<p>another measure of the strength of a school's engineering school or program is the number of faculty members it has in the prestigious national academy of engineering. stanford has 88 such members. yale has 5. cornell and princeton, the ivies' top two programs, have 23 and 21, respectively.</p>
<p>
[quote]
YALE ENGINEERING RANKED FIRST IN RESEARCH IMPACT
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Those are per-paper and per-professor statistics. They don't address the depth of the department: how many people are performing at a high level, how many areas within the field are covered at a high level, how many high-cited papers are published per year, total citations impact per year of the department. Yale does not rank with Berkeley and Caltech (and MIT, Stanford, Cornell) by such measures.</p>
<p>
[quote]
In my opinion, quality is more important than quantity:</p>
<p>(Engineering: Yale #1, Stanford #3, Caltech #4)
[/quote]
</p>
<p>PosterX,</p>
<p>According to this questionable ranking, neither MIT nor Berkeley is in top 10 in engineering; So according to your logic, they were surpassed by university of Arizona and Boston University in engineering. FYI, MIT and Berkeley have most and 3rd most faculty members in national academy of engineering.</p>
<p>According to this questionable ranking, neither MIT nor Berkeley is in top 10 in physics; So according to your logic, they were surpassed by Lousiana State University and SUNY at Stony Brook. FYI, MIT has been ranked as #1 in physics by US NEWS for years. And Berkeley has most faculty members selected into the national academy of science in physics.</p>
<p>According to this questionable ranking, in psycology, Stanford is surpassed by
Virginia Commonwealth University. FYI, Stanford has been ranked as #1 in psycology for decades by both US NEWS and National Research Council. So neither these 2 rankings is quality ranking according to you. Right?</p>
<p>According to this questionable ranking, in mathematics, Princeton is not in top 10. FYI, Princeton has created most Fields medal winners (the "Nobel" prize in dare math) and has most faculty members in national academy of science in pure mathematics. I assume you don't dare to say Fields medal has nothing to do with quality. Right?</p>
<p>alright guys, we get it-- you both know wayyy more statistics about colleges then any healthy human being should. no one really believes that yale engineering is better than mit or caltech. i want to go into engineering, but i still chose yale over mit because of the undergrad experience, and in fact i was extremely turned off by mit students who, during the campus preview weekend, tried to convince me that my "earning potential" was "infinitely higher" coming out of mit than it would be from yale. that sort of pretentiousness was not what i was looking for in a school, and i know i won't regret my decision.</p>
<p>elsewhen,</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the decision you picked Yale over MIT to study engineering was a horrible mistake. probably 95% of the people in this universe would agree with me. And 99% of the engineers would agree with me.</p>
<p>I'm not part of that 95%, datalook. elsewhen chose the school that was the right fit rather than the best on paper. That separates her - hugely - from the people who aren't even able to see why such a distinction matters. I'd easily choose to learn or work with somebody who has that spark she seems to have for such an unusual decision rather than being stuck around somebody who only looks at statistics and future marketability.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Unfortunately, the decision you picked Yale over MIT to study engineering was a horrible mistake. probably 95% of the people in this universe would agree with me. And 99% of the engineers would agree with me.
[/quote]
And what would the horrible consequences of going to Yale instead of MIT be datalook? You make much too much out of program rankings, when, at the undergrad level, what matters (in terms of getting jobs, going to grad school, and quality of education) is overall college quality, not rankings in specific programs.</p>
<p>datalook - you couldn't be more wrong</p>
<p>Undergraduate education is about what you make of it. If a student in engineering at Yale wants and has the motivation to have all of the opportunities and get as good if not a better education as he/she would at any other school, he/she will. It is not a matter of rankings or money spent on research or number of citations - if a student wants to get involved in research and is motivated enough, he/she will; if the student excels in all of the classes the student takes, the Yale name alone and the quality of the overall education will get them into graduate school. </p>
<p>Yale engineering does have a long history (first engineering PhD, for instance), and whether you like it or not, just because Yale's name doesn't evoke engineering prowess doesn't mean the quality of education is any less. In fact, if you look at the student-faculty ration in Yale's engineering program, it is approximately 1:1 - in what other program do you get that kind of attention? They just built brand new biomedical and chemical engineering facilities, and are pouring money into the sciences. Recently, I have been unsure about whether to choose Yale, and I went and visited - I met a girl in BME/ME at Yale who just received a Gates scholarship to study at Cambridge for graduate school - doesn't sound as if her opportunities were severely hurt by choosing arguably the best undergraduate experience in the country instead of the statistical number one BME program. The collaborative spirit at Yale, the small, focused programs, and the individualized attention all give engineers at Yale the same quality of education as an engineer at MIT - and none of the can be quantized. </p>
<p>For graduate school this might be different, granted. Yet undergraduate education more than anything else is about what you make it - not what the school does for you. I would put money on the fact that 95% of the universe agrees with me on this.</p>
<p>Datalook, I think you're way off on your percentages. I've talked to many MIT graduates and Stanford graduates and most of them said to go to Yale if you got in there. Yale is just a better undergraduate college (socially and academically), even in engineering. Yes, classes are smaller, there are fewer profs, etc., but there are many fewer majors as well so students get much more personal attention, meaning they can get into the top program they want to, or any job they want to, after college. MIT is just not like that at all, no matter how much more "well known" (because of its size) it is. I've addressed all of that argument in my posts above.</p>
