<p>For example, Penn, Princeton, Columbia, and Cornell all have engineering schools and all say that they are very good, but how can you tell which school is the best? Do you use a variety of rankings to figure out which is the best, or are there any other measures that you use to determine the schools' quality in certain areas, such as how many people major in one area?</p>
<p>But at the same time, is that really an accurate measure, since MIT has humanities majors, yet it's generally regarded as an engineering school?</p>
<p>One source is the American Society for Engineering Education. Their profiles of engineering schools have tons of data about the majors, faculty, student body, research expenditures etc. etc. Makes it very easy to see the differences…
[ASEE.org</a> - ASEE - Publications - College Profiles - Search the Profiles](<a href=“http://profiles.asee.org/]ASEE.org”>http://profiles.asee.org/)</p>
<p>Also, a little digging on the colleges websites can reveal a lot. How long have they had an engineering school or been offering engineering majors? Is engineering a separate college within the university or just part of the “Arts and Sciences” college? How many engineering majors do they offer?</p>
<p>ABET accreditation is the usual baseline for most engineering majors.</p>
<p>Beyond that, check course offerings and faculty interests within each major at each school to get an idea of how strong the school is in the major and its subareas.</p>
<p>For many colleges, you can find and download a “Common Data Set” file. Section J of the CDS covers “Degrees Conferred”. It indicates how many students graduate in various fields.</p>
<p>If a school has graduate departments, the one you are interested in may be ranked by the National Research Council. For example, here is the NRC / Chronicle ranking of History departments:
[NRC</a> Rankings Overview: History - Faculty - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“NRC Rankings Overview: History”>NRC Rankings Overview: History)</p>
<p>USNWR ranks some graduate departments. Like the NRC rankings, it is only useful to the extent a graduate ranking might tell you something about undergraduate faculty quality or research strength. US News also ranks undergraduate engineering and CS programs.</p>
<p>Ruggs Recommendations and the old Gourman Reports are two other resources. They do purport to assess undergraduate department quality. However, their methods are a little mysterious/suspect and out-of-date.</p>
<p>Be sure to visit the online course catalogs for departments of interest. Consider how many courses are offered, whether they look interesting, and whether required courses are offered every year. Check out the number of faculty in the department, where they got their degrees, and any other indications of faculty quality you can suss out from their bios and CVs.</p>