<p>This thread has become my version of my wife’s US Weekly.</p>
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<p>Must be from the Payscale rankings that do not account for the mix of majors. “Engineering schools” have varying percentages of engineering majors versus other majors with lower paid job prospects (indeed the top 10 are mostly schools with relatively few non-engineering majors). It also does not account for the mix of different engineering majors. Stevens is now #7, not #5, on this list.
[Best</a> College ROI By School Type](<a href=“http://www.payscale.com/data-packages/college-roi-2013/schools-by-type]Best”>College ROI 2013 Schools by Type)</p>
<p>Payscale does have a top 20 ROI ranking specific to engineering, but does not distinguish between various engineering majors. Stevens is not in the top 20.
[Best</a> College ROI by Engineering Major](<a href=“http://www.payscale.com/data-packages/college-roi-2013/college-roi-2013-schools-by-major/engineering]Best”>Best College ROI by Computer Science Major)</p>
<p>ClassicRockerDad,</p>
<p>You’re laughing out loud? I’m rolling on the floor after that last one of yours! 
You can not be serious. </p>
<p>You’ve turned the corner of “bias.” You left bias far behind you. You’re in “opinionated” territory now. You’re spending your time trying to dig up any dirt you can against a school you don’t like, as if that justifies your initial actions? Holy cow! To think you initially questioned my use of “bias.” ;-)</p>
<p>So now you claim to know exactly what Stevens teaches in it’s classes? Well, just for fun I looked up the curriculum for a BSEE at Purdue, a school you clearly admire. Low and behold, no mention of Maxwell’s equations or anything else. </p>
<p>Should I assume Purdue EEs don’t get exposed to that any of that stuff? No. That would be ridiculous and irrational. As ridiculous and irrational as you sound claiming it about Stevens.</p>
<p>I have to thank you for a good belly laugh. Really. I can’t remember the last time I saw someone make such absurd and ridiculous claims… and spend time digging up any dirt they could find… in some kind of desperate attempt to justify their actions. This was precious! </p>
<p>I’m saving this thread!</p>
<p>So…who can close threads?</p>
<p>ucbalumnus,</p>
<p>You can’t go by ROI. That’s a function of both the cost of the school and the salary. So a low cost school with just a decent median salary can knock out a high priced school with a great median salary figure.</p>
<p>Stevens is a very expensive school to attend. Few are more expensive.</p>
<p>Stevens is #5 in the country for salary when compared only against other engineering schools. I can be found here:
[Engineering</a> Schools by Salary Potential ? PayScale College Salary Report 2012-13](<a href=“http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report-2013/engineering-schools]Engineering”>http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report-2013/engineering-schools)</p>
<p>As you know from other threads in which we’ve communicated, I’m not a big fan of rankings. They are all flawed, but at least offer some useful data.</p>
<p>Do I think Stevens should be considered the 5th best engineering college in the United States. Not even a little! 
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<p>But it also doesn’t even begin to deserve the treatment ClassicRockerDad has given it. I don’t know what crawled up his you-know-what and died. Maybe a Stevens grad beat him out of a job or a girlfriend. I don’t know, but I’m in slack jawed disbelief at his messages.</p>
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<p>Not trying to pick sides here… just observing.</p>
<p>FWIW, I saw the EE curriculum that CRD posted regarding Stevens and agree that it is very weak. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen an engineering curriculum that looked as unstructured and dubious as what Stevens offers (I’m actually a little surprised it’s accredited). Even the CSU schools here in California offer a more robust EE degree curriculum.</p>
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<p>Check out the core courses for Purdue.
