<p>compared to say the 45 - 60 schools (from the USNEWS engineering rankings).. generally.. I know each is different and can't truly be compared but I just want get your opinion... I have a chance of getting into a top school but not sure if I will be able to maintain a high gpa since I will be among very motivated and intelligent students. FYI, if do get into a top school, I will probably just make the cut.. Yeah, so, to what extent are the classes, at the top 30 schools, more difficult? For example, is a gpa of 3.2, at some less known school, around the 50s, equal to like a 2. something at Johns Hopkins or Penn State?</p>
<p>Rank doesn't determine difficulty, the factors behind rank determine difficulty.</p>
<p>Correlations that I believe to be true:
1) Smarter peers (as measured from SAT scores) correlates with additional hardness.
2) Public is harder than private.</p>
<p>Oh, what about University of Maryland? It's a public although I do have a higher SAT score than the school's avg .. Has anyone heard about their engineering program?</p>
<p>I disagree with the public-harder-than-private correlation-- I'm not sure that there really <em>is</em> a correlation-- but that's just one gal's opinion.</p>
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I disagree with the public-harder-than-private correlation-- I'm not sure that there really <em>is</em> a correlation-- but that's just one gal's opinion.
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<p>I really wish I had data on this. Given comparable student quality, when comparing two schools I suspect that publics will be harder 80% of the time.</p>
<p>I don't know if the material will be harder in publics, but I think in larger departments they tend to grade a bit harsher (be it public or private).</p>
<p>Yeah, that's the point. It's a harsher curve.</p>
<p>Yeah, I dunno. With my experience, equivalent courses at Illinois versus Rice covered less material, and were less in depth. Design courses ended up basically being a code review where you learned all the little details of how many inches of concrete cover you had to have over what pieces of rebar, whereas at Rice, we'd basically derived everything that the design code had concluded. It was give a man a fish vs. teach a man to fish... I dunno. I guess I was just a little surprised about what constitutes a "top program" to USNews. Seemed a little skewed to me.</p>
<p>More people may have failed at Illinois, but I'm not convinced that their coursework served them better, in the long run... It's great if you're going to be the engineering equivalent of a code monkey, but... Don't most people want more than that?</p>
<p>I've only scrutinized two programs, so obviously I don't have a complete basis for comparison... I've seen stuff and have met engineers that have supported the conclusions I seem to have drawn for myself, but it's still not the end-all, be-all. If Illinois is so worth its salt, though, what's the criteria we're using? Is it the right criteria...? =</p>
<p>And how do the student bodies compare?</p>
<p>There were some sharp cookies at Illinois, but really, every kid at Rice could've been top of the class at Illinois... It was a little alarming to me. It'd take most of the Illinois kids a lot longer to get the implications of things, while most of the Rice kids immediately picked up on things like how our knowledge interfaced to reality.</p>
<p>I think that's why it scares me that so many people take rankings so seriously. Everyone says that Illinois is far and away the best, particularly in civil engineering... so when I went in for my masters, I was expecting something far better than what I'd gotten at Rice, which is hardly even ranked for civil engineering. I expected to be blown out of the water, and I was kind of looking forward to the challenge. What I ran up against were masters students who still calculated out beam capacity to eight decimal places, and who would get irrational answers and put them down as their final answer without a second thought, and that scared me. And yeah, they're young, they're learning... but in industry, nobody checks your work for you, particularly if you have the name recognition of a top program to back you up. Only the glaring errors get spotted by your superiors.</p>
<p>I don't know. They're fairly sharp kids, but... even with the very brightest, I don't think the program did them any favors by letting the process weed out the less talented ones. This past week was my company's intensive crash-course for new graduate engineers. Even though I had a year of experience, I'd asked to attend because I figured it'd be helpful. There was one other Illinois grad there, who'd done both his undergrad and his masters there, and he was completely lost the entire time. I don't know why it still surprises me, but it does. It shocks me, and it scares me. What do these rankings value? Is this the best engineering education that we have to offer? How can we produce engineers that don't recognize that they're calculating out a beam capacity to the nearest half-Big-Mac, then look out in the field and see the construction industry cutting-to-fit and beating-into-place-with-a-sledgehammer, and who don't realize that there's a <em>huge</em> disconnect between the two... and call them the best engineers that academia can produce?</p>
<p>I dunno. Freaks me out a little.</p>
<p>So yeah, my point exactly. Rice has a stronger student body. That's why I personally don't put a lot of weight into rankings. School SAT average and public/private both correlate to difficulty.</p>
<p>Would a school like University of Maryland be the best school to go to, for me, considering the quality of their students is not tremendous (1280) yet their program seems to get respect from their peers? But it is a public school though... I just want to go to a reputable engineering program but not one where I will have to compete against students who are really driven or extremely smart. (like a Johns Hopkins) Does University of Maryland have more name recognition than, like, University of Delware or Rutgers, for engineering?</p>
<p>On a side note, UM's average SATs are probably a little higher for engineering students...</p>
<p>University of Michigan (and I'm sure many other schools do this too) does an internal review of the greatest determinants of how students do in engineering, in other words, they wanted to know what makes a student graduate with a good gpa versus 'not graduating'. The conclusion is that the best indicator is how they do in the Intro Science and Math classes. SAT scores/class rank/high school gpa were almost irrelevant. </p>
<p>This is what I have seen through my own experiences in college as well, people who do well in the intro physics/calc courses generally do well in engineering. And I knew many people who didn't do well but had very good SAT scores.</p>
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So yeah, my point exactly. Rice has a stronger student body. That's why I personally don't put a lot of weight into rankings. School SAT average and public/private both correlate to difficulty.
