<p>I am attending Emory, and I like the environment and all, but I just wonder why it is ranked #20 national university when a lot of their programs are not very highly ranked... Emory does not even have an engineering school, and their comp sci program is pretty much unranked, and their sciences like chem and bio are not very highly ranked either...</p>
<p>So I am pretty upset because I really want to major in comp sci or engineer but then I realize that I have to transfer into any decent program...</p>
<p>Chem and Bio are excellent.
Math (after you get out of the intro courses)/Comp sci are decent but wont blow you out of the water.
BBA is overrated.
Econ sucks.</p>
<p>To answer your question, I think it’s the professors and environment that make it a good school. I’m surprised you think the programs like chem and bio suck because everyone else thinks they are great. If anything, it’s the students (who are focused on being preprofessional and mkaing $$$) that might make emory undesirable. We’d much much better if we had more student innovation (instead of everyone wanting to be premed/prebusiness). The people here who aren’t preprofessional are really bright and innovative (and a lot of the preprofessionals are too). We just need a lesser amount of preprofessional students to hit the highest echelon of awesomeness. So I guess I’m saying that the professors/programs are fine but hte students dont take advantage of them and narrow themselves to med school/wall street.</p>
<p>if you wanted to major in engineering why would you go to a school that does not have engineering. emory has great pre med and business programs, and I believe that is what people go there for in the majority</p>
<p>Actually, biology and chemistry programs are definitely well ranked (the chem. Ph.D program is ranked near Tech’s despite the fact that we have no engineering school and are much smaller. 30s is a high ranking considering the number of programs in the country and that schools with extremely large faculties have an advantage. Also, individual programs within the biological sciences do very well). Emory is like the top school you would come to if you wanted a Ph.D in molecular pharmacology for example. I just have no idea what you are talking about. Most undergrad. programs are hardly ranked at all anyway, so your so called rankings are likely irrelevant to the undergrad. experience. Besides, it seems a lot of Emory undergrad. programs are actually really good. History, English, French, German, Biology, chemistry, neuroscience (though I personally don’t care for it, it is very solid), psychology, BBA (I think most BBA programs are over-rated, but I suppose Emory’s is the lesser of the evils as it is indeed far better than most…I guess. It does what it is supposed and I have to admit that some innovation comes out of it) and political science all seem well-sought after from people considering this school, and most of these are more than deserving of their reputation. I think Emory for undergrad. does quite well (though can use lots of improvements; but one pays the price for having growing pains). And the graduate school (non-professional) isn’t doing badly at all considering that this was relatively small before Emory became a research university (not that long ago compare to our peers). As for your engineering/CS issue, that’s your fault that you didn’t consider this as jacob suggested, but don’t bash us because we don’t have engineering. Chicago does not have it either, and nobody seems to complain. Some can argue that it’s academic environment is better off without it (they have found ways to strengthen other depts and produce great minds and innovation w/o it, something Emory is okay at, but could certainly be far better than it is now. Not having engineering does not justify the weaknesses in math and physics here. Emory will have problems until it realizes this). If you end up transferring, there will always be someone to take your spot, who will recognize, and then take advantage of what Emory has to offer. The experience in the undergraduate classroom here will give you more of an idea of how good it is than your Ph.D rankings (or useless undergrad. dept. rankings. I mean seriously, how do you measure and assess quality of undergrad. learning outcomes? This has been debated amongst those in higher ed. for a while)</p>
<p>Emory is definitely worthy of its #20 ranking. It may not have exceptional graduate-level programs, but in general, the quality of a school’s graduate program in a particular field will not determine the quality of the education it provides to its undergraduates in the same field. What is more important is the quality of undergraduate teaching that the school provides. Emory clearly excels in this area. You will earn an excellent education in whichever field you choose to pursue at Emory.</p>
<p>If your philosophy of ranking schools is based on high graduate departmental rankings, than schools like Dartmouth, Vandy, Rice, Notre Dame, Georgetown, Boston College, W&M, Virginia, and Wake Forest would all not be deserving of their rankings as well.</p>
<p>US News doesn’t rank based on the strength of individual departments, although you could argue that’s indirectly considered through the peer assessment portion of the survey.</p>