<a href=“https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECE/Academics/Undergraduates/UGO/CourseInfo/coursesBSEECore[/url]”>ECE Course Descriptions - Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering - Purdue University;
Notice that each one is quite foundational. Digital design is foundational (it’s not required for an EE from Stevens either - if you know what a flip flop is, you’re not a Stevens EE grad). </p>
<p>Purdue gives you a foundation in the basic areas of EE and then you can choose from a wide variety of options to specialize. </p>
<p>Notice ECE 31100 - Electric and Magnetic Fields
Now click on the course description
<a href=“ECE 31100 - Electric and Magnetic Fields (Now runs as ECE 30411) - Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering - Purdue University”>ECE 31100 - Electric and Magnetic Fields (Now runs as ECE 30411) - Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering - Purdue University;
<p>"Continued study of vector calculus, electrostatics, magnetostatics, and Maxwell’s Equations. Introduction to electromagnetic waves, transmission lines, and radiation from antennas. "</p>
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<p>Again, different “engineering schools” have varying proportions of different engineering majors, as well as varying proportions of non-engineering majors, so the comparison is not apples to apples (more like one fruit salad to a different fruit salad).</p>
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<p>Isn’t Maxwell’s equations normally covered in the sophomore level physics course that includes electricity and magnetism?</p>
<p>Physics II (E&M) = Maxwell’s Eqs</p>
<p>OK, now I see the more detailed Purdue explanations. But no such explanations seem to exist for Stevens, so again, I think you’re jumping to the most negative conclusions possible.</p>
<p>And I agree with fractalmstr on this point. Without those, I find it difficult to believe they would pass accreditation… and yet they are accredited. And they are a very well respected school in the NYC area… winning government contracts, national engineering challenges against other top engineering schools like the solar decathlon, etc…</p>
<p>So I still believe the assumptions about the curriculum are incorrect and, even absurd. It just defies logic that fundamentals would be excluded… would be allowed to be excluded. And if somehow it were true, industry would immediately recognize these graduates as sub-par. Placement would be off. Salaries would certainly be lower. A deficit to the level you describe and assume would not exist without a significant price. </p>
<p>I’ve always warned my child that when people hate someone or something, they find it very easy to think unbelievably bad things about them. IMHO, this is the case here. You seem to intensely dislike Stevens so you are allowing yourself to assume some pretty outrageous things about their curriculum… and excluding/dismissing anything and everything good that is actually tangible or measurable about the school.</p>
<p>The school is not easy to get into, so it draws a respectable academic level of student. </p>
<p>The school is one of the most expensive to go to, and is not very generous, so it draws from affluent families who can afford to send their children anywhere.</p>
<p>The school is lavished almost annually with multi-million dollar endowments and gifts from past graduates and they enjoy government contracts. They do very well financially. In fact, the dirt you dug up on the president taking too much money exposed what a great job that guy did for the school. He apparently brought in huge amounts for the school through his connections, but the State didn’t like how much he got personally. </p>
<p>They pump out products and incubate companies every year in several markets.</p>
<p>Their graduate’s placement record and mean salaries are outstanding, so their graduates are valued by industry.</p>
<p>Yet, you’re spending your time, diving into limited curriculum descriptions, searching the web for dirt, trying to prove the school sucks. :-/ Nothing, absolutely nothing you claim makes sense when you take in the whole picture. </p>
<p>Why? What’s the point? Even you have softened your stance in a message to someone else, saying that fit might actually be important. Why continue to bash these schools into the ground? Seriously, what’s your reward in the end? To convince a kid not to go to a school that thousands of other people have attended, enjoyed, graduated from, and gone on to wonderfully successful careers?!</p>
<p>I’m done with defending any of these schools. I don’t agree with anything you’ve said about any of them. I think you’ve really gone over the top in an effort to justify your initial actions. Honestly, I can’t wrap my brain around your claims or your position on these schools.</p>
<p>I’ve agreed to disagree with others, but in your case I’ll agree to vehemently disagree with you, because that’s how I think we feel about each other’s position at this point. ;-)</p>
<p>ucbalumnus,</p>
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<p>Like I’ve said, a lot, I’m no fan of rankings. None are perfect. </p>
<p>But you don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. The salary ranking does show some indication of value. You can discount it, but not dismiss it.</p>
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<p>Go to the link I provided and click on the links for the course descriptions. Pick one, I’ll read it to you. For example Microprocessor Systems:</p>
