How much of a hook is being a girl going into engineering?

College Search & Selection
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<p>Which would give an applicant a stronger chance: not applying into engineering at a top-tier engineering school (applying instead to the CAS and transferring in later) or applying into engineering as a female applicant?</p>

<p>A friend of mine, an aspiring (chemical) engineering major, has recently decided that on her remaining apps to top-tier schools (Brown, Johns Hopkins, Duke, the like) she'll apply into each school's college of arts and sciences, because she thinks she'd have a better chance at getting in if she didn't apply engineering. She pitched the idea to her parents but they disagree, saying that the fact that she's a girl applying into engineering would increase her chances more. So, who's right? </p>

<p>Her stats, in case they help: 2320 SAT (770/760/790), 780 SATII Chem, 760 Math II. 4.0 GPA, heavy coarseload (5 APs each for senior and junior year, 1 sophomore year - only AP class allowed at the time) 3/375 rank. Relatively good variation of ECs, killer essays. Killer.</p>

2

<p>It depends on the particular program. But I would encourage her to apply to program that she actually wants to enroll in as I think that will make her application the strongest. Also, adcoms can often tell if a student is simply trying to game the system, so I’d encourage her to be honest in her pursuits. At Hopkins, for example, I’ve heard them state they can often detect “closet BMEs.” That is a particularly competitive program so some try to apply to something else and then transfer in, but the admissions staff told me they can often tell. (Other schools/programs don’t admit on a per major basis, though, like Hopkins does for BME.)</p>

3

<p>I agree, apply to the program you really want to get into. If you don’t make it it is because there are a lot of better applicants. It just means that you should apply to a different university where you match what they expect from their entering class. When there is a high demand for a particular program, there may not be an easy path to internal transfer anyway so entering the CAS will not necessarily lead to admission in to College of Engineering.</p>

<p>There is also this to consider. If you get into a school that is a reach by internal transfer, will you be able to handle the workload? Is a degree with poor grades better than a degree with stronger grades at a better matched university?</p>

4

<p>None of the schools you listed are top-tier engineering schools. Frankly, for the top engineering schools like MIT or Stanford, there is no separate admission into an engineering college or by major. On the other hand, a strong science background with some demonstrated interest in science or engineering could be an advantage for female applicants at colleges with a majority of male applicants (MIT, Caltech, CMU…). Definitely not the case at places like Brown where female applicants far outnumber males.</p>

5

<p>Are you serious? Brown is not a top engineering school, and Duke doesn’t even have chemical engineering. JHU is not bad, but there are better.</p>

<p>Top ChemE programs per NRC are:</p>

<ol>
<li>Caltech</li>
<li>UC-Berkeley</li>
<li>UC-Santa Barbara</li>
<li>UT-Austin</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Minnesota </li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Michigan</li>
<li>Northwestern</li>
</ol>

<p>Most of the other top ChemE schools are publics. If she really wants private, there’s Carnegie Mellon at #14, Penn at #16, Johns Hopkins at #21, Cornell at #22, and RPI at #23.</p>

<p>I understand the appeal of an elite private school with lots of resources, but in a technical field like ChemE I have serious doubts about what that buys you. The employers will be lining up at the top ChemE programs, not at schools like Brown (#50 in ChemE, per NRC, sandwiched between Arizona State and Mississippi State), and certainly not at Duke which doesn’t offer a ChemE major.</p>

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<p>I’m not personally familiar with engineering rankings - this is for my friend, as stated, and these are the schools she’s interested in, balancing rankings as well as other aspects of the schools. Top-tier, I guess, was a misstatement on my part. Your point, cellardweller, on existing gender variations in applicants, is a good one. </p>

<p>I see your points, bclintonk, but rank isn’t everything, and I’m sure that my friend has weighed the rankings of each department in her decisions along with the myriad of other factors involved in choosing where to apply. For the record, she’d be going into neural engineering at Duke, which I was not previously aware lacked e a ChemE major. I’ll mention to her your points about employment opportunities with higher-ranked programs, but if you have an opinion on the question originally asked, I’d love to hear it.</p>

7

<p>She should be aware that if the engineering division is more selective than the arts and sciences division, doing an internal transfer into the engineering division is likely to require applying to do so while maintaining a high GPA.</p>

<p>Also, as noted above, some of the best schools for chemical engineering are public and/or not super-selective reach-for-everyone schools (and Minnesota’s list price for out of state is relatively low).</p>

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<p>What does per NRC mean?Pretty cool to see my state flagship above Princeton!</p>

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<p>^ <a href=“nrc rankings - Google Search”>nrc rankings - Google Search;
Oh good. I thought Google was down.</p>

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<p>^^And mine above MIT! :)</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>These are NOT the NRC rankings. The NRC does not rank programs overall but only provides ranges according to various criteria.</p>

<p>S-Rank: Programs are ranked highly if they are strong in the criteria that scholars say are most important.
Research: Derived from faculty publications, citation rates, grants, and awards.
R-Rank: Programs are ranked highly if they have similar features to programs viewed by faculty as top-notch.</p>

<p>R-rank is the closest to a reputation rank. It is derived from faculty in the field ranking the doctoral programs, extracting the criteria used and then doing a regression on these criteria.</p>

