<p>^And our point was that, according to the career surveys, the outcome of an education from both Penn and Cornell SEAS was virtually the same. You’re right, the OP should choose based on fit and certainly not before visiting both campuses. For your information, I did visit Cornell and found Penn to offer a superior atmosphere and social life (this is a purely subjective assessment of course).</p>
<p>is cornellian2011 gone for good, then? i’m accepted to both schools, plan CS/Eng but think economic application is really important. or may have other interests that surface in a year or so. technically, not sure if longterm engineering is such a good way to go - lots of smart guys in india and asia work at this for less money than i want to make here. penn so far is my choice, why? campus more focused and seemed, to my admittedly brief tour, more spirited. philly is an interesting city - not san francisco or new york but a city is a city, for all it may offer. ithaca offers the sense of a classic little college campus, but in fact is huge and quite spread out. also, ithaca is real remote - how DOES everyone get in and out of town when the student body leaves at the same time for holidays? cornellian2011 probably would have cute answers to all this, but fortunately he promised not to return. so now it’s just us, and i’d like to hear from some more upbeat penn engineering majors who can help offset the bad vibes this person has taken it upon him/herself to spread (refers a lot to this exchange as his/her “job” - if that’s the kind of engineer they recruit to fill positions from cornell, who wants it anyway.) so - eliminate m&t and wharton and the biomed from the picture, & assume one prefers Penn for whatever personal reasons - how much does this compromise the quality of its engineering degree?</p>
<p>I’m going to refer you to this thread: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/578349-does-prestige-undergraduate-school-matter-engineering.html?highlight=engineering[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/578349-does-prestige-undergraduate-school-matter-engineering.html?highlight=engineering</a></p>
<p>The whole Ivy League engineering thing has already been thoroughly discussed and people generally agree that in the long-run, people who are less interested in the low-income pure engineering jobs (and I say this not to disparage the dedication and ingenuity of engineers, but to criticize a harsh market for some of the more valuable members of our society) and more interested in the more lucrative careers in consulting, finance, management, etc are better served by an Ivy name and education. I find that this is especially true at Penn SEAS, where a student can, without hassle, take all the courses in a finance concentration and use this as a powerful resume builder.</p>
<p>Hmmm. hope didn’t kill this thread. thank nj<em>azn</em>premed for the useful link. still hope for input from current some (one?) engineering students who obviously made this (or similar) decision. maybe, unlike cornellian, they have a life on weekends. question is - how much, if at all, do they sense that the technical depth of their engineering education is compromised by their having chosen Penn, presumably because of the school’s focus on the economic? (wonder how many go on to grad school in CS/Eng?)</p>
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No need to wonder. Just check out the Career Surveys for the Penn SEAS Classes of 2003 through 2008 (the last few pages of each survey detail where and in what fields members of each class went to grad school):</p>
<p>[Career</a> Services, University of Pennsylvania](<a href=“http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/seas/surveys.html]Career”>http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/seas/surveys.html)</p>
<p>thank 45Percenter. very useful. does this article have any relevance to class 2009 plans?
