Harvard ranking in terms of engineering (Undergraduate)

[sakky]

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Harvard’s only BS in engineering is in Engineering Sciences. It offers no engineering degrees in any of the fields covered by MIT such as aerospace engineering, civil engineering, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, nuclear engineering, electrical engineering, materials science or biological engineering. So you couldn’t attend Harvard with the expectation of getting an engineering degree in any of these fields by simply taking some classes at MIT. Even if by some extraordinary effort a Harvard student took all the MIT classes required for BS degree in chemical engineering for instance (which is actually impossible because of the additional GIR requirements at MIT), that would not grant him a degree in chemical engineering from MIT (or Harvard).

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<p>I fail to understand why this is a serious issue. Harvey Mudd similarly doesn’t offer any formal BS engineering degrees except one in (General) Engineering. Yet I don’t think anybody disputes that Harvey Mudd is a respectable engineering school. </p>

<p>Even Caltech (surprisingly!) doesn’t offer actual formal undergraduate engineering degrees in many disciplines including, surprisingly, those in which it holds great prestige such as aerospace engineering. You could take the entire gamut of aerospace courses and still not earn an actual aerospace engineering degree from Caltech. You would instead formally earn a degree in ‘Engineering and Applied Sciences’. The same is true of bioengineering at Caltech. Caltech doesn’t even offer materials science or civil engineering at the undergraduate level and doesn’t offer nuclear engineering at all. Yet I don’t think anybody would deem studying engineering at Caltech to be a “pretty pointless exercise”. </p>

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He would be no better off than if he had taken the MIT courses on OCW, the online MIT course library which is freely available to anybody.

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<p>If that is what you truly believe, then you must then also believe that there is then no benefit for MIT students to study at MIT at all (except perhaps for the brand name and the networking). After all, every MIT student could have similarly not attended MIT but simply leveraged the OCW resources to educate themselves. So why should any student go to MIT at all? Presuming that there actually is some value in attending actual live courses at MIT that MIT students enjoy, then Harvard students are able to access that value through cross-registration.</p>

<p>Now, if you wish to persist in arguing that there is indeed zero value in attending live MIT courses - whether for Harvard or MIT students - you are certainly free to do so. But that seems to be a topic best served on another thread. </p>

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No advisor of an undergrad student in the school of engineering at Harvard would approve a course schedule where a substantial number of the classes where taken at MIT. They can only take a class at MIT if a similar class is not available at Harvard.

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<p>This requirement is easily met in practice, as I have seen myself. All a student has to do is identify a section of the MIT course syllabus that differs from the counterpart course at Harvard. Due to the unique nature of most MIT courses, you can almost always find some difference in coursework except perhaps for the more basic courses, for which you frankly don’t really need cross-registration anyway. {Basic Circuits, as an example, is going to be roughly the same everywhere.} </p>

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Over 90% of all cross-registrations at MIT in engineering are by Harvard graduate students not undergrads.

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<p>Obviously that is to be expected given the sheer paucity of Harvard undergraduate engineering students relative to graduate students, coupled with the aforementioned fact that you don’t really need cross-registration to complete the more basic undergraduate requirements anyway. </p>

<p>Nevertheless, the point stands that the MIT course catalog is available to Harvard undergraduate engineering students, regardless of how many of them actually choose to take advantage of it. </p>

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Undergrads at Harvard are severely restricted in how many classes per semester they can take through cross-registration

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<p>The formal restriction is that you cannot take more than half of your coursework in any given semester through cross-registration. This hardly seems to be an unusually restrictive policy. </p>

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and each department sets further limits.

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<p>This is the first I have heard of this. Exactly which departments are setting these limits, and what are these limits? </p>

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There are also many practical limitations. The semesters don’t overlap and spring semester finals at MIT are given after degrees are already awarded at Harvard, so students could not take classes that would count towards graduation.

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<p>The way that that problem is often times surmounted in practice is to simply have your final exam scheduled early. Or, obviously, an even more straightforward solution is to not take a course that has a final exam at all, but rather a final project. </p>

<p>But in any case, the issue of final exam graduation scheduling is one that affects only your final semester. </p>

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Harvard students can’t participate in research projects at MIT which are often requirements to many courses and programs at MIT.

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<p>Uh, which ones exactly? I have never once heard of any MIT research projects that students are required take take as part of courses or programs at MIT that Harvard students are formally barred from participating in. </p>

<p>Now, what may happen is that Harvard students may be barred from being paid or offered course credit for such projects, although I suspect that the latter is false as well. But in any case, I would be interested in hearing about some actual MIT research projects that are integral to any MIT programs that Harvard students are formally barred from partaking in.</p>

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This is a far cry from the best of both worlds!

