<p>I understand this has been asked before. I haven't been able to get a straight answer, though.</p>
<p>Some background info:</p>
<p>I will be a freshman in the fall in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. My interests have shifted, and I am considering majoring in chemical or biological engineering. Penn's rank for Biological Engineering is 6, whereas its rank for Chemical and Biomolecular is around 18. Right now, I am leaning towards Chemical. I understand that rank is not everything, and regardless, I will be going to Penn in the fall. My question is this - Does the rank given by U.S News really matter? Penn is a good school in general, and I don't want my job/career opportunities to be cut short because I chose an engineering program that is not "top 10", even though Penn in itself is a prestigious school.</p>
<p>Edit: I could also major in another type of engineering, though these are two that definitely spike my interest in it.</p>
<p>To paraphrase a famous quote whose author escapes me momentarily, I would not want to work for a company that bases its hiring or promoting decisions on such minute differences between college rankings… </p>
<p>Academia is another story and pedigree matters. If you never plan to step foot in college after graduation, don’t worry about it. In DD1’s state flagship school most faculty in her department has a profile so uniform (Ivy, Ivy, Ivy, UCLA, Ivy, Michigan, Ivy, …) it’s not even funny.</p>
<p>I don’t expect to go into academia. I either expect to go into industry or business, going to get an MBA or a graduate degree later. I appreciate your input.</p>
<p>School rankings (both national and regional) are less telling, IMO, than the program rankings (which are generally subjective). I know that sounds counterintuitive, but I will explain why later. I have found through my 6+ years experience as an engineer that employers tend to cast a pretty wide net when hiring engineers, with only a small percentage of employers exclusively hiring from “elite”, top-10 schools. For instance, where I work, we have engineers/scientists from MIT all the way to engineers/scientists from Cal State Channel Islands! The distribution is pretty uniform as well, but I imagine some are paid more than others. In essence, the pedigree of one’s school does not matter as much as one’s performance in school (as well as in any internships and/or research involvements).</p>
<p>As to the USNWR program rankings, I believe there is some merit to these since they are based purely on peer evaluations. In essence, they are a good measure of the perceived quality of a school’s program as witnessed by peers. In other words, they offer a good way of telling the reputation of a particular program, or what others think of your particular program. Going back to what I said earlier though, the reason why peer evaluations, I believe, are more useful than the national and regional rankings (which are heavily based on input factors - SAT scores, GPA, etc) is that they are fundamentally set up to look at the output rather than the input. What is the end product of these programs, and how good are they at producing good engineers? </p>
<p>To answer the meat of your question though, don’t sweat it with those rankings, especially if we’re talking about #6 vs #18. Now, if we were talking about #6 vs #92, that would be a different story. In that case, you might want to look in to the #92 ranked school a little more to see why it was ranked so low. The bottom line here is to pick the school that fits your tastes and preferences best, and excel at whatever you do while you’re there.</p>
<p>As a kid I know who is now a senior at a top 10 program is finding out, GPA is king. Work experience is second. Most open job postings for new engineers will say 3.0 minimum. Some will require prior experience. Take care of those two things, enjoy your time at Penn, and the job offers will be there for you when you graduate.</p>