<p>Also, UChicago doesn’t have an engineering school either, and it’s ranked #5! Just because Emory isn’t a top engineering school doesn’t mean it’s a mediocre school in general.</p>
<p>My son and daughter in law both attended Emory …each had a wonderful four years on campus, and a wonderful 5 years since graduating. They have each had fabulous opportunities and know that studying at Emory helped put them in positions to have those opportunities.</p>
<p>So yes, Emory is that good.</p>
<p>I just don’t understand why the OP chose to attend Emory if he wanted to pursue engineering. Or why he seems to equate the presence of an engineering program as synonymous with a quality educational institution?</p>
<p>Emory is a really strong pre-professional school bolstered by being the best overall university in Atlanta (sorry G. Tech) and by having two terrific graduate schools in medicine and law. I think in the SE Emory ranks with Duke and Vandy in terms of prestige and opportunities. Nationally ,Emory is not with those two yet, but clearly rising quickly. </p>
<p>PS–Both my son and daughter (twins), who are from NOVA and want to attend a school together in the south, plan on applying to Emory this fall. My daughter loves english/creative wriitng and my son wants to do pre-med. I know Emory is terrific for pre-med. Could anyone give me some insights into English there. Thanks.</p>
<p>English here is better than premed in my opinion. Your writing here will get ripped apart, but it’s in a supportive way. Assuming you take the right teachers of course. It’s really great.</p>
<p>And I still don’t understand why people think we’re not at the same level as Vandy. We are. It’s just that SEC sports teams give Vandy more recognition.</p>
<p>You can do the Emory/GA Tech 6-year engineering program if you want to. I think most people who are passionate about engineering wouldn’t want to spend four years doing something else, though, and graduate two years later.</p>
<p>As a direct answer to your question: Emory is good enough. :)</p>
<p>It’s the ranking and popularity aluminum: I think we may be with Vandy nationally among scholars (if not better, our faculty seems much more distiguished in terms of making press for ground-breaking research, winning some national award, or becoming fellows in a national academy), but students are a different story. Currently, the types of students we attract care less about these things and more about the things offerered at Vandy (big sports scene and huge Greeklife scene) because they probably don’t research enough into the academic culture or faculty members at a school (they look at rank and assume they are the same as indicated by the number of people coming to Emory thinking we actually offer engineering directly). Oh and not to mention they look at ranking in USNW (they look at things like this, the admit rate, and SAT score differences, and make a judgement on how well they think a school is academically. It’s such a fail. It really only tells you how popular certain schools are among the academically elite in America). Anyway, Unless one wanted to go into engineering or education, I can’t honestly see why students would think Emory is less than Vandy academically because there are certainly aspects of the Emory undergraduate education that may actually make us much more interesting in that arena (but that’s what happens when you don’t have to invest in sports and stuff as much). Unfortunately, until Emory has a 15% or less admit rate, no one will recognize it as actually on par with a place like Vandy whose admit rate is dropping because of a continuing rise in app. numbers (though honestly, as I always point out, despite the decline in admit rate, the SAT score gap of incoming students has hardly widened. It is about the same as it always used to be back when both schools were near the 30-40% admit rate area. Vandy admits very high and enrolls a bit lower. We admit and enroll on par). The way people read statistics is kind of misguided and based on faulty assumptions. Until that stops and people care about other things, Emory will be at a disadvantage (unless it ramps up marketing and stuff to actually get app. numbers up).</p>
<p>Firstmove: You assume that bright students cannot have seemingly opposite interests (or multiple interests). What if a student, for example, liked the regular biology faculty and coursework at Emory better than Georgia Tech (I actually think our bio dept. for undergrads may be the more serious of the two. Not to mention, it seems to have more heavy hitting faculty members in both teaching and research), and wanted to get a degree in it, and then go on to BME and gain more applied knowledge in the area so that they can use it?</p>
<p>With the Emory/GA Tech Dual Degree program you get both a BS or BA from Emory in whatever you major at Emory is, as well as a BS in an engineering from Tech. So the OP could major in Computer Science at Emory AND get an engineering degree from Tech. Of course the real advantage of the dual degree is if you wanted to engineering but also had diverse, liberal interests you wanted to pursue at Emory. If you just want to straight up get a nice engineering job after graduation though, your best bet would be just to go to Tech and do their 5 year BS/MS engineering degree (unless your out of state in which case paying OOS tuition for 5 yrs might be excessive).</p>
