Engineering @ Yale

<p>I was looking around online, and I was wondering, How is ChemE at Yale?</p>

<p>Everything at Yale is amazing and ranked highly : )</p>

<p>Engineering is a weak spot at Yale. In fact, the college was thinking at one point of eliminating engineering majors (in the 1990s under Benno Schmidt’s tenure).</p>

<p>If you are really interested in ChemE and want to go to Yale, I would say try a double major or a major that has a strong overlap with the department so that you get exposure to another area that emphasizes Yale’s strengths.</p>

<p>Yale is a first class institution so it tries to have all of its departments live up to that. But in the last couple of years, Yale has been concentrating its efforts on developing Engineering, hiring new faculty and building a new multimillion dollar building. As a former Electrical Engineering major, I loved the small classes and individual attention. It was so easy to do research, and to get a professor for my senior thesis/project. The best thing about doing Engineering at Yale is that you can still sample the liberal arts education.</p>

<p>Going to Yale for engineering major is probably a big mistake. The engineering department is too small and is not well regarded by its peers. Despite the effort by Yale shore its support for the program, there is not much showing in the academic hard numbers. Here is the most recent ranking of engineering productivity (both quality and quantity) by institutions in the world ([Performance</a> Ranking of Scientific Papers for World Universities](<a href=“http://ranking.heeact.edu.tw/en-us/2008%20by%20Fields/Domain/ENG/TOP/100]Performance”>http://ranking.heeact.edu.tw/en-us/2008%20by%20Fields/Domain/ENG/TOP/100)). Yale is ranked 103 in the world, and is rock-bottomed in the IVY league schools, behind Harvard, Cornell, Princeton, Penn, Columbia, and Brown. It is just an utter embarrassment to Yale.</p>

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<p>Biased much?</p>

<p>This message is not meant to Yale-bash, but any high-end, research-minded engineering student should probably think about going to somewhere like MIT or Stanford to study. This is not to say someone interested in engineering should not major in engineering at Yale. On the contrary, someone looking for small classes and a good liberal arts/engineering balance will do quite well at Yale. But a mega-engineering student should probably look elsewhere.</p>

<p>Professor John B Fenn of Yale Chemical Engineering won Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2002!
The prize winning work was done entirely at Yale ChemE. I believe this was the first time any chemical engineering department won the Nobel Prize. Not even at MIT or Stanford.</p>

<p>All the engineering folks I knew at Yale (before the hundreds of millions of dollars Yale infused so I bet it’s better now) got into top Phd programs, loved their engineering majors, had tons of research opportunities, and loved the social, extracurricular, and residential college scene at Yale. Is engineering Yale’s strongest program? No way. Do lots of serious engineering students go there anyway, have a fabulous experience, and have wonderful post-graduation opportunities? Absolutely. Going to Yale for engineering was a not a mistake for these folks.</p>

<p>It should be properly called former Yale professor John B. Fenn. He received the prize 8 years after he left Yale for VCU. To my knowledge, no Yale professor received Nobel prize in the last 20 years (since Sidney Altman). Evaluation of academic strength of a department is mainly based on 2 criteria: Extramural funding and Publication. In both aspects, Yale engineering is significantly behind other major powerhouse schools. </p>

<p>If you have other better engineering school options but choose Yale for engineering major, you are probably not very serious about engineering.</p>

<p>There is simply no basis to some of the claims here about Yale’s undergraduate engineering program.</p>

<p>Harvardfan – you simply cannot translate the amount/quality of research publications and directly relate it to the quality of the undergraduate program. The connection between the two is virtually nonexistent. Look around at the top engineering PhD programs (or even science for that matter) in the US. Look at where the kids come from. A significant portion of them come from lower-profile research schools. Why is that? These lower profile schools also aren’t filled with “great faculty researchers” (IIT is an example). The truth is that it doesn’t take a prolific academic to teach what is already known, which is a large part of the undergraduate curriculum. Research is about finding out what’s unknown, which is an entirely different ball game.</p>

<p>Yale’s engineering program should be judged on its undergraduate curriculum, its ability to accommodate its students for undergraduate research in engineering, and its ability to place its undergraduates in top tier graduate schools or top tier jobs. The quality of the faculty research is not as relevant. Whether one faculty member wins a Nobel Prize does virtually nothing for graduate school/ job placements. Many schools have several Nobel Prizes; that doesn’t make them a great undergraduate school.</p>

<p>For the science/engineering inclined, I can see where Yale may not compete as well with a Stanford or a MIT because Stanford and MIT allocate more money towards undergraduate research in engineering. Stanford, Caltech, and MIT allocate the most money per student out of any school towards undergraduate engineering/science research, and they all have well developed undergrad research programs. That’s not to say that one can’t succeed Yale’s environment, but it takes a more proactive student, which Yale doesn’t really lack

Sure, Yale is a first class institution. It still doesn’t attract a* significant portion* of first class engineering researchers. I’m not saying it won’t be able to do it in the future; they could very well become an engineering powerhouse in the future. They are going to have to manage their money well.</p>

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Agreed.</p>

<p>The work winning the prize was done entirely at Yale ChemE. Fenn was the only Yale professor won Nobel Prize in the last 20 years. He was forced to retire to VCU when he was in his 70’s. He won the prize when he was 86!
My point is that there are wonderful things happened at Yale Engineering. Yale administration finally recognizes that and pours in significant amount money into biomedical engineering… Yale also prefers highly qualified science and engineering students in the college admission.</p>

<p>If you come to engineering school just for class room experiences, you should choose Harvey Mudd or Rose-Hulman. The teachings in these colleges are probably better than those in Yale since teaching is the faculty’s sole responsibility in these schools. </p>

<p>I doubt that you will be comfortable to major in non-reputable program in a major research university, knowing that you have to move up onto another good program for graduate study in order to be competitive…, unless you have no choice.</p>

<p>Members of the National Academy of Engineering
[Home</a> Page](<a href=“http://www.nae.edu/nae/naepub.nsf/Home+Page?OpenView]Home”>http://www.nae.edu/nae/naepub.nsf/Home+Page?OpenView)</p>

<p>MIT (112)
Stanford (90)
Berkeley (75)
Texas (49)
Caltech (30)
Illinois (29)
Cornell (24)
UMich (22)
Carnegie Mellon (22)
Princeton (22)
UCSB (22)
UCLA (20)
Harvard (20)
Wisconsin (19)
UCSD (18)
Columbia (16)</p>

<h2>Minnesota (16)</h2>

<p>-</p>

<h2>(quite a few more schools here)</h2>

<p>University of Delaware (7)
University of Utah (7)
Yale (6)</p>

<h2>UMass (6)</h2>

<h2>-</h2>

<p>(drop here)
Brown (3)</p>

<p>actually, the arguments against Yale engineering apply across the ivy league. By research expenditures, they are all quite weak. In terms of the academic qualifications of the average undergraduate engineering student at Yale (APs, SATs, subject tests), I would think the stats are much higher than most non-ivy higher ranked schools (except MIT, Caltech, Stanford and Harvey Mudd).</p>

<p>some schools missed from above:
USC 22
Northwestern 19
U. Washington 15</p>

<p>"How is ChemE at Yale? "</p>

<p>I don’t know, myself, but one thing i might suggest you do is go to their registrar’s list of courses actually given last semester (not the catalog, which may list courses given only infrequently) and count the number of courses they actually gave last semester in chemical engineering, available to undergraduate students. then count the number of professors specifically listed as being in the chemical engineering deprtment. These measues will give an indication as to the breadth and depth of what one may learn in the field of chemical engineering at Yale.</p>

<p>Then compare to alternatives.</p>