“Looks like Stanford would be a far better option for Engineering. I think I’ll EA there instead”
Of course, if you get into Stanford early for engineering, you take it and don’t look back.
If you want to practice engineering in Texas, going to Harvard would be the kiss of death! UT, A&M, or Rice would be your best bets. And you will have PLENTY of connections. Alumni called my dad, a UT professor, every year to get recommendations for students to hire. The alumni are VERY loyal to hiring new graduates, and there are many, many alumni in Texas.
And if you want to work on Wall Street a math degree from Harvard probably has the edge over an engineering one.
One HS classmate regretted turning down MIT to attend Harvard as an engineering major in the mid-late '90s as back then, the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences(DEAS) was “the neglected stepchild of FAS” in her own words. While Harvard has had engineering since 1847, it has long been considered a small program not considered much better than what one could get at many state flagships…and certainly inferior to many respectable/elite ones…especially UMich, UIUC, Gtech or moreso…UC Berkeley*.
This feeling was only reinforced when she went to Stanford for engineering grad school.
I also had several older relatives who were senior engineers/engineering management at various hardcore engineering/programmer firms who tended to regard most Ivy engineering graduates with some skepticism about their techie cred and commitment to engineering/technology (Exceptions were Cornell, Columbia SEAS, and Princeton whose engineering programs were comparable to elites like UMich, UIUC, etc).
Most of those graduates tended to be shifted over to the sales and marketing department and in one extreme case…an idiot nephew of an influential engineering firm partner was found to be so incompetent they felt foisting him on my then newly promoted junior engineering executive uncle was the most expedient way to keep him employed to please that partner without causing too much damage to the firm’s bottom line. Took a decade before other senior partners and my uncle was finally able to get rid of him.
This experience also strongly factored into that uncle telling his kids that if they wanted to apply to Harvard to study engineering, they were completely on their own in financing it.
- Berkeley's engineering/CS peers are MIT/Catech/CMU/Stanford...the very apex of top engineering/CS programs.
Yeah I’ve kind of shifted my views a lot since the OP.
Thinking of Stanford EA, and would probably pick state flagship (UF) over Harvard at this point.
I have a question for everyone… EA decisions come out December 15th, and app deadlines are January 1st…
I may sound dumb asking this, but I shouldn’t wait until EA decision to start my other supplements?
Probably would be a rough 15 days, but If I get in to Stanford EA, a lot of time will have gone to waste.
You shouldn’t wait. Have all of them ready. If you don’t have to file, consider yourself very lucky that you got into a school you like and saved the application fees.
Definitely start working on them before decisions - I originally planned to apply to a much wider range of schools but after getting your decision for EA/SCEA it definitely demotivates you - either because you got in and can’t be bothered to finish the rest, or because you didn’t get into your top choice and feel saddened afterwards.
As, statistically, you shouldn’t expect to get into Stanford EA, it is in your best interest in either situation to start working on them early.
@Telluric Yeah if I got into Stanford, I’d probably be done (I also will be relying on financial aid but HYPS give the best aid and are generally comparable in terms of financial aid)… but definitely not counting on getting in, that’s for sure.
I wish they notified us EA applicants of the decision earlier, but alas, business is business. (The business of admissions profiteering).
You would be surprised. Princeton offered me half of what Harvard offered, likely as their financial aid application (PFAA) is considerably less detailed than the CSS Profile is. It was quite surprising, the difference was in the tens of thousands of dollars. Yale was about 4/5 as much, so roughly comparable but still a noticeable dip. Not sure about Stanford’s aid, I never applied. Good luck!
@AimingTop50 for undergrad i would pick Harvard over GTech even for engineering. For grad school I would pick GTech.
ON the undergraduate level individual department rankings do matter but overall schools strength/standing and quality across the board matters just as much or probably more imo.
@Telluric Guess I should still apply to the engineering ivies (princeton + cornell) and CMU, to see what aid they have to offer (whether I get into stanford or not)… having other (better) financial aid offers is good for 2 main reasons:
- well it would be cheaper to attend another school if I were to receive a better offer
- I could use that better offer to potentially haggle with Stanford
Billionaires ranking in Tech-Startup area (undergrad)
- Bill Gates (Harvard)
- Jeff Bezos (Princeton)
- Mark Zukerberg (Harvard)
- Larry Ellison (Chicago)
- Larry Page ( Michigan)
- Sergey Brinn (Maryland)
- Steve Ballmer (Harvard)
- Michael Dell
- Paul Allen
Dustin Moskovitz(Harvard)
Eric Schmidt(Princeton)
In High Tech industry
Harvard>>>>>>>>>>> Princeton>>> MIT>> Michigan>Maryland>>>> Georgia Tech, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, etc…
@JamesVanc This doesn’t say anything. Most of these people were undergrads many decades ago and their undergrad was not the key factor that helped them get successful. Most started their business in grad school or after moving to sillicon valley. Nowadays the top talent interested in tech tends to overwhelmingly flock to Stanford either for undergrad or grad school or as entrepreneurs looking to take advantage of the silicon valley and Stanford resources.
Btw you forgot Elon Musk from your ranking, who has a higher net worth than Dustin Moskovitz and Eric Schmidt.