<p>Alright, Northwestern is a great school, but it's also a pretty damn expensive school, and it's engineering department (minus MatSci) isn't exactly top of the line. So I'm wondering, is the engineering school really good enough to justify all that money? Why not just attend a public like Umich or Cal, or apply/try to transfer to another private school with a (supposely) superior engineering school, say Stanford, Harvey Mudd, Cornell, or MIT (if possible heh), etc? Is a degree from McCormick really that good of an investment?</p>
<p>I think that if you want to live in/around Chicago it would be worth more than a degree from Cornell or Standford. I don't know though. You also have to consider the university itself and whether you like it as a whole.</p>
<p>What do you mean top-of-the-line? Their faculty comes from all the top universities. Rankings have a bias against smaller programs, but most people consider Northwestern's E-school top-notch. </p>
<p>Northwestern's goal is to give engineers a well-rounded education and they are very successful at doing that. Students who choose NU over other comparable engineerign programs like Hopkins, Cornell, WashU, etc. do so because of university wide factors like quality of life, sports, campus, near big city, etc.</p>
<p>I can't speak for the other programs, but in Industrial Engineering, Northwestern is one of the top 5 programs (plus im doubling in econ). Also, Northwestern has a lot of unique engineering experiences like their co-op program and EngineeringFirst program.</p>
<p>Well, Michigan IS NOT cheaper than Northwestern if you are OOS. Out of all the schools you mentioned, you should pick Cal over others, including MIT/Stanford, if all you care about is money (assuming you are paying full tuition). I don't think an engineering firm would pay more to a MIT grad than a Cal grad when both are hired but it will be faster for you to pay off Cal's debt (assuming you don't get any FA from any school). Keep in mind, however, privates often do offer generous FA package that it can actually be cheaper to go there than some public ones.</p>
<p>I guess I have to agree. Maybe it's just not as reputable here on the west coast, but Northwestern in general isn't. Alright, thanks for the info.</p>
<p>While Northwestern is no MIT/Stanford/Cal/CalTech in engineering, it's still very close to one of the best out there, especially among privates. MIT/Stanford/CalTech are crapshot for anyone. So you are left with Cornell and Carnegie Mellon. While Cornell is slightly more reputatable overall, their engineering isn't better than Northwestern across the board. NU actually is better ranked in quite a few disciplines: biomedical, chemical (or about even), management sciences/industrial, and material sciences. Their civil and mechanical are about even. Compared with Carnegie Mellon, NU probably has more top-20 departments. But Carnegie Mellon has much better EE/CS and for some reason, these two disciplines seem to influence the overall reputation more than other disciplines like civil, biomedical..etc. NU is trying hard to improve its EE/CS and they took the first step by merging the two couple years ago.</p>
<p>It's
really
difficult to transfer into MIT. I think they accepted 4 tranfers last year. The MIT undergraduate experience is worth it IMO over the other schools you mentioned for engineering (although Mudd is great too). It's not a matter of starting salary comparisons; it's a matter of lifelong learning experience/value IMO.</p>
<p>Cornell accepts a large number of transfers, at the rate of about 30% acceptance.</p>
<p>EE and CS at CMU is top flight IMO.</p>
<p>UIUC is ranked higher than Michigan for EE and CS, and is a bit less expensive.</p>
<p>Haha MIT took 16 this year. A record I'm sure.</p>
<p>yea i hate you so much.</p>
<p>How come you didn't mention UIUC? It's a top 5 Engineering school with very cheap in-state tuition.</p>
<p>because i have a lot of hate</p>
<p>To expand on Sam Lee's post, let's compare the graduate rankings of Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, and Northwestern:</p>
<p>Biomedical: NU #7, Cornell #28, CMU #30
Chemical: Cornell/CMU #13, NU #16
Civil: Cornell #9, CMU/NU #10
Computer: CMU #3, Cornell #9, NU #21
CS: CMU #1, Cornell #5, NU #40
Electrical: CMU #7, Cornell #9, NU #29
Environmental: CMU #7, Cornell #13, NU #20
Materials: NU #3, Cornell #9, CMU #13
Mechanical: Cornell #8, CMU/NU #10</p>
<p>Only Cornell offers Aero/Astro and only NU offers Industrial, so I didn't include those. You can see that NU is basically on par with Cornell and CMU in Chemical, Civil, and Mechanical, better in Biomedical and Materials, and lags behind in ECE, CS, and Environmental. The problem is that ECE and CS are much more visible than the newer, smaller niche areas of Biomedical and Materials, so that's why NU's reputation is perhaps not as high as Cornell and CMU.</p>
<p>hatred 10 char</p>
<p>LoL whats up with you bluedevil</p>
<p>i donno ... those rankings and how someone had enough patience to put them up there makes me hate stuff though</p>