<p>“A study of the implementation of digital systems using microprocessors. The architecture and operation of microprocessors is examined in detail along with I/O interfacing, interrupts, DMA and software design techniques. Specialized controller chips for interrupts, DMA, arithmetic processing, graphics and communications are discussed. The laboratory component introduces hardware and software design of digital systems using microprocessors. Design experiments include topics such as bus interfacing, memory decoding, serial communications and programmable ports.”</p>
<p>Wouldn’t you want to start with gates, study logic design, combinational and sequantial circuits, to flip flops, and then move into this stuff with some foundational background? Why not use FPGAs?</p>
<p>There is an electomagnetics course as an elective if you can squeeze it, but the department thinks Mechanics of Solids, Thermo, and Materials are all more important for an EE. </p>
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<p>Well I would like to conclude that my so called biases are based on my objective view of the curriculum as compared to what other schools do. You trust Stevens more than I do for sure. </p>
<p>Your unbiased opinion comes from sending your son (and probably your money) to Stevens. Good luck to him, and I mean that genuinely, not sarcastically.</p>
<p>Interesting. You’ve also looked up my other posts/threads to see my son went to Stevens. Kind of creepy. :-\ I didn’t mention that in this thread. Now it’s clear why you went on such an Stevens attack, when I was discussing your shot gun poisoning of several colleges.</p>
<p>Again, I’m a little tired of this. But again, I feel compelled to be astonished at your next absurd revelation. Now you’re suggesting they don’t teach boolean algebra and sequential logic well enough? Really? [sigh]</p>
<p>I feel safe assuming things about Stevens… and the other schools… because I know them pretty well. As previously stated we have a university program and interface with these schools, especially their electrical engineering programs, and I don’t see much of a different in their project work.</p>
<p>Our company makes a wide variety of devices… micros, RF, analog, etc… These kids use it all. The kids at one university, as a whole, don’t seem any brighter (or dimmer) than any other university.</p>
<p>I also feel more confident about my assumptions than your assumptions because your assumptions don’t fit with the whole picture. Not at all. This is university which as been churning out some exceptionally successful engineers and, in general, at a higher level of success than the rest of their peers. </p>
<p>You’re assumptions make no sense in that reality. And in the end, we have to deal with reality.</p>
<p>My son is going to Stevens because he “fit” there. His short list was Cornell, RPI, Lehigh and Stevens. The others never had a fighting chance. He loved everything about Stevens. The location, the size, how he felt walking around campus. How he felt eating lunch on Washington Street.</p>
<p>Since I’ve been far, far more fortunate than I ever deserve in my career and in my life, he could go anywhere he pleased. Where he pleased was Stevens.</p>
<p>Oh man. Went to the US Open last night and didn’t realize how tired I was this morning. Just re-read what I wrote. </p>
<p>Typo hell! ;-)</p>
<p>I’m happy to see that people are taking such an interest (to say the least) in this topic, lol.</p>
<p>Thank you for the discussion about Stevens and Purdue, ClassicRockDad and maikai. Your arguments are both helpful to me.</p>
<p>Also, thanks to the other posters that suggested schools like WPI and Case Western for me. I’ll look into them.</p>
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<p>Excellent question, I just noticed it, sorry I missed it. The course in Physics is the science and is the same as AP Physics C E&M . It’s a bit different from the EE version of electromagnetics, which uses the science and vector calculus as a foundation for engineering electromagnetics. </p>
<p>The engineering course develops engineering tools and techniques to analyze and design systems based on fields and waves like antennas. For example, in the circuit theory course that almost every EE starts with where they use “lumped” models of resistors, capacitors and inductors to represent real circuit components. These models are approximations that break down at high frequencies and an engineering course teaches techniques to analyze problems and design systems at VHF, UHF, microwave through optical frequencies. This is a fundamental part of almost every EE curriculum without which motors, antennas, optics, and wireless communication couldn’t happen.</p>
<p>I don’t know why I’m even doing this, because I know, full well, you’ll come up with some other BS to throw. You are so emotionally committed to your absolutely absurd negative claims against this school. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen someone so full of hate against an institution… in the absence of sports. ;-)</p>
<p>But here, Maxwell’s equations are indeed addressed. </p>
<p>EE 473 Electromagnetic Fields
Introduction to electromagnetic fields and applications. Vector calculus: orthogonal coordinates, gradient, divergence, curl, and Stokes’ and divergence theorems. Electrostatics: charge, Coulomb’s and Gauss’ laws, potential, conductors and dielectrics, dipole fields, stored energy and power dissipation, resistance and capacitance, polarization, boundary conditions, and LaPlace’s and Poisson’s equations. Magnetostatics: Biot-Savart’s and Ampere’s laws, scalar and vector potentials, polarization, magnetic materials, stored energy, boundary conditions, inductance, magnetic circuits, and force. Time-dependent Maxwell’s equations: displacement current, constitutive relations, isotropic and anisotropic media, force, boundary conditions, and the time-dependent Poynting vector and power. Circuit theory of transmission lines, transient response, and multiple reflections.</p>
