Harvard Engineering (DEAS) vs MIT

Colleges & Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1

<p>Hello
Which one has better engineering program ?
According to US news, MIT has #1 engineering program, however, many top engineers graduated from Harvard Engineering Program (DEAS) such as</p>

<p>Bill Gates & Steven Ballmer (Software Engineering)
An Wang (Electrical Engineering, invented Magnetic Tape eg) video tape, floppy disk etc..)
Fischer Black ( father of Financial Engineering )
CEO of Sun Microsystem... etc..</p>

<p>I think about 30 people graduate from Harvard DEAS and more than 1000 people graduate from MIT engineering program ( including Graduate schools)</p>

<p>However, It looks like Harvard DEAS alumnus are mush more successful engineers than MIT engineers. Why is that ?</p>

<p>Should I choose Harvad DEAS over MIT enginnering ? The most successful MIT engineer alumnus are founders of small or medium sized companies...</p>

<p>CEOs of eBay, Google, GE, Microsoft, Amazon went Ivy League Engineering programs.. not MIT Engineering ? Why ?</p>

2

<p>Cause they're businessmen, not engineers...?</p>

<p>Do you want to be rich or do you want to build stuff? They don't necessarily come hand-in-hand. You could be the most talented engineer in the world and work behind the scenes your whole life making businessmen rich.</p>

<p>And last I heard, the revenue from MIT-alumni-based companies is equivalent to that of a small country. Ahh, found it:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.ssti.org/Digest/1997/digest54.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.ssti.org/Digest/1997/digest54.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>
[quote]
Graduates of MIT have founded some 4,000 currently active companies, according to the report. Worldwide, these companies account for annual revenues of almost $232 billion. Compared with foreign countries, MIT-related companies would rank 24th largest in the world -- just behind South Africa and ahead of Thailand.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Have fun at Harvard :)</p>

3

<p>But Bill Gates was a dropout :confused: ...</p>

4

<p>Yeah
But he chose to attend Harvard Engineering not MIT engineering program</p>

5

<p>Yeah.
But then he left...</p>

<p>(two can play at this game.)</p>

6

<p>Was Gates getting an engineering degree? I thought it was something else...</p>

7

<p>According to his entry in Wikipedia, Gates was studying for a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science (not specifically engineering) at Harvard when he dropped out.</p>

8

<p>Computer Science program at Harvard is in the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) program . Bill Gates was a student at the Devision of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard.</p>

<p>MIT computer science program is in the School of Enginnering, department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS)</p>

9

<p>Well, I think there's a question here -- did all of those people choose Ivy engineering programs, or did they just not get into MIT? Many people, as you may be aware, don't have a choice.</p>

<p>I'm always very suspicious of "alum list" types of evidence, because it's heavily anecdotal and isn't easily turned into some type of statistic. Sure, those particular Harvard engineering alums are very successful, but what about the rest of them? Is the average MIT engineer more or less successful than the average Harvard engineer? Those sorts of questions are the most important for the average person (obviously), but they're not well-answered by laundry lists of program alumni.</p>

<p>Both programs should be approximately equally good if you're planning to major in engineering as a conduit to other things (ie investment banking), but if you want to be a practicing engineer and build stuff, MIT engineering is the thing to do, hands down.</p>

10

<p>Actually, what made Gates rich was not what he learned at Harvard. Instead, he decided to write an operating system and a programming language(BASIC) that was user friendly, unlike the IBM OS2, which was light years ahead of DOS and Windows, yet remained extremely user-unfriendly. He was a business man, not a genius engineer. He does have a very good vision however, and knows how to play his cards, while at the same time, knowing enough technical stuff that he's not just some snobby chairman, but actually sit down with low level developers.</p>

11

<p>Reminds me of the infamous quote said by former MIT undergrad Dean Margaret MacVicar: ""Too many MIT graduates are working for too many Harvard and Princeton graduates". </p>

<p><a href="http://fixedreference.org/en/20040424/wikipedia/Massachusetts_Institute_of_Technology%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://fixedreference.org/en/20040424/wikipedia/Massachusetts_Institute_of_Technology&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>However, let me clear some things up:</p>

<p>
[quote]
CEO of Sun Microsystem... etc..

