Getting into MIT or Harvard Graduate School

Graduate School
21

<p>maybe she/he's from MIT or Stanford...who knows? They're pretty arrogant about engineering programs there...</p>

22

<p>he/she's from cornell engineering which I think is way better than harvard's engineering.</p>

23

<p>dontno: Cornell's GPA is NOT out of a 4.3, not every class offers A+'s</p>

24

<p>Getting into the grad school is not the question you should be asking. In grad school, You choose the field of study, Professor selects if he wants you in the program. </p>

<p>S had 3.8gpa, dual major at CMU, steller recs, and internships, a critical project, and he still was not selected in 3 of the 4 programs he applied. The fourth program he hit the jackpot.</p>

25

<p>it's probably because it was a 3.8 gpa instead of a 4.0. I bet if it was a 4.0, he'd hit jackpot in all 4.</p>

26

<p>why would you apply to harvard for engineering...their engineering schol is terrible....do mathematics or something</p>

27

<p>
[quote]
why would you apply to harvard for engineering...their engineering schol is terrible

[/quote]
</p>

<p>See: there it is again. Since when is a #21 ranking in anything "terrible"? What does that say about the vast majority of engineering programs that are ranked even lower than Harvard's?</p>

28

<p>
[quote]
maybe she/he's from MIT or Stanford...who knows? They're pretty arrogant about engineering programs there...

[/quote]
</p>

<p>
[quote]
he/she's from cornell engineering which I think is way better than harvard's engineering.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>So what? We're talking about grad school here, guys. I'm quite certain that there are plenty of Cornell undergrad engineers who couldn't even dream of getting into Harvard for engineering grad school.</p>

<p>Ridiculous, you say? Well, consider this. Let's take Berkeley. Berkeley is (at least according to the rankings) a better engineering school than is Cornell. One might say that a Berkeley engineer has some reason to be arrogant. Yet there are Berkeley undergrad engineers who end up going to rather low-ranked engineering grad schools - in fact, lower ranked than Harvard. For example, I see a Berkeley MechE student who ended up going to MechE grad school at UCRiverside. I see a Berkeley EECS student who ended up going to EE grad school at UCDavis. I see one who ended up going to CS grad school at NYU. These schools are all worse than Harvard for engineering, both overall and in terms of the specific programs in question.</p>

<p>Career</a> Center - What Can I Do With a Major In...?
Career</a> Center - What Can I Do With a Major In...?</p>

<p>And of course at least those students got in to some grad school, even if those grad schools are not particularly highly ranked. Plenty of other engineers couldn't even dream of getting into even those kinds of schools. To use Berkeley as an example again, I know plenty of Berkeley engineers who barely graduated, including quite a few who spent several semesters on academic probation. These guys could never dream of getting into even UCRiverside for grad school. Heck, they feel lucky to have even graduated at all. {And yes, I know others who couldn't even graduate.} </p>

<p>Look, the point is, not everybody gets to the very best and highest ranked grad school, or to even any grad school at all. In fact, the vast majority won't. Harvard actually has a quite highly ranked engineering grad program, compared to the vast majority of other programs out there. As good as MIT or Stanford's? No. But it's still better than most other programs. In other words, most engineering grad students out there can only dream of going to a program as good as Harvard's. For example, UCRiverside's grad engineering program is ranked #65 overall. How does that compare to Harvard's #22 ranking?</p>

29

<p>I always find it incredible how much focus Americans place on the top 10 schemes and how everything else below ican be seriously talked down. USA has huge numbers of the best universities in the world and number 22 in a field is still one of the best rated programs, not only in the states, but in the world.</p>

30

<p>OK when I referred to them as a "complete joke" I was referring to how incredibly small the department is. The majors (let's say EE) are not actually separate entities, but all grouped together in SEAS. Also, their entering class for all of SEAS (which includes all engineering majors) is the same size as the entering class in one major (let's say ME) at a place like Cornell. Their ME department has 9 professors total in it. Maybe the work there is great, but I'd be very suspicious of a place with that small.</p>