<p>i actually have a friend who transferred from MIT to Yale and is studying engineering. He also had interests other than science/math - that's why.</p>
<p>Datalook,</p>
<p>You go around the boards telling people they've made a grave mistake simply because they choose schools that may simply rank lower in their intended fields. If that's how you're going to choose where you attend college, that is sad indeed.</p>
<p>I love how you also call someone's choice of college without even knowing their process in the decision, the "worst mistake of their lives."</p>
<p>Childish, naive, and a tad bit idiotic. Didn't you also argue about the prestige of Stanford v. Yale in rural China for about two straight pages?</p>
<p>Hold on I just want to point out that Yale doesn't skimp on the number of Math/Science professors it hires. The Engineering program has a 1:1 ratio of students and professors. It's out of control. Furthermore, if that's still not enough all undergrads are allowed to take classes in the grad school.</p>
<p>In academic reputation, Yale is excellent in science (but not super, not top 5), good in engineering (but not excellent, not top 20). Biology, medicine, and mathematics are Yale's 3 strong areas in science. All these are well reflected by US NEWS graduate school rankings over the years, by the number of faculty members selected into the prestigious national academies of sciences (NAS + NAE + IOM), and by the number of national medal of science winners. In science and engineering, there is a significant gap between Yale and the super group (Harvard + Stanford + MIT + Berkeley + Caltech) in terms of faculty distinction. Let's admit that.</p>
<p>coconu,</p>
<p>
[quote]
Childish, naive, and a tad bit idiotic. Didn't you also argue about the prestige of Stanford v. Yale in rural China for about two straight pages?
[/quote]
In my humble personal experience, people who call others idiotic are usually not smart themselves. This holds even if you attend Yale. I have met several Yale people before. They are just average IQ people, not smarter than some of the people from average state universities, but more snobish.</p>
<p>I don't recall that I argued about the prestige of Stanford v. Yale in rural China, unless you want to call Beijing and Shanghi, the 2 biggest cities in China, 'rural'. But I don't think that is relavent to Yale's strength in science and engineering. Why did you bring that up?</p>
<p>again, that's enough with the rankings statistics. if the op wanted to know Yale's rankings, he/she wouldn't have titled this thread "how bad REALLY..." and probably would have just googled those statistics anyways. what we need here are actual yale students who can tell us exactly how bad, or how good, the science and engineering programs are from personal experience, citing classes, professors, labs, etc. </p>
<p>and datalook, if you want to take offense at someone's response to a criticism that you had initially made of me (which i took in stride), then fine, but deal with it in a pm. no one is here to read your response to an insult, we're here because we want to know about yale.</p>
<p>Datalook, the Institute for Scientific Information doesn't agree with you. In a most recent ranking, it placed Yale 3rd after Caltech and Harvard in the average strength of science faculty. For overall research impact, the top five were H, Y, S, MIT and UCSD.</p>
<p>Datalook,</p>
<p>I was not attacking you personally, but rather your action of telling others that they've made some grave error by going to a lower ranked school.</p>
<p>You've still not justified yourself on that point.So my question still stands; why is it some fatal mistake by choosing a lower ranked school, if that person feels at home there?</p>
<p>I applaud your personal experience of discovering that people who call others idoitic are not smart themselves, but I cannot help but question just how many of those particular experiences you've had (plus, I love how you avoided using the word idiotic to make that argument). I'm guessing not that many.</p>
<p>Same goes for you making an argument based on "several Yale people," of whom you somehow managed to analyze their IQ.</p>
<p>When top universities, like Yale, Harvard, MIT, blah blah, say the opportunities are endless (an overused phrase, perhaps, used by all the top universities), they mean it. As it is at most universities and all studies, success in a field is measured by your motivation and the resources they have to offer. Since Yale focuses so much on its undergraduates (not to mention the recent 1 billion dollar investment in the sciences), it's not difficult at all to find science opportunities for a couple hundred science/engineering kids. </p>
<p>I want to say that the level of academia are virtually the same at all these universities; I've sat in on classes at MIT, Yale and my state university, and I didn't see a marked difference in rigor at all! The only significant difference I observed was that each school has a different academic focus. I would like to note that the people with whom you spend the next four years of your life inevitably help shape who you become. The people/personal preference should be a bigger factor than a silly US News Ranking. Or the Science Rankings. The fact that they differ so much shows that everyone has his or her own perceptions, and thus makes rankings useless.</p>
<p>At Yale, a science/engineering student will have the benefit of not only a more personal education (BME has like, a 1:1 student/teacher ratio), but also the chance to spend his or her time around history majors, budding actors, lawyers, whatever. I thought that this would be more valuable to me than being around say, all math/science majors. I felt that a lot of the people at MIT were just into science, and they found it more comforting to be around mostly science/math people. It's really a matter of personal preference than ranking.</p>
<p>--
No offense, Datalook, but the way you're talking about your ideas and the judgment you're passing on others' choices makes you sound narrow-minded and unpleasant. Choosing Yale over MIT (which I am also doing), is a matter of personal preference rather than a matter of pigeonholing myself into an inferior institution. I am pretty damn annoyed that you think it's a huge mistake.</p>
<p>Old, but interesting.</p>
<p>mei_er:
Amen</p>