[/quote]
</p>

<p>No, Scott McNealy does not have an engineering degree from Harvard. He has a degree in Economics from Harvard. In fact, of the 4 original founders of Sun (McNealy, Vinod Khosla, Bill Joy, and Andy Bechtolsheim), he is the only one who has no engineering degree at all (the other 3 founders all have bachelor's and master's degrees in engineering). </p>

<p>
[quote]
An Wang (Electrical Engineering, invented Magnetic Tape eg) video tape, floppy disk etc..)

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I believe An Wang's Harvard PhD was in Applied Physics, not EE. Is Applied Physics really engineering? You be the judge.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Fischer Black ( father of Financial Engineering )

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Fischer Black's PhD was in Applied Mathematics, not engineering. Furthermore I don't know that Financial Engineering is really 'engineering'. If you want to say that it is, then I would say that the MIT Department of Economics and the MIT Sloan School have no shortage of stud financial engineers. Heck, Fischer Black is best known for the Black-Scholes equation, which is a method to value financial options. Black, Scholes, and Robert Merton (who won the Nobel Prize in Economics with Scholes in 1997, which Black would have won too if he were still alive in 1997) were all, at some point in their career, professors at the MIT Sloan School. </p>

<p>Heck, if you really want to go down this road, the new Chairman of the Federal Reserve (replacing Greenspan), Ben Bernanke, got his PhD in Economics at MIT. Bernanke is clearly the most powerful economist in the world. </p>

<p>
[quote]
Bill Gates & Steven Ballmer

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Bill Gates did not graduate. Steve Ballmer's Harvard degree is in applied math + economics, not engineering.</p>

<p>Nevertheless, all of the examples you have pointed out illustrate that you don't really "need" a true engineering degree to work as an engineer or to succeed at an engineering company. This seems to be especially true in high-tech, where plenty of people with degrees in the natural sciences or mathematics nevertheless invent many of the most important inventions in the industry. The Turing Award is widely considered to be the "Nobel Prize" of computer science, yet a significant fraction of them have been won by people who do not hold CS or eng degrees (but rather, hold PhD's in mathematics or physics). Quite a few highly successful computer companies have been founded by people who never graduated from college at all, most notably Microsoft (neither Gates nor Paul Allen graduated), but also Oracle, Apple (both Jobs and Wozniak dropped out, although Wozniak later returned and graduated), and Dell. </p>

<p>Granted, all of those founders were true "hands-on" people who most likely either would have gotten their engineering degrees or would have been good enough to pass as one. Gates and Allen didn't have degrees but were pretty darn good coders back in their day. Larry Ellison was quite knowledgeable about computer science. Jobs and Wozniak had excellent EE and circuitry skills, despite not having engineering degrees. Especially Wozniak, who was widely regarded as a prodigy at EE. Michael Dell was a very good PC tech and engineer back in the days when PC's were still considered to be obscure technologies. While none of these guys got engineering degrees (or any degrees at all), I think it's safe to say that they were a match for anybody who did have engineering degrees.</p>

<p>But then there are other people who rise to the top of engineering companies despite not having engineering degrees and not pretending to have engineering knowledge. Many engineering companies are run by non-engineers. Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun, is a businessman, not an engineer, and he doesn't pretend to be an engineer. Sam Palmisano, CEO of IBM, is not an engineer. His bachelor's degree is in history from Johns Hopkins. His expertise is in business management, not engineering. John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems, has degrees in business and law, not engineering. He's a salesman.<br>
He rose from the sales division, not the engineering division. Terry Semel, CEO of Yahoo, is not an engineer. He's a former Hollywood executive at Warner Brothers whose expertise is in marketing and entertainment production, not engineering (and certainly not computer science). </p>

