<p>Harvard is not my first choice for college, since I want to study engineering. I may also be interested in applied math or physics. I would probably prefer an engineering school.</p>
<p>My dad says that in the real world, people will see Harvard on my resume, and no one is going to see or care if it says Harvard Engineering. He said that since Harvard is the best known school in the world, Harvard Engineering may carry more cache on a resume than even MIT or CalTech.</p>
<p>Do you think he is correct? Even if he is correct, will I get a decent education in engineering at Harvard.</p>
<p>I also have this same question about Yale engineering, so I guess I'll just post there, too.</p>
<p>yeah, i agree with marite... in the engineering world a school like MIT or Caltech will definitely carry more weight. but if you have even the slightest inkling that you may not want an engineering degree, then harvard isn't a bad choice. but then again, caltech and MIT degrees are also great in general.</p>
<p>You will still get a very good engineering education at Harvard. It's not MIT, but a Harvard engineering degree is certainly not looked down upon. It'll probably even make you stand out in the professional world since a large number of engineers graduated from big name engineering schools.</p>
<p>Your dad is correct. Harvard and Yale both are exceedingly well respected, actually, and among the very top 5 programs in the country -- especially at the undergraduate level:</p>
<p>One does not go to Harvard for a career-oriented education.</p>
<p>One goes to Harvard for a broad spectrum of education that opens up the mind to different modes of thinking and enriches a person's intellect. This is the whole idea behind the liberal arts philosophy. Engineering and applied sciences are in fact contrary to the operating philosophy of a Harvard education. The existence of these departments is merely a symbol of the ages, a sign of the University's attempt to stay competitive in today's elite education market, by catering to the broader needs of those seeking an elite education.</p>
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You will still get a very good engineering education at Harvard.
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<p>What is "very good" -- would it be at the level of, say, RPI or Rice or one of the better state school engineering programs? The spectrum of engineering courses and faculty expertise is narrower, and the humanities distribution requirements more onerous, at Harvard than at a tech school. Harvard is improving its engineering but it is nothing at all like a technical institute. It does have a lot of science and medicine-oriented students, but that is a different population with its own culture and its own type of courses. Even in computer science it is a theory-oriented crowd compared to what you find at MIT.</p>
<p>"One goes to Harvard for a broad spectrum of education that opens up the mind to different modes of thinking and enriches a person's intellect."</p>
<p>"Engineering and applied sciences are in fact contrary to the operating philosophy of a Harvard education."</p>
<p>I think you just contradicted yourself buddy. Engineering and applied sciences do in fact open up a different mode of thinking and allows one to expand their intellect in different respective fields. If they go against Harvard's philosophy, why would Harvard embrace them and pump millions of dollars to strengthen these departments?</p>
<p>It comes down to the difference between the pure sciences and the applied sciences. Between physics and engineering. Liberal arts and science programs focus on theoretical and experimental knowledge of the fields, while engineering programs focus on the applied and technical knowledge needed for a career in those fields. As for why Harvard has these programs, it's simply a case of pragmatism over idealism.</p>
<p>where did you get the idea that engineering merely teaches you to blindly, mechanically apply theoreticians' ideas? sure, engineering focuses on making things work, but there's a lot of fundamental science in engineering that most theoretical scientists never learn.</p>
<p>So basically, according to you, dualityim, if you go to school for engineering or applied science, you are narrow-minded and/or depriving yourself of intellectual growth? Please. Take an engineering class and tell everyone that that doesn't broaden your horizons and stimulate your mind as much as a history class about some guy who lived X years ago in X country and did something really boring that has little bearing on today's society.</p>
<p>I think regardless of what college you go to, the power to innovate and find new solutions to problems is completely within you. I think that if a person lacks the drive to do such things, then regardless of what school that person went to, "good" or "bad", that person will not succeed. Just look at Steve Jobs-- He was a college drop out, and by many people's, if not most people's standards, it wasn't a good college at that (Reed college). Yet, ten years later, he was the head of a 2 billion dollar company.</p>
<p>That being said, I think that the purpose of undergraduate studies is more to find yourself and what you want to do with your life than anything else. That is the reasoning for having minimum requirements, I mean, we're all really young, and hypothetically, what if we never took physics in high school (which is possible for my high school), and were required to for a semester in college? It's quite possible that throughout minimum requirement classes, a person will change their intended major. If engineering is still what you want to do after minimum requirements, then you'd probably go to grad school anyway, and at that point, since you won't have to take english, history, or other subjects that were re-confirmed to yourself as not an interest through the minimum requirements, you could go to a tech school such as MIT, Caltech, etc., and hold a well respected degree by the majority of employer's (presumable) standpoints.</p>
<p>After all, how about students who go to Harvard intending to major in say, English Literature, but then change their minds and want to major in engineering. Should those students be punished for having a change in interest? Of course not, and those students even have a plausible story to justify why they chose Harvard for engineering over other schools. And you could always make up such a story if an employer actually asked you why you didn't go to MIT or Caltech for undergrad ;) (which I just don't see happening anyway).</p>
<p>Sorry if anybody was offended by me calling Reed college as not "up there". I was just trying to make a point, and I guess I went a little overboard. Vossron pointed this out to me, and provided me with this link: <a href="http://web.reed.edu/ir/phd.html%5B/url%5D">http://web.reed.edu/ir/phd.html</a>, and admittedly I stand corrected. I guess in a way, that also displays my point, since what is "good" and what is "bad" is changing, yet a lot of people still think of engineering schools and think of only MIT, Caltech, etc. Thanks Vossron!</p>
<p>No ranking is perfect, but the one showing Yale at #1 in Engineering fails a simple laugh test by not having MIT or Berkeley in the top 10 (while UOfArizona is).</p>
<p>^U-Arizona has a small, but exceptionally high-quality program. ISI/ScienceWatch is published by Thomson, which happens to be the world's most respected authority for scientific information and relies exclusively on scientific data, not people's biases. As you can see, Caltech, Cornell, Princeton and Stanford also fare extremely well in the ranking. It's you who are prejudiced, not the ranking.</p>
<p>I am not sure how I ended up in this thread but the Science Watch rankings PosterX uses to promote the quality of H and Y's engineering caught my attention.</p>
<p>They measure something but not the quality of undergraduate education. The say something about the various programs but cannot possibly reflect the overall quality. Not only is MIT missing from the Engineering list but it has Computer Science without CMU (but UMass Amherst) and Physics without Princeton or Caltech (but LSU and UCSC) ???</p>