<p>Yes. I don't see anything about the criticisms that is specific to "engineering" schools, and not generalizable to the overall methodologies that US News uses.</p>
<p>Overall my feeling - perhaps you'll even agree - is that the US News rankings have done a significant disservice to students and universities by encouraging many schools to adjust their policies to pander to the magazine's ranking system, rather than to the actual needs of students.</p>
<p>I don't see a huge disconnect between the "actual needs of students" and the areas in which USNews has encouraged schools to make progress.</p>
<p>For the most part (with the significant exception of whatever has been done to foster the insideous spread of Early Decision programs) I think most "improvements" aimed at raising the USNews ranking also make any school better. (Higher SAT medians, better graduation rate, better faculty/student ratio, higher faculty salaries, smaller class sizes, etc.)</p>
<p>Many people don't remember the "bad old days" before USNews forced schools to reveal information about themselves that was previously viewed as proprietary and "sensitive" - and kept secret. USNews has not only made much important data directly available, but it was the driving force behind the project to get schools to submit information in a common format via the Common Data Set.</p>
<p>Colleges, for generations, were used to "controlling the message" they were putting out, and making it as difficult as possible for potential applicants to make comparisons between schools.</p>
<p>It is easy to pay too much attention to these rankings. It is hard to imagine that it makes any difference at all which top 10 (?20, ?50) engineering school a student attends. There is virtually no evidence that professional outcome is related to which college a student attended, after controlling for student academic properties at entrance for colleges overall. It is even harder to believe that it matters for a field as standardized as engineering.</p>
<p>So, even if the rankings were perfectly reliable, they would not mean anything.</p>
<p>afan: couldn't disagree more.</p>
<p>top engineering schools usually have more accomplished professors.
usually have more and better research opportunities
usually have more and better labs and facilities
usually have more and better connections for internships
usually have stronger on-campus recruiting
usually place more grads in better grad schools</p>
<p>I said "evidence"</p>
<p>afan: I suggest you go to Boeing's, General Electric's, IBM's or virtually any other company's website and see where their HR departments hold recruiting fairs for engineers. </p>
<p>Then you will know what I know, and have your evidence, too.</p>
<p>So, I gather on evidence, you have none.</p>
<p>The assertions you make are hardly evidence that a given student will have a better professional career after enrolling at a "top" engineering school than elsewhere. Assuming it is true -remember "I said 'evidence'", not speculation- this is more a reflection of the characteristics the students brought to college with them, and the fact that companies find it efficient to look to schools with large numbers of top students. </p>
<p>"Evidence" would be:</p>
<p>Identify a set of people who enrolled in the top 5 engineering schools. </p>
<p>Determine their standing on characteristics that predict career sucess coming out of high school. Among these would be high school GPA, scores on SAT 1, SAT 2, and AP exams, parental income and educational levels, race and ethnicity (white and Asians tend to do better than blacks and Hispanics), gender (men make more money than women, although women get higher grades in college), partcipation in varsity athletics (probably uncommon among engineers, but a predictor nonetheless).</p>
<p>Identify a set of people with the same high school and demographic characteristics but who went to schools rated 31-35.</p>
<p>Follow their careers for long enough to have a meaningful outcome, but not so long as to be impractical- 15 years should be sufficient to know the trajectory they are on.</p>
<p>Ask whether the predictability of their career outcomes is enhanced by adding "engineering school attended" to the high school acheivement and demographic information. If it is, then it matters which school the students attend. If it is not, then it does not matter, controlling for entrance characteristics. </p>
<p>As far as I know, no one has done this for engineering schools. They have done this for colleges in general, using far more than 10 colleges, a longer interval, and much better controls for entrance characteristics. For most students, they find very little effect of "college attended". To the extent there was an effect, it favored attending schools with higher tuition, not those with higher SAT scores. Of course SAT scores figure highly in college ranking, and tuition does not. In fact, in engineering, many of the highest ranked schools are relatively inexpensive state universities.</p>
<p>I really do think that USNWR is very inaccurate in Harvard's engineering ranking. I mean, look at the schools it's being put in the same category. They are considered by most to be far better at engineering than Harvard is.</p>
