<p>If you have kids in engineering or if you are engineer,
how prestigious do you all consider GT?
It is equal in prestige to schools such as what school?</p>
<p>I was born and raised in Atl. even though I went to UGa. I have a lot of GTech friends. I don't know about prestige of the school but I do know that they are highly ranked in every single engineering ranking that I have seen. My S is an aspiring engineer and we are making our final choice. He is not going to GTech because he wants to get away from Atl. But I will say the GTech job network is huge, well respected and well placed. Never any problems with GTech grads finding jobs.</p>
<p>Our company has very high regard for GaTech engineers, and we often have co-op students from GT, who almost always get job offers from us when they graduate.</p>
<p>I know less about this than about a lot of other things, but I have the following very strong impression: There's no question that Ga. Tech ranks among the top engineering programs in the country overall. Only MIT and Cal Tech, and maybe now Olin, have any clear prestige advantage among tech schools, and Stanford among comprehensive universities. Several Ivies and flagship public universities have great engineering programs, and one can debate their ranking relative to Ga. Tech, and how much the overall prestige and experience at those schools matter. One can debate how much "prestige" matters at all, too. And at the departmental level any particular school may be stronger or weaker than its general overall reputation.</p>
<p>A few months ago, molliebatmit, who had access to MIT's data, reported that the main schools to which MIT lost accepted applicants were the Ivies, Stanford, and Cal Tech, and that Michigan and Georgia Tech were the only public universities to which MIT lost any significant number of students. I think that gives a pretty decent read on the relative overall prestige of Georgia Tech, i.e., high.</p>
<p>From the academic point of view,they are prestigious enough to send their top graduates to top graduate progams and are still working toward achieving the status of sending their top doctorates to fill the faculty positions at top schools.</p>
<p>I went to a speech where I live by a MIT provost (there are apparently tons of really old people who went to MIT in the 30's living around my town). Anyways, what he said was along these lines:</p>
<p>MIT right now is ranked very highly in every engineering field, but that's just because we currently have some of the most respected professors in all of the fields. Georgia Tech is similar, choosing to be as good in all the fields as they can, and they manage to be highly respected in most fields, but if they wanted to they could be number one in a specific field. They just choose not to. The same goes for Harvard, who could buy all of our chemical engineering professors if they wanted to, they just spend their money in different areas.</p>
<p>In other words, Georgia Tech is pretty darn close to MIT in the engineering fields (close enough that a couple of interchanged professors would make the difference), which is always a good sign.</p>
<p>I suspect that Georgia Tech's quality is not too far behind that of MIT in some areas. Nevertheless, I'd be a bit skeptical about admission/acceptance comparisons because of a major factor that benefits Georgia Tech; The state Hope Scholarship Program.</p>
<p>This is pure speculation, but my bet is that if you are planning to stay in the southeast Georgia Tech's prestige is very high and perhaps more helpful for job hunting than some of the bigger names.</p>
<p>GA Tech is very well respected in my field. I would not say it is on the level of a Caltech or MIT, but it is on a very small list of places we actively recruit at. (This would be for electrical engineers.)</p>
<p>mathmom, </p>
<p>You're right. GATech gets you into many, many doors. (I lived in GA during HS and college, and my brother attended GT.) They also have a terrific co-op program which several of my friends went through, so they were able to attend GT for almost nothing after completing freshman year because the co-op jobs paid quite well. I also have a friend who went to GT for UG and Princeton for his PhD. It is a top school. </p>
<p>The HOPE scholarship programs are having the effect of keeping many top-scoring in-state kids at home rather than losing them to OOS. It has raised the bar for admittance considerably among in-state kids. (I have a niece who would dearly love to attend UGA. She's extremely talented and a good student. I have serious concerns about whether that will be enough in the current admittance climate down there.)</p>
<p>Good program. Have a good friend's S who just graduated. Lots of job opportunities. Degree highly valued, at least in SE area</p>
<p>Southerners who went to MIT used to wear t-shirts that said "MIT, the Georgia Tech of the North". Californians at MIT wore t-shirts that said "MIT, the CalTech of the East." And Northerners who ended up at Georgia Tech tried to fake a southern accent. (And Easterners who went to CalTech never went back.)</p>
<p>Among my husband's wide circle of friends are many Georgia Tech engineers. Based on what they're doing right now (twenty to thirty years after graduation), I would put it right up there with MIT and CalTech, if slightly lower (because I'm a northern snob)--and just above RPI (which my husband attended).</p>
<p>Highly recognized degree..my dad did his CE there and we lived in every part of the USA. Young man I know who was valedictorian at GaTech a few years back has never practiced engineering..hired immediately in consultant and management of businesses jobs. Businesses ..and even law schools and med schools all love engineers. The work is a grind but Atlanta can make up for it..fun lively city especially for the young and hardy.</p>
<p>"Southerners who went to MIT used to wear t-shirts that said "MIT, the Georgia Tech of the North". "The main schools to which MIT lost accepted applicants were the Ivies, Stanford, and Cal Tech, and that Michigan and Georgia Tech were the only public universities to which MIT lost any significant number of students. I think that gives a pretty decent read on the relative overall prestige of Georgia Tech, i.e., high."</p>