<p>Heck, look at some of the highly successful MIT graduates who made it to the top. Carly Fiorina was former (and infamous) head of HP, and formerly the most powerful woman in business according to Fortune Magazine. She's an MIT graduate - but not an engineering degree, but rather she came from the MIT Sloan School, holding a master's degree in management from the Sloan Fellows program. Her undergrad degree is in medieval history/philosophy from Stanford. She's no engineer - her expertise is in marketing. She had a brilliant career in marketing at Lucent and AT&T. {Heck, the current CEO of HP, Mark Hurd, is no engineer either, holding degrees in business and who rose from the sales ranks to get to the top}.</p>

<p>How about some other MIT grads who rose to the top? Duane Ackerman is head of Bellsouth. He's an MIT grad, but, again, from the Sloan School, where he got a master's degree in management. His undergrad degree is in physics. John Thompson is CEO of the antivirus company Symantec, and is also an MIT graduate from the Sloan School, and doesn't hold any engineering degrees. Dan Carp, former CEO of Kodak, is also a MIT Sloan graduate, and whose other degrees are in business and math. </p>

<p>The point is, you don't ** need ** an engineering degree to run an engineering company. There are many ways to get to the top of an engineering company. You can get there through sales, finance, marketing, business development, HR, and so forth. Furthermore, you sometimes don't even need an engineering degree to work as an engineer. This seems to be especially true in many high-tech fields where they don't care much about your degree, they only care about what you know how to do. Tech companies in Silicon Valley are replete with people who don't have degrees but have very good computer and engineering skills.</p>

12

<p>And his AB from Harvard.</p>

<p>A minor point, but to be fair to Harvard ...</p>

13

<p>Does anyone know why Bill Gate chose to attend Harvard Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences instead of MIT Engineering program ?</p>

<p>Was he rejected from MIT Engineering program ?</p>

14

<p>
[quote]
And his AB from Harvard.</p>

<p>A minor point, but to be fair to Harvard ...

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I am being fair. It's not an engineering degree from Harvard. We are talking about Harvard DEAS here.</p>

<p>Besides, I could point out that recently deposed Harvard President Larry Summers got his bachelor's degree in economics from MIT.</p>

15

<p>
[quote]
Does anyone know why Bill Gate chose to attend Harvard Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences instead of MIT Engineering program ?</p>

<p>Was he rejected from MIT Engineering program ?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Nobody knows. I think it's more to that he didn't really know what he wanted to do, so he was hedging his bets by going to Harvard.</p>

16

<p>FIscher Black, Bill Gates, An Wang, Steven Ballmer chose to attend Harvard Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences (DEAS). Applied Math, Applied Physics, Computer Sciences are programs at Harvard Division of Engineering.</p>

<p>Many other schools offer Applied Physics, Applied Math or Computer Sci degrees by schools of engineering. Applied Physics is called "Engineering Physics" at Cornell and Applied Math is called Computational Mathematics at Stanford. </p>

<p>You can not say certain program is not engineering program because the name does not contain 'engineering'.<br>
Aeronautics and Astronautic degree at MIT is an engineering degree. Material Science is also an engineering degree. </p>

<p>Applied Math & Applied Physics at Harvard Division of Engineering are the engineering programs</p>

17

<p>This discussion has shoved itself into a nitpicking corner. Sounds to me as if you may have already chosen the Harvard DEAS program. Best of luck with everything!</p>

18

<p>chill out. whatcha yellin' for. lay back, it's all been done before. and if only you would let it be you would see... you become somebody else around everyone else you're watchin' your back like you can't relax, trying to be cool you look like a fool to me. TELL MEEEEEEEE... why'dya have to go and make things so complicated?????!!11</p>

19

<p>
[quote]
FIscher Black, Bill Gates, An Wang, Steven Ballmer chose to attend Harvard Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences (DEAS). Applied Math, Applied Physics, Computer Sciences are programs at Harvard Division of Engineering.</p>