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<p>To be clear, I have never once argued that Harvard engineering is as good as engineering at MIT. Obviously if you know you want to be an engineer, you should prefer to attend MIT (assuming that you were admitted, yet many Harvard admittees are not). </p>

<p>My point is that Harvard engineering is still a highly respectable option, and - at least from a curricular resource standpoint - is arguably superior to that of many other engineering programs, notably due to the access to the MIT course catalog through cross-reg.</p>

[sakky]

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Not quite true. Harvard students are not allowed to take part in MIT undergrad research projects (UROPs)

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<p>Obviously I meant engineering curricular resources. </p>

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Indeed, we might say that the “combined engineering resources of Wellesley and MIT . . . is [sic] arguably superior to any other school’s.” Notwithstanding the fact that Wellesley’s engineering resources are non-existent; but combine them with MIT’s, and arguably they’re the best.

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<p>Well, you can’t quite say that the combined engineering resources of Wellesley and MIT are superior to that of any other school, because as you pointed out, Wellesley has no engineering resources and can therefore only access the resources at MIT. In contrast, Harvard actually has some engineering resources, and adding them with MIT’s would result in a combination that is indeed superior to that of arguably any other school’s. </p>

<p>But more to your point, I know that you meant your post as a joke, but strictly speaking, you are correct. Wellesley students do indeed have access to the entire MIT course catalog. Surely plenty of other students at other schools wish they had the same. For example, surely many students at BU - which is just across the river - wish they could take coursework at MIT but have no established cross-registration program to do so. </p>

<p>Look, at the end of the day, Harvard has an standalone undergraduate engineering ranking somewhere around the 20’s, which is a highly respectable ranking. Combine that with the curricular resources at MIT, and an enterprising Harvard undergrad can construct an engineering curriculum that is competitive with almost any other school’s. Nor do I see the lack of a formal degree in a specific engineering discipline from Harvard to be a serious issue, as the same is true at Harvey Mudd and even many engineering disciplines at Caltech. The only 3 engineering subdisciplines at Caltech for which formal degrees are offered are EE, ME, and ChemE - the rest are aggregated into the ‘Engineering and Applied Sciences’ degree designation.</p>

[sakky]

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It was a joke, just meant to point out the inanity of the argument that Harvard’s engineering ranking should be piggybacked on MIT’s because their “combined engineering resources” are the best in the nation. So are Wellesley-and-MIT’s, even though Wellesley has none. Sure, it’s to Harvard’s advantage that its engineering students can take classes at MIT, but that doesn’t make Harvard a top engineering school, any more than Hampshire can bootstrap itself into the category of “top 3 LAC” because its students can cross-register at Amherst

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<p>Again, I don’t see why the argument is ‘inane’, for you freely admitted yourself that Harvard (and Wellesley) students are better off by having the opportunity to cross-register at MIT, when students at other schools, even local ones such as BU or Northeastern, lack such an opportunity. Similarly, MIT students are surely better off with opportunities to reciprocally access resources at Harvard through cross-reg than if they lacked such opportunities. </p>

<p>The controversy seems to revolve around whether a school can, as you said, ‘boostrap’ itself to a higher ranking through formal sharing and aggregation policies at nearby schools. Rankings exist to identify the quality of the stand-alone resources at any particular school and are therefore highly relevant to those students who choose to only access the specific resources at that school. But that stand-alone ranking may be less relevant to those students who are able and willing to leverage shared resources. </p>

<p>Now, again, to be clear, I have never once argued that Harvard is better than, or even equivalent to, MIT when it comes to engineering, cross-reg notwithstanding. Obviously if you want to be an engineer, you should just go to MIT, presuming that you were admitted. The bevy of resources offered at any particular school extends farther than merely the curricular resources, such as the branding, recruiting, student culture, the extracurricular activities (such as the UROP’s), and the like.</p>

<p>However, the point still stands that from a purely curricular standpoint, there is little reason to deprecate Harvard engineering, as the cross-reg program frankly provides more engineering curricular resources than that at most other schools.</p>

[nothingto]

<p>Stanford, Caltech, Princeton, and MIT.</p>

<p>They are the shining beacon of Engineering.</p>

[sakky]

<p>Uh, Princeton is a shining beacon of Engineering?</p>