<p>I like that,Thanks guys!</p>
<p>I agree with everything said above. And Tech has a combined biotech program with Emory now that is very strong. Add to that the new construction/facilities across the highway, the trolly system to get around and the easy access to the new Atlantic Station complex (shops, theaters, housing) and this all makes Tech very attractive. Ditto ont he strong career counseling/job placement/ networking and co-op opportunities. I must add, thought, that a lot of Tech students find the environment a bit harsh. There is a sense that you graduate in spite of the faculty, not becaue of them (I am exaggerating, but you get my drift). Some of the profs don't make it easy on the students and some don't speak English all that well. Some of the students wear a rather unflattering tshirt that says "IHTFP" (or something like that) which stands for "I hate this*** place". GA Tech was my s's safe school. He is a Mech Eng. major, but chose to go elsewhere.</p>
<p>Georgia Tech is an interesting case. Much of its prestige appears to be fairly recent. Looking at the NRC rankings from 1995, GaTech was not especially stellar in the engineering rankings, with quite a few schools ranked above it. That has obviously not been the case with the more recent USNWR rankings. The other interesting point is that although it is considered a "tech" school, theoretical/pure sciences are actually quite weak, especially compared to other flagship publics. Unlike the engineering rankings, the natural science rankings have remained relatively low according to the USNWR graduate science rankings. (There was even an article from Georgia Tech talking about this a few years ago that I'll try to find online.)</p>
<p>That being said, GaTech's engineering reputation continues to improve, as readily apparent in the USNWR grad and undergrad engineering rankings. It also is boosted in the overall USNWR undergrad rankings because being a tech-focused school, the general student body is stronger than more broad-purpose public universities like Wisconsin, Illinois, and Texas. (It would certainly be interesting to only compare the engineering/natural science undergrads at these universities against GaTech).</p>
<p>There is a fairly high number of faculty in the prestigious National Academy of Engineering as well, and GaTech continues to hire NAE-caliber faculty away from schools like UT-Austin. I'm sure the reputation will only get better.</p>
<p>In terms of total number of faculty with this honor, GaTech does have an impressive showing relative to all other universities. As a public, only Berkeley and UT-Austin have a greater concentation.</p>
<p>Faculty NAE membership:
MIT 107
Stanford 84
Berkeley 72
UT-Austin 48
Caltech 29
Georgia Tech 25
Illinois 25
UCSB 25
Cornell 23
Michigan 21
Columbia 20
Carnegie Mellon 19
Princeton 19
U Southern California 19
Texas A&M 19
Minnesota 18
Northwestern 18
UCLA 17
UCSD 16
Wisconsin 16
Purdue 15
Harvard 14
Rice 13
Washington 13
Maryland 12
Rensselear 11
Colorado 10
Arizona 10
Va Tech 10
Case Western 9
Johns Hopkins 9
Penn 9
Virginia 9
NC State 8
Utah 7
Florida 6
Houston 6
UC Davis 6
UNC 6
UC Irvine 5
Rochester 5
Yale 5
Brown 4
Dartmouth 4
Kansas 4
U Mass 4
Pittsburgh 4
Duke 3
Tennessee 3
New Mexico 2
Notre Dame 2
Tulsa 2</p>
<p>source <a href="http://www.nae.edu%5B/url%5D">www.nae.edu</a></p>
<p>JWT-
As countingdown said in post# 10, the Hope scholarship, which essentially covers in-state tuition for GA students with a B or better average, has had an incredible effect of the State of GA schools, keeping a lot of the top students in state at both Tech and UGA (as well as some of the smaller schools like GA State, GA Southern, Kennesaw, Southern Tech, to name a few), and has significantly improved the brainpower of the big state U's. With that comes better faculty to please the better students, etc. I believe this is in large part why the schools have improved so much in the rankings.</p>
<p>jym - I agree and think that's a great thing. I've actually wondered how the National Research Council rankings could have been so different from the more current rankings, when most other schools don't show such dramatic improvements in just 10 years. Perhaps GaTech really has increased its prestige that dramatically, or maybe the NRC rankings were off regarding it in the first place.</p>
<p>JWT-
Take a look at how many students have received $$ from the Hope scholarship since its inception in 1993 <a href="http://www.gsfc.org/main/ga411info/hope_facts.html?CFID=25316503&CFTOKEN=35475a4789dd6864-53AF2BCE-AEF0-4A34-FD8484ECF026E982%5B/url%5D">http://www.gsfc.org/main/ga411info/hope_facts.html?CFID=25316503&CFTOKEN=35475a4789dd6864-53AF2BCE-AEF0-4A34-FD8484ECF026E982</a> In the first few years, they had an income restriction on it, so the bright but wealthier students didn't qualify. They changed that after the first few years (I forget exactly when) but this whole scholarship program has had a HUGELY positive effect on UGA and GA Tech. Many of Ga's best and brightest are choosing to stay in state, and the competition and admissions stats have been steadily rising. I don't know if the NRC rankings were off or not, but I do know that the State of GA university system has had an incredible shot in the arm with the Hope scholarship. We now look at out of state public and private colleges in comparison to the education our s's can get for the $$ at the in-state schools. And mind you, I went to grad school at U of Fla-- UGA's huge arch rival--so to even consider letting my guys go to GA is a big , BIG compliment to the school. When I was in grad school, UGA was a bit of a joke academically. Times have changed. UGA's honors program is excellent.</p>
<p>And do not forget that Georgia Tech is not exclusively an engineering school, though obviously that's their cachet. I understand that the administration is committed to enhancing Ivan Allen College (Liberal Arts). Also, the International Affairs program is reportedly not bad at all. At the undergraduate level, the Life Sciences probably are not on par with U of Georgia, but are much stronger at the Graduate School.</p>