<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/weekinreview/12lohr.html?_r=1&emc=eta1[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/weekinreview/12lohr.html?_r=1&emc=eta1</a></p>
<p>The trend towards ‘governmentalization’ is actually quite frightening, but I don’t think it will hold in the long run (hopefully). I ran away from medicine partly because of the impending socialization of that industry and now the gov’t seems to be creeping into the unlikeliest of places (e.g. finance)…</p>
<p>The students that are engineers from Penn make on average the most money (if that appeals to you). I don’t know this for certain but that is what someone mentioned on another thread. I think that everyone is looking at Upenn w/o batting an eyelid but it is a great school esp for engineers. Give it a chance!</p>
<p>obviously cornell</p>
<p>[Undergraduate</a> engineering specialties: Engineering Science/Engineering Physics - Best Colleges - Education - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/college/spec-doct-science]Undergraduate”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/college/spec-doct-science)</p>
<p>Yeah, I would say Cornell here, hands down.</p>
<p>Believe me, I have nothing to gain in saying this. I transferred from Cornell to Penn (for the College). But in nearly all respects, Cornell’s physical sciences are literally among the best in the world.</p>
<p>cornell’s science has a lot more respect and if you’ve read any newspaper recently then you’d know that the only thing that Upenn really used to distinguish itself “undergraduate business and wall street training” is useless now and looked down upon</p>
<p>my cousin was a CS major at Cornell then went to work at Yahoo Research and then Google. The crazy thing is that he’s in his second year at Yale law now and is probably going to return to Google and move from programming to big business. He told me that Cornell was one of very few schools (I think he said the other school was Stanford) that have top engineering and liberal arts so that people dont have to be pure engineers but be well-versed in fields that are part of basically everything these days.</p>
<p>go with cornell.</p>
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<p>Finally. A sensible opinion.</p>
<p>If you go to a top school, do well, and are personable and have a decent resume you will be able to get any job you want. Whether its at NASA, amazon, Goldman, UBS, or in the sanitation department.</p>
<p>The difference between penn and cornell is negligible. You should choose on location and fit. </p>
<p>Sometimes I wonder how smart ivy leaguers really are, especially after reading a thread like this.</p>
<p>tough choice but engineering would definitely tip you in favor of cornell</p>
<p>^Again, that’s if he’s interested in pure engineering, which involves a lot of work and stress with low compensation. If he wants to get into the more lucrative realms of consulting, finance (yes…finance…), etc, then Penn is as good as Cornell, if not the better choice. I don’t think the OP is even paying attention to this thread anymore, so this is just petty, redundant, and pointless…can we let this die please?</p>
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<p>This really isn’t true. Actually, pure engineering has far LESS stress than a finance, banking, or consulting job. Finance or consulting is extremely stressful. There’s 90+ hour work weeks in finance and loads of travel in consulting. Also, in the US, engineering is the highest paid major coming our of college, so I don’t know how you can say that engineers get “low compensation.” Computer engineering and chemical engineering often rank as the highest paying jobs both coming out of college and at mid-career. </p>
<p>Also, what data shows that finance or consulting is any more lucrative than engineering? This seems like yet another unfounded assertion.</p>
<p>If you consider the hourly salary of an Ibanker, it’s not even that much. They make a large annual salary because they essentially work 24/7.</p>
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<p>The 90+ usually applies to Ibanking. Other branches of finance, while less lucrative, offer better hours and far less stress. Personally, I would never consider Ibanking; I just threw that out there for what it’s worth. </p>
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<p>Yes, but engineers also experience slow salary growth and the field itself suffers from an overabundance of low-level positions with too few upper-level/management opportunities.</p>
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<p>That’s because much of the business realm is diluted by lower-level white collar workers (i.e. those from less highly regarded colleges). However, we’re specifically discussing the Ivy League in this case. </p>
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<p>Again we’re talking about people with Ivy League degrees. This is an assumption that doesn’t need evidence to back it up. There’s a reason why the Ivy League/top schools have so much prestige attached to them.</p>
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Care to specify? More than likely these jobs are not more lucrative than engineering.</p>
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<p>Yes, but you claimed that engineers receive less compensation, which is not true. Regardless of whether or not there are management opportunities, engineering still pays well and engineers are not lowly compensated as you so claim. Yes, you might not make a million bucks a year if you’re an engineer, but you still make pretty good money. </p>
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<p>Every assumption needs evidence to back it up. Just because you cannot verify something it doesn’t mean that it’s true. We shouldn’t believe your baseless assertions just because you tell us to. If you cannot find data or evidence to prove a claim, you cannot assume that your claim is correct until you have found proof. There have been studies done by Princeton economists that indicate that Ivy grads make the same money as state-school grads in the long run.</p>
<p>As of right now, you haven’t put forth any evidence and you’ve presented a pretty weak argument as to why finance/consulting is more lucrative than engineering, even for Ivy League students. If you put forth legitimate evidence, I’ll believe you. But, so far, I see no evidence whatsoever as to how finance/consulting is more lucrative than engineering for Ivy League grads and am therefore going to have to disagree with you.</p>
<p>Actually this has already been discussed extensively on the engineering board of this website. You can probably find some data backing these assertions there. I don’t feel like sifting through the threads right now, but I encourage you to do so if you’re curious.</p>