<p>Remember that the biggest factor in these rankings is peer assessment reports. I'm sure that most engineering faculty at other schools don't know a thing about Harvard engineering, but because its Harvard, they think that it can't be that bad.</p>
<p>As far as the combination of liberal arts and engineering goes, I think that the best school for that from a pure ranking/prestige perspective is Princeton. Other good schools for that include Penn (where I am going for engineering next year), Stanford, and Duke. Compared to their balance of both excellent liberal arts and decent/strong engineering, Harvard cannot compare.</p>
<p>Any success of any engineers that might come out of Harvard (I've never heard of a Harvard engineer in my entire life) has more to do that they must have been some of the top students in the country just to get into Harvard and that they would do well no matter where they went to school than to the quality and strength of the actual deparment.</p>
<p>afan: </p>
<p>The area known as Silicon Valley in Northern California is considered by many to be the engineering technology capitol of the world. I know that you will require an exhaustive study on this, so I suggest you do one. </p>
<p>The founders, leaders, movers and shakers and engineering backbone of the companies located in Silicon Valley, which I allege is the engineering technology capitol of the world, have come most commonly from Stanford University but also from top schools such as CalTech and MIT. I know you will require a 30 year study on this with names, dates and title; I suggest you do one.</p>
<p>The top technology companies in Silicon Valley and the United States recruit heavily on-campus at Stanford, CalTech, MIT (you can check this on their websites as I said before) precisely because they are the top-ranked, big name, famous engineering schools with a proven record of producing the finest engineering talent.</p>
<p>Am I going to fast for you?</p>
<p>Of course they recruit at these schools. These schools enroll many of the students who were at the top of the distribution when they graduated high school. This says nothing about how these students do when they go to less prestigious engineering programs.</p>
<p>Sarcasm is not a response to careful, detailed, peer-reviewed studies.</p>
<p>The economics literature is based on facts, not unsupported declarations of authority. Tenure committees care much more about the former than the latter.</p>
<p>Dale and Kreuger, NBER working paper 7322.</p>
<p>afan:</p>
<p>The kind of study you propose would certainly be helpful, but since I don't have the time and resources to conduct it, and since it's unlikely you will conduct such a study in a timely manner, and since I have to make a decision in a few weeks, I am forced to go with the common wisdom and my own possibly wrong-headed assumptions.</p>
<p>If you can suggest a better course of action under these circumstances, I would hope they would be forthcoming.</p>
<p>My son was accepted at both MIT and Rice for electrical engineering/computer science. After talking to people at MIT (who couldn't be bothered), and then at Rice (not only with a prof who had taught at both, and told me that the kids were of the same quality) but for 1.5 hrs. which the comp sci department head, he chose Rice. THe weather was warm, and the personal attention and research opportunities with world-reknown profs from first semester on were amazing. All the top recruiters came to Rice.</p>
<p>My daughter, who also majored in EE/comp sci, chose to go to MIT because of their music program! (Rice has a conservatory). Also, she went to HS in Europe, and wanted to be in a more international community. To this day, I don't know how she fared in electrical engineering, which is a huge department, but she found her niche in the music department, which is small, and loved MIT.
The top kids in math chose Harvard, but the engineers went to Cal Tech, Rice and MIT.<br>
BTW, Rice offers merit scholarships.</p>
<p>MIT has a great alumni network for EE. My brother, a Stanford EE undergrad, has had internships with a big semiconductor company and noticed that most of the managers were MIT EE grads. Not surprisingly, most of the internships went to MIT undergrads.</p>
<p>This is ancedotal evidence and won't satisfy afan, but it seems to support the conventional wisdom and my thoughts in general. </p>
<p>BTW, I visited Rice. It's a great school with a really beautiful campus.</p>
<p>An article explaining this initiative:
<a href="http://www-tech.mit.edu/V124/N51/51harvardeng.51n.html%5B/url%5D">http://www-tech.mit.edu/V124/N51/51harvardeng.51n.html</a></p>
<p>Here's the article anyway...</p>
<p>Engineering to Expand Dramatically at Harvard
By Jeffrey Chang
STAFF REPORTER </p>
<p>After finding that it had underinvested in engineering and technology development in a report last spring, Harvard University will expand its engineering program, substantially increasing the size of its faculty and possibly establishing a separate school. </p>
<p>According to an article in BusinessWeek, Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers said the new school would probably be located on a large block of land that Harvard owns in Allston, across the Charles River from Harvard Yard. </p>
<p>See rest of article at link.</p>
<p>16 in "engineering sciences"? That's laughable.</p>