<p>you have two categories of schools there. Ones that are highly influential in engineering research and industry and ones that are almost oblivious. </p>
<p>Most Ivy types, especially Dartmouth and Brown, belong to the later category; this is supported by their low engineering rankings and lack of ‘in the know’ prestige. It’s important to realize this is where people need to let go of the rankings and use some common sense, these programs are oblivious because of their small size not because of their lack of excellence which is evident in their overall elite reputation. A student at darmouth (ranked 70th) or harvard, yale, will have excess to the same excellence as a top 5 engineering school. imho</p>
<p>Many public state schools and some privates belong to the first category, these colleges of engineering are big and highly influential in industry and research drawing top students because of high rankings and tremendous reputation and popularity with respect to engineering, these schools are synonymous with engineering. solid reputations for engineering that beat out the ivy types; also in many some cases they are the only affordable undergraduate options (or people are just reluctant to shell out 100k more for a program when their instate is a flagship engineering school). And lastly, because even if the ivy’s are in reach cost wise for those with the money the admissions are highly competitive and many people just get rejected by all of em’</p>
<p>I’d say that whether your going to GaTech or Yale you’re in excellent shape. (ignoring costs of course, lol)</p>