<p>Harvard historically has had a very small engineering program that was just an academic department with limited offerings for degrees. For most of its long history, people who wanted to be engineers just went to school down the street at MIT. But pretty recently Harvard decided to invest in their engineering program and have created the School of Engineering.
So that’s why you don’t know too many Harvard engineers, they haven’t been producing them!
I researched this a little when my son was looking at schools. Most engineers I know would be surprised to know that Harvard had engineering at all.</p>
<p>Harvard has always had engineering, but it was historically small. With MIT literally 10 minutes away, there was never an impetus to compete in that arena. Historical note: Around 1905, Harvard and MIT were planning on merging to form one university… apparently the project got a lot of traction and made some progress, but there was one group vehemently opposed: MIT alumni. They knew that in any merger, MIT’s identity would be lost and all of MIT would become Harvard’s College of Engineering. The alumni groups through lawsuit after lawsuit to block the merger, and eventually won out.</p>
<p>That said, Harvard is rapidly ramping up engineering, but they are sort of trying to leapfrog over “traditional” engineering (eg civil, mechanical, etc) and go for next generation engineering like biosynthetic engineering, nanoscale engineering… and also developing joint programs with MIT.</p>
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<p>Although Northeastern (and Drexel and Cincinnati) have co-ops integrated into the curriculum more so than other schools, many other schools offer optional formalized co-op programs through their career centers, particularly for engineering and CS students (for example, at [University</a> of Massachusetts](<a href=“http://www.umass.edu/careers/internships/coopprocess/]University”>http://www.umass.edu/careers/internships/coopprocess/)). Harvard does not appear to have such, but a student can take a [leave</a> of absence and later return](<a href=“http://static.fas.harvard.edu/registrar/ugrad_handbook/current/chapter2/voluntary_leaves.html]leave”>http://static.fas.harvard.edu/registrar/ugrad_handbook/current/chapter2/voluntary_leaves.html) in order to take a “co-op” job.</p>
<p>Of the super selective schools, Harvard is not generally known for engineering, compared to MIT, Stanford, Princeton, Cornell, and Caltech.</p>
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<p>Investment banking and management consulting most likely.</p>
<p><a href=“Out of Harvard, and Into Finance - The New York Times”>Out of Harvard, and Into Finance - The New York Times;
<p>Harvard engineering is small, at 3% of bachelor’s degrees (about 50 per year). CS is another 2% (about 33 per year).</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>Ah…I was beginning to wonder: “who are these folks?” </p>
<p>Well, then, the OP’s relative may want to consider career goals when deciding.</p>
<p>A computer science major attending pretty much any university isn’t going to have a problem finding summer internships or a full-time job.</p>
<p>OP,</p>
<p>You “dilemma” seems unnecessary. Anyone that’s competitive enough to consider Harvard and interested in engineering and CS can apply for MIT, Caltech, and Carnegie Mellon (CS). For job prospect, they blow Northeastern out of the water even without co-op. GaTech and Northwestern have well-established co-op programs that also let students co-op in alternating terms; their engineering programs are also considered stronger and ranked much higher nationally. Among all these schools, I would only pick Northeastern if it’s cheaper.</p>
<p>Harvard engineering students are also capable of taking any classes offered at MIT which are not offered at Harvard. The schools are only 2 miles away from each other. Even if Harvard has a week engineering program, the students can get the best of both worlds: A degree with Harvard on it, and a rigorous education in engineering from MIT.</p>
<p>Harvard’s probably pumping up its engineering program because of startup culture. Boston has some of the most IPOs annually in the country. And if you’re trying to do a startup, you’re going to need engineering/CS.</p>
<p>Of course MIT and Carnegie Mellon have also been applied for. If getting accepted to MIT/Harvard can compensate for a co-op program in Northeastern then that would be great. If I can get that assurance from you guys, that would be fantastic!</p>
<p>I would urge you to look into the specifics of Harvard students taking MIT classes. Make sure you know what the program limits are.
If I got into Harvard and Northeastern but not MIT or Stanford I would go to Harvard, even for engineering. Note that Harvard’s CS department is excellent.</p>
<p>If you end up at Northeastern, don’t expect anybody to believe you when you’re sitting around the student center swapping stories and you say, “Yeah, well, y’know, I…ah…got INTO Harvard, but you really can’t beat the ol’ Co-Op system.”</p>
<p>The ■■■■■ grazes among the small woodland creatures.</p>
<p>Harvard’s most notable contribution to to the evolution of the computer industry was the advent of the “computer bug”.</p>
<p>As you might expect, this tends to close doors within the computer industry rather than open them, which forces Harvard computer engineers into academia or other industries such as consulting or finance. The only way into the computer industry from Harvard is to drop out of school and form your own company :-)</p>
<p><a href=“http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_334663”>| National Museum of American History;