31

<p>
[quote]
OK when I referred to them as a "complete joke" I was referring to how incredibly small the department is. The majors (let's say EE) are not actually separate entities, but all grouped together in SEAS. Also, their entering class for all of SEAS (which includes all engineering majors) is the same size as the entering class in one major (let's say ME) at a place like Cornell. Their ME department has 9 professors total in it. Maybe the work there is great, but I'd be very suspicious of a place with that small.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Sure, it's small. But so what? It's still far better than plenty of other programs that are far larger. </p>

<p>Let me put it to you this way. Would you rather go to, say, the New Jersey Institute of Technology? After all, it has almost 3 times the number of engineering faculty than Harvard does. Furthermore, it actually has separate engineering divisions as opposed to clustering everything into one entity. But, honestly, who here is honestly going to turn down Harvard for NJIT? After all, like I said, Harvard is ranked #22. But NJIT scored so low that it's not even ranked (meaning that its score is N/A, hence not meriting any ranking within even the top 92). </p>

<p>But hey, according to your logic, NJIT is big and has separate engineering divisions, so that means that it's automatically better than Harvard, right?</p>

<p>The same could be said for schools like UT-Arlington (no, not UT-Austin, but UT-Arlington), Wayne State University, George Mason, and Florida International University - all of them being huge graduate engineering programs. I don't think too many people are turning down Harvard to go to any of them.</p>

<p>Look, again, nobody is claiming that Harvard's engineering program is as good as MIT's or Stanford's. But being ranked #22 is still pretty darn good.</p>

32

<p>I think what people are trying to get at is Why Harvard engineering? If you could make it into Harvard engineering, you could most likely make it into a top 5 engineering school as evidence by Harvard stating most of the people who don't go to harvard go to stanford or MIT or CMU for engineering. And the liberal arts aspect is bunk as you could go to MIT and cross register. I have a feeling most of these people are going to harvard for the name which is a joke.</p>

33

<p>It's not just the name. It's the funding. Do you think MIT funds all PhD prospects ? Or CMU or Stanford ? However, for Princeton or Harvard, if accepted in to Phd program you're guaranteed funding.</p>

34

<p>I don't know of anyone admitted to CMU or Stanford that wasn't given a full stipend. Heck, the school of computer science at CMU guarantees you funding no matter who you work for since they work on a fairly unique pooling system.</p>

<p>Also, I think people are questioning Harvard's relatively high rank because they're not really known for engineering, and thus do they have such a good reputation just because they have the name Harvard in front. You don't hear people complaining about Caltech being highly ranked even though their departments are tiny (in mine, Materials Science, we have six professors, only three of them are mainly in MSE).</p>

35

<p>Don't make me cite the funding statistics for stanford. Needless to say the vast majority of PhD students there are funded as are ones at MIT. Don't try to use funding as an excuse.</p>

36

<p>"I think what people are trying to get at is Why Harvard engineering? If you could make it into Harvard engineering, you could most likely make it into a top 5 engineering school as evidence by Harvard stating most of the people who don't go to harvard go to stanford or MIT or CMU for engineering."</p>

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37

<p>"Also, I think people are questioning Harvard's relatively high rank because they're not really known for engineering, and thus do they have such a good reputation just because they have the name Harvard in front. You don't hear people complaining about Caltech being highly ranked even though their departments are tiny (in mine, Materials Science, we have six professors, only three of them are mainly in MSE)."</p>

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<br>

<ol>
<li>they have a really strong math and biology department, and they are leveraging the strengths of those departments to create strong interdisciplinary research projects</li>
<li>despite not being "known", they still manage to attract many talented students who like the Harvard name and who prefer to stay in the northeast</li>
<li>they have the money</li>
</ol>

<p>I am not sure if I am correct, but thats what I think.</p>

38

<p>In response to waterlogged above, the department in my field of study at Stanford will not admit anyone to the PhD program without full funding.</p>

39

<p>go stanford! It's funny how this thread has been dragged this long and the OP doesn't seemed to care anymore.</p>

40

<p>I was thinking the same thing, Bo. This all started as a fairly fictitious thread by someone who was reaching for something in the future. Now it has become a "defend Harvard's engineering program" thread.</p>

<p>By the way, does anyone know what rank that program is? Anyone? Sakky?</p>

<p><em>ducks</em> :)</p>