<p>Also, the criteria used for the NRC rankings are not especially relevant to an undergrad engineering education.</p>

12

<p>Ah, you’re right, the source I was using said “based on” the NRC rankings but they apparently used their own modifications. But the actual NRC rankings are pretty similar.</p>

<p>Here are the 10 best NRC R-ranking ranges for ChemE:

  1. MIT 1-4
  2. UT-Austin 1-5
  3. Caltech 1-6
  4. UC-Santa Barbara 1-6
  5. UC-Berkeley 2-5
  6. Minnesota 5-11
  7. Princeton 6-12
  8. Stanford 6-13
  9. Wisconsin 6-13
  10. Michigan 7-16
  11. Carnegie Mellon 7-18
  12. Northwestern 8-20</p>

<p>And here are the best NRC S-ranking ranges for ChemE:

  1. Caltech 1-2
  2. UC-Santa Barbara 1-4
  3. UC-Berkeley 2-5
  4. MIT 3-8
  5. UT-Austin 3-9
  6. Princeton 3-10
  7. Minnesota 4-15
  8. Stanford 5-19
  9. Illinois 6-25
  10. Michigan 7-26
  11. Northwestern 7-27
  12. Carnegie-Mellon 7-28
  13. Wisconsin 7-29</p>

<p>“Not especially relevant to an undergrad engineering education”? I don’t know. I’ve got lots of engineers in my family and they’re always been of the belief that if you want to get a great engineering education, you should go to a school that’s strong in engineering. You can compare these NRC rankings to US News’ undergraduate engineering rankings and you’ll find an awful lot of overlap.</p>

<p>Here’s US News’ list of top undergrad engineering schools: 1) MIT, 2) Stanford, 3) UC-Berkeley, 4) Caltech, 5) Georgia Tech, 6) Illinois, 6) Michigan, 8) Carnegie Mellon, 9) Cornell, 9) Purdue, 11) Princeton, 11) UT-Austin, 13) Northwestern, 13) Wisconsin.</p>

<p>Pretty much the same schools. The two schools that make the top of the NRC rankings for ChemE but not for general engineering are Minnesota (#24 overall undergrad engineering per US News) and UC-Santa Barbara (#38 overall undergrad engineering per US News). These are schools that are particularly strong in ChemE, more so than in some other areas of engineering. And FWIW, US News in its own graduate program rankings (broken down by subspecialty in a way the undergrad engineering ranknigs no longer are) has Minnesota in a 3rd-place tie with Caltech in ChemE, and UC-Santa Barbara weighing in at #9.</p>

<p>I don’t think there’s much question that the schools at the top of the NRC rankings are outstanding engineering schools at both the undergrad and the graduate level, and the strongest in the nation in ChemE. If either of my daughters were interested in ChemE (and they’re not), these are the schools I’d be encouraging them to consider. And frankly, as Minnesota residents who also get in-state tuition at Wisconsin under our tuition reciprocity agreement, I’d be especially encouraging them to consider Minnesota and Wisconsin as far and away (for us) the best values in the group. </p>

<p>With its low OOS tuition, Minnesota is also a best value for any high-EFC OOS student seriously interested in ChemE.</p>

13

<p>To answer the OP’s original question, I wouldn’t describe being a girl going into engineering as a “hook,” but it probably confers some admissions advantage; most engineering schools have a higher admit rate for female than for male applicants, and the female applicants probably get a slight break on SAT/ACT scores. </p>

<p>But there are other factors you need to consider. At many universities, gaining admission to the engineering school is harder than gaining admission to the undergrad arts & sciences school, so even if girls applying to engineering get a slight break relative to boys applying to engineering, it might still be easier for the female applicant to get admitted to arts & sciences. On the other hand, transferring into engineering from arts & sciences is not guaranteed at many schools; you’ll still need the grades and test scores you would have needed to be admitted as a freshman, and now you’re competing for a very limited number of transfer slots with other internal transfer applicants as well as what could be a large pool of external transfer applicants. And if you want to be an engineer, the worst outcome would be to apply and be accepted into arts & sciences with the intention of later transferring into engineering, only to be rejected as a transfer applicant. Then you’ve got to pretty much start over somewhere else. I think it’s best to face the music, apply to the program you want, and see what happens; and to have several fallbacks from there. But what I’ve said here might not apply at all schools, especially at schools with uber-selective arts & sciences programs, at schools where internal transfers are guaranteed, or at schools where engineering is just a “department” (or a set of departments) in a unified undergraduate college, so that internal transfers are not necessary (though in the latter case it’s hard to see how applying to A&S would be an advantage, since it’s not a separate school).</p>

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<p>A student who’s smart enough into Brown, Hopkins or Duke should be smart enough to change her choice of major to something that the former 3 offers or is decent at so as to not end up at Minnesota at all costs. An undergraduate education at a place like Brown or Duke is simply life changing in ways that simply cannot be explained. You will interact with peers from all over the world, be humbled in your classes, participate in riveting campus traditions, be treated as peers with faculty and emerge with a perspective and people management skills that only a few other schools in the country can provide (hint: Minnesota isn’t one of them).</p>