<p>Many other schools offer Applied Physics, Applied Math or Computer Sci degrees by schools of engineering. Applied Physics is called "Engineering Physics" at Cornell and Applied Math is called Computational Mathematics at Stanford. </p>

<p>You can not say certain program is not engineering program because the name does not contain 'engineering'.
Aeronautics and Astronautic degree at MIT is an engineering degree. Material Science is also an engineering degree. </p>

<p>Applied Math & Applied Physics at Harvard Division of Engineering are the engineering programs

[/quote]
</p>

<p>First off, there is no such thing as the "Harvard Division of Engineering". There is only the "Division of Engineering and Applied Science". There are ** TWO ** topics in that division. That's why it's called DEAS, not just DE. Why is it called DEAS if everything in there is engineering? Why not just call it DE then? </p>

<p>Hence, all of those people you named were did not get study in the Harvard Department of Engineering, because there is no such thing. There is only the Department of Engineering and Applied Science. All of those guys resided in the Applied Science part of DEAS. </p>

<p>
[quote]
Many other schools offer Applied Physics, Applied Math or Computer Sci degrees by schools of engineering.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>But many others do not. For example, applied math at Berkeley is NOT taught in the College of Engineering. Rather, it is taught in the College of Letters and Science. </p>

<p><a href="http://ls.berkeley.edu/dept/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://ls.berkeley.edu/dept/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Applied Math at MIT is taught within the MIT Math Department, which is housed in the School of Science, not in the School of Engineering.</p>

<p><a href="http://www-math.mit.edu/applied/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www-math.mit.edu/applied/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Besides, let me put it to you this way. You say that applied math, applied physics, and CS are all engineering degrees at Harvard. Yet, the fact is, according to ABET, the only accredited engineering degree you can earn at Harvard is the SB degree. You can see this for yourself here.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.abet.org%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.abet.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>So to get an accredited engineering degree at Harvard, you must earn the SB. Oh, but what's this here? According to DEAS, you cannot earn an SB in applied mathematics, computer science, or engineering physics. You can only earn an (unaccredited) AB degree. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.deas.harvard.edu/undergradstudy/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.deas.harvard.edu/undergradstudy/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p><a href="http://www.deas.harvard.edu/undergradstudy/engineeringsciences/index.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.deas.harvard.edu/undergradstudy/engineeringsciences/index.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>So, let's say you're right. Let's say that applied math, applied physics (engineering physics), and computer science at Harvard are engineering degrees. Then why doesn't Harvard allow people to get the ABET-accredited SB degree in those fields? Is Harvard or ABET being stupid?</p>

20

<p>
[quote]

Actually, what made Gates rich was not what he learned at Harvard. Instead, he decided to write an operating system and a programming language(BASIC) that was user friendly, unlike the IBM OS2, which was light years ahead of DOS and Windows, yet remained extremely user-unfriendly. He was a business man, not a genius engineer. He does have a very good vision however, and knows how to play his cards, while at the same time, knowing enough technical stuff that he's not just some snobby chairman, but actually sit down with low level developers.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>You are right in that Gates' success had nothing to do with his (incomplete) Harvard education, but it also had nothing really to do with user-friendliness per-se. Like all other successful business men he "saw his opportunities and he took them". Gates is definitely a brilliant man, but his engineering skills are debatable. Altair BASIC was a very simple 8080 assembly language program and MSDOS was actually just a stripped-down clone of CP/M that was written by somebody else (Gates bought QDOS from soembody else and renamed it MSDOS). OS/2 came some years later and was quite userfriendly, but failed because Microsoft pulled out of the joint OS/2 project between IBM and Microsoft and started their own project (Windows NT), and due to their existing hold on the market, they were able to wipe out OS/2 with propaganda and advertisements. Off the subject, I know, but I like to argue about computer stuff :). Interestingly enough, Gates' businessman views actually brought him in to conflict with the hackers at Berkeley and MIT during the late 70s and early 80s.</p>

<p>Anyway, I would choose MIT for the great enviornment, but either one would be a great choice I'm sure.</p>