical. But like any brother or sister, there is competition, IMO.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I wasn’t saying that MIT wasn’t super-prestigious. I was just saying that that is one of the two reasons someone might choose Harvard engineering over say, Cornell engineering, which has a humanities atmosphere plus a stronger engineering program than Harvard. (Yes, I know Cornell is prestigious, just not on the same level overall as Harvard.) In fact, there are quite a few state schools with stronger engineering programs than Harvard, and they don’t have a tech-y atmosphere either.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It’s all in good fun- just like Caltech and MIT.</p>