Using this example, I do not know of the reputation of Polytechnic University. Once NYU merged with it though, my guess is that the amount of applicants it received annually surged. Just by gaining the name NYU, did this engineering school gain in popularity and/or did the reputation of the degree improve? Would the popularity of this school and the reputation of its degree be the same if it did not have the name NYU attached to it?
Not really. There are certain national name brands. But I would look at more who comes on campus to recruit. That is more important then the name of the school. Companies like certain schools since they like the work ethic of the students. Also certain companies hire from certain schools. Usually due to where the Ceo/board went to. Again, I would be more interested at what companies come to recruit besides Microsoft etc… The name brand companies tend to be everywhere.
You mean every possible school?
Microsoft etc… Tend to recruit from everywhere. Parents often brag their kids got an internship /job from the popular companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook etc… But there are many other companies out there (actually pay as well). Some of these are regional to the schools and some are not. So look at what companies come to recruit for these engineering students… That should give you a clue of what the companies think of the school.
I’m not sure the question makes sense, since nobody applies to Polytechnic University. It used to be NY Polytechnic Institute. I lived in NYC for a few years in the 90’s, and you really didn’t hear much about the school compared to the other universities in the area. It had an OK reputation among STEM folks, but nothing special. Its identity seemed to disappear completely after the merger. Prestige-wise, I’d say the merger helped NYU more than NY Poly. I honestly can’t even remember how people referred to the school, - whether it was “NY Poly” or “Polytechnic Institute” or whatever, which maybe shows how much of an impact it made in people’s minds.
The former Polytechnic University was formed in the 1970’s through the merger of Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn and the New York university School of Engineering. So engineering has come full circle at NYU with the creation of Tandon.
Recent name evolution:
Polytechnic University
Polytechnic Institute of New York University (merger agreed)
New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering (merger complete)
New York University Tandon School of Engineering (donation by Tandon)
What is your underlying question?
Engineering is a somewhat atypical field: for most undergraduate subjects the overall reputation of the college/university matters more than the specific subject (ofd, most ≠ all! there are exceptions), whereas for engineering it is the reputation of the department that matters. Thus, Georgia Tech >> Yale for engineering. Tandon is a middle-ranked engineering school.
But iirc, you are a student at Fordham, originally interested in Stern and keen on transferring to NYU. If you are thinking of applying to Tandon as a transfer & you haven’t already been taking some math/science/cs courses make sure that you will be able to graduate in good time- even in the Business & Tech Mgmt major there are some pretty substantial requirements.
Matters more for what? The first post seems to be asking about popularity and reputation, but the subject of the post asks about quality of degree. If you mean importance of college reputation to employers of new BA/BS grads without further degrees, I think the vast majority of employers place little importance on prestige of college name, as is typical engineering. The few employers or fields of employment that do are the outliers.
For example, in the report at https://chronicle-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/5/items/biz/pdf/Employers%20Survey.pdf , hundreds of employers in a variety of industries where asked about the relative importance of various factors in evaluating resumes of new grads for hiring decisions. College reputation averaged as the least influential factor in all surveyed industries except for education (reputation was 2nd lowest, narrowly edged out by GPA) and media (relevance of coursework was lowest).
If you mean matters for number of applications and general popularity among HS students, college reputation absolutely is influenced by college name. More applications or greater popularity is often very different from higher quality.