<p>How is SEAS different from its counterparts in other top schools (eg. Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, U of Chicago)?</p>
<p>Well Cornell's engineering is vastly superior to any other Ivy's engineering. But, engineering at all the rest of the ivies are about the same. The main difference is certain schools have departments that stand out, like Penn's bio/parts of CS/nano.</p>
<p>To quote someone: "Places like Dartmouth, Princeton, and Yale tend to send most of their engineers into business sectors that often end up being more lucrative, but not actual engineering jobs. If you want to work at DOW chemical, a place like UIUC is the place. If you want to be a top consultant, biotech venture capitalist or go to grad school the Ivies will serve you far better."
from: <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/578349-does-prestige-undergraduate-school-matter-engineering.html%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/578349-does-prestige-undergraduate-school-matter-engineering.html</a></p>
<p>UChicago doesn't have undergrad engineering. I'd say Penn's undergrad engineering is a lot more techy and will have a lot better opportunities for a pure engineer than Harvard, Dartmouth, Brown, and Yale. Cornell's program is a lot better for things like Mechanical and Electrical engineering. Penn is probably better for Bio and on par for Chemical and Materials. If you want to go to a top private school, have a good engineering experience, but not be at a tech school (MIT, Caltech) I'd look at Penn, Columbia, Cornell, Stanford, and Northwestern.</p>
<p>I think ____ summed it up pretty well...I chose SEAS b/c I know I won't be confined to my major given that I earn the degree from Penn (I'm thinking I may either end up branching out to business and getting an MBA or sticking with comp eng/bioengineering while trying to work my way up to owning and operating a private engineering firm). Penn SEAS gets job placements at top firms and gets students spots at top grad schools as well, so you really can't go wrong, no matter what you want to do. If you haven't done so already, take a look at the career surveys for the colleges you're considering and compare their graduates to get an idea what you can expect coming out of said schools.</p>
<p>It's almost to the point of splitting hairs, but it's worth it to explore the Cornell vs. other ivy option some more. Conventional wisdom has always promoted the quality of Cornell engineering, but I don't think it outweighs the opportunities you get coming out of Penn SEAS, Columbia SEAS or Harvard's (newer) engineering. To be honest, most employers that are employing ivy grads don't care as strongly about the specific engineering credential, and the overall quality of the other schools over Cornell helps there. </p>
<p>Cornell competes well against UIUC, MIT, Caltech and other tech schools well in traditional engineering fields, but I don't see those fields as particularly strong anymore, and I think the people looking at all of these schools would be more comfortable in the jobs that Penn, Columbia, Harvard etc engineering programs find in consulting or pseudo-engineering work (finance, etc). </p>
<p>It really depends a lot on what engineering discipline you're looking at in today's economy. The American economy (where you'll likely be working if you go to one of these schools) has room for certain types of engineers, but doesn't mesh well with all of these programs. If you want to do something biomedical, Penn, Harvard, Yale, and WashU would be good places to look. If you want to be in computer science-related engineering fields (more software-side), Penn, Harvard, Yale, Columbia are good choices. If you want to do chip design (electrical engineering-type computer engineering) go to UIUC, but realize that this market is shrinking fast. If you want to do almost anything else in engineering, but don't necessarily want a PhD, go to a good state-school engineering program, as it's not worth Ivy tuition and culture. </p>
<p>Perhaps if you post some more about what kind of engineer you'd like to be, we can help a little more. Also, Chicago doesn't have an engineering school. Northwestern would be a better fit there.</p>