<p>EE 474 Microwave Systems
Complex scalars and vectors, sinusoidal steady-state, complex Maxwell’s equations, and complex Poynting’s theorem. Propagation of plane waves: complex vector wave equation, loss-less transmission line analogy, sinusoidal steady-state, frequency, wavelength and velocity, polarity, lossy media, radiation pressure, group velocity, and reflection and refraction. Snell’s law, Brewster angle, field theory of transmission lines, TEM waves, sinusoidal steady-state transmission line theory, traveling and standing waves, Smith Chart, matching power flow, lossy lines, and circuit and field theory. Waveguides: TE and TM modes in general guides, propagation constant and wave impedance, separation of variables, rectangular and cylindrical guides, representation of wavelength fields by plane wave components, propagation and cutoff (evanescent) modes, the Poynting vector, dielectric guides, and losses. Waveguide resonators. Antennas: scalar and vector potentials, wave equations, spherical coordinates, electric and magnetic dipole antennas, and aperture antennas. Microwave electronics and traveling wave tubes.</p>
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<p>In schools where multivariable calculus is a co-requisite for physics 2, multivariable calculus may be used in physics 2. Note that Maxwell’s equations is a topic in this common physics book: [pearsonschool.com:</a> Giancoli, Physics for Scientists and Engineers with Modern Physics, 4th Edition](<a href=“Page Not Found |”>Page Not Found |) . It is also included in this classic physics book: [Electricity</a> And Magnetism 3rd Edition :: General and classical physics :: Cambridge University Press](<a href=“http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/physics/general-and-classical-physics/electricity-and-magnetism-3rd-edition#contents]Electricity”>http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/physics/general-and-classical-physics/electricity-and-magnetism-3rd-edition#contents)</p>
<p>Of course, the EE and physics departments each have their own more advanced E&M courses (for which the introductory physics 2 course is a prerequisite), with appropriate emphases.</p>
<p>Maikai. I’m not trying to be mean or malicious, I swear. </p>
<p>You can go to the registrar’s site
[Course</a> Schedules | Stevens Institute of Technology](<a href=“http://www.stevens.edu/sit/registrar/schedule-calendars]Course”>http://www.stevens.edu/sit/registrar/schedule-calendars)
and look up the EE course schedules. </p>
<p>While those courses sounds like the real deal, neither of these courses are or have been offered in any Fall or any Spring. It goes back to Fall 2011. </p>
<p>I feel bad for you, since you have a lot invested. Perhaps you might inquire why these aren’t available, and which course teaches basic digital logic.</p>
<p>ClassicRockerDad,<br>
You needn’t feel bad for me. Do you think my son is becoming an EE? He is not. I researched his major rather thoroughly and found the top graduate schools in the nation for his major have regularly accepted applicants from Stevens.</p>
<p>Again, I’ve been far luckier than I deserve to be so he should be in no rush to join the rat race and no matter his path in life he knows he will never want. So again, I am probably one of the very last people in this site you should ever feel sorry for. ;-)</p>
<p>I dare not say what his major is to you. I really don’t want to deal with your cr-p about that. And I’m sure you would try to dig stuff up. Heck, you researched me on other threads to find out my kid is going to Stevens… which again, is incredibly creepy of you.</p>
<p>I don’t know what’s going on in the EE department, but I’m sure they are teaching maxwells equations, as well as boolean algebra and sequential logic, as sure as I’m sitting here typing on this keyboard. It makes no sense at all that they would not. </p>
<p>Let’s think of your affront to Stevens in a different light. It’s an exercise in logic I use from time to time. If a train of logic makes sense, it will continue to make sense if you change the names.</p>
<p>We have this jet engine maker. They have a reputation for making really good jet engines. The jets they make look like jets. They sound like jets. They have the light weight and forceful thrust of jets. </p>
<p>Passenger and corporate plane companies have used their jets in service for many years and are very happy with the jets from this jet maker. They continue to purchase these jets and continue to be happy. In fact they gobble up almost all the jets this maker can make and pay a market premium for them.</p>
<p>But you, ClassicRockerDad, looked inside one of these jets and didn’t understand everything you saw to the greatest detail so you assumed things were missing. You neither work at this jet maker nor do you have anyone at this jet maker that would know… yet you made these grossly negative assumptions anyway. You made these grossly negative assumptions in spite of the fact that this company has a reputation for putting out good jets.</p>
<p>You tell the world “These are not actually jets!” You tell the world the jet maker sucks and the young jets are unworthy. And in doing so you do an incredible disservice to the jet maker and the young jets being produced on their line. </p>
<p>What you’re doing is unconscionable when you wrap your brain around the full gravity of it. </p>
<p>You started off just harming the OP by arbitrarily cutting out options from this kid. Now you’re spreading awful things about the young graduates of Stevens University. Awful things that at nothing more than products of your assumptions. Ridiculous assumptions with no proof at all. And you just won’t stop.</p>