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<p>Well, yeah. I agree with you about the rankings. I'm not sure about your definition of "difficulty," I guess. If you don't really teach things that are going to make your students good engineers, I think difficulty's kind of beside the point... There's busy-work difficulty, and there's actually-teach-you-something difficulty. You can require that engineers learn to juggle flaming bowling pins while riding a unicycle within a fifteen minute time frame before you allow them to graduate, and that'll probably be more difficult for most people than having them sit down and learn circuit theory, but will it make them good engineers? It's a different kind of difficulty, that I'm talking about, I guess.</p>
<p>Eh... I won't push the point any further. I've kind of threadjacked, so I'll hang back for a while.</p>
<p>I don't go to a top private school (Case Western), but I do know that my course work here is a lot tougher than any of my friends have at state schools. For instance, I know a guy who went here for a year, did poorly because of the courseload, transferred to Penn State, and is now doing much better, despite studying much less and not working nearly as hard as he did when he was here. I think that it depends on the school, and not whether it is public or private. I'm sure there are plenty of private schools that try to weed people out of the engineering curriculum too.</p>
<p>I don't go to a top private school (Case Western), but I do know that my course work here is a lot tougher than any of my friends have at state schools. For instance, I know a guy who went here for a year, did poorly because of the courseload, transferred to Penn State, and is now doing much better, despite studying much less and not working nearly as hard as he did when he was here. I think that it depends on the school, and not whether it is public or private. I'm sure there are plenty of private schools that try to weed people out of the engineering curriculum too.</p>
<p>Mr. Payne's theory about SAT scores still seems to hold true though.. the quality of students at your school is just better than those at Penn State (judging merely from SAT scores) It doesn't take much to get accepted into Penn State.. my friend got into the business school with just a 1200 SAT score.</p>
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Would a school like University of Maryland be the best school to go to, for me, considering the quality of their students is not tremendous (1280) yet their program seems to get respect from their peers? But it is a public school though... I just want to go to a reputable engineering program but not one where I will have to compete against students who are really driven or extremely smart. (like a Johns Hopkins) Does University of Maryland have more name recognition than, like, University of Delware or Rutgers, for engineering?
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<p>Maryland engineering is very highly respected. It is #1 public in Northeast and #2 public in east coast (after Georgia tech). However, it's stronger for Graduate program than undergrad. I would say in term of difficulty, engineering at Maryland is about the same for engineering program at Hopkins (because I attended both). For grad, I heard that Hopkins courses are alot more laid back. The two schools are pretty close to each other anyway.</p>
<p>In public (state) schools, the range of people is larger. There are a lot of smart people, and there are not very smart people. There are people transferred from many places. That's why there has to be a way to separate people. Sometimes exams usually range from very easy questions to very hard ones in order to separate the ones who understand those who don't. That's why you see lots of Ds and Fs and Cs in public schools. This you don't see at many privates.</p>
<p>It would seem to me that learning the concepts is more important than applying the concepts. Of course, as an engineer, you need to correctly apply everything, but if you have a firm conceptual grasp, then bridging the gap to application would probably not be too difficult.</p>
<p>chaoses: Which school did you do better in, gpa wise? Also, is there a reason why, generally, private schools are less likely to weed out weaker students?</p>
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Also, is there a reason why, generally, private schools are less likely to weed out weaker students?
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I can think of 30,000 reasons why privates don't like to fail people out.</p>