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<p>The program is usually 5 years not 6. You spend the first 3 years at Emory (during you have to complete all of Emory’s GERs and courses for a major) and the last 2 years at Tech. And therefore you also pay Emory’s tuition for 3 years a Tech’s for 2, so you if you’re instate you can actually save some money even though you paid for 5 yrs of school.</p>
<p>But as people have already said Emory definitely is the better choice over Tech for social sciences/humanities and pre-prof (pre-med and pre-business usually).</p>
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<p>2 years back when Emory dropped from 17 to 20 on the USNews Rankings someone asked asked President Wagner about it (while he was speaking in front of a large audience of students and some faculty/staff). He said that while he knows how to “game the system,” such as by advertising to places where high schoolers who would never have a chance of getting into Emory just to get applications up and thus admit rates down, he doesn’t seem like it’s very ethical. In other words, he doesn’t care that much about Emory’s rankings. While rankings won’t say a lot of things about your school, it’s the first thing the majority of the population will look at about a University they’ve never heard before (especially employers in other countries from those of you who are international) so they’re essentially a necessary evil. The joke on campus and on FB is that Wagner’s response to the decline in rankings has been to build more and more dorms…</p>
<p>At the same meeting/gathering someone also asked him about why Emory doesn’t have D1 athletics. Wagner said that we should just “let go of that dream” because the extreme expensive involved in running such a program are cost prohibitive. I personally don’t buy this as a reason given the budget many state schools are running on. Maybe if the reason was that they wanted Emory to be more focused in other areas like academics and research, many more people could be more convinced.</p>
<p>Thanks Complexity for the information on creative writing!!! Had no idea Emory was ranked so highly. Sorry to insult anyone (lol, like going to Harvard web site and asking if the school is any good in public policy – at least, theory, maybe not outcomes).</p>
<p>I honestly don’t blame him for not caring about the ranking that much. If someone who has never heard of Emory looks at them and says: “20?!!! That’s low”, we probably do not want that type of person on campus anyway. Such a person is snobbish, misguided, and is merely using the university for self-validation and probably not much of an education. They’ll just add to the amount of students at top schools looking for a state school education so that they can have an easy time making As (even without learning), have a perfect social life, and also have a nice name on their degree. Seriously we don’t want types that think 20 is low. That’s stupid. I’ll be very disappointed if Emory gets to the point where a majority of the student body is focused on such trivialities (and many are now). Many Emory students are full of irony in their ideas. They think we should push for a higher rank, but they are also those students who would like many professors to lessen the rigor of their courses (a key indicator of academic quality). Most higher ranked schools (other than those close by) are significantly more rigorous (though they have grade inflation) and students at those schools get over it or even welcome the challenge. It’s among the reasons they attended. One can only wonder why some students attend Emory. Seems as if it’s because it’s the only top 20 they got into. The only problem is that they don’t actually want a top 20 education. This is Emory’s problem and it will need to fix its admissions scheme or do something innovative with the curricula here so that it can move forward in a fashion that allows it to move up in ranking and actually deserve it based upon the quality of the education it provides and not upon things like admit rate and app. numbers. Chicago used to have a relatively high admit rate, and compared to its peers, kind of still does, and we know it deserves its position because it provides a great, rigorous, education that the type of students it recruits welcome as an opportunity of realistic improvement and not resist based upon the idea that it will ruin their dreams of making into prof. school. Once Emory gets these types and then shapes its education accordingly, it’ll get better and actually stand out. Right now, we look like every peer close in rank to us, with a more cultural atmosphere, less sports, and a lower rank. If we can’t have sports (we can financially, Wagner needs to stop lying about that. I would rather we not have D-1, but he can at least be honest about why we won’t get it), and people don’t buy the cultural aspect, the best thing to do is innovate in the education arena and make noise about those innovations (this school still has trouble making noise about its accomplishments and innovations).</p>
<p>I agree with everyone on campus focusing on rankings. It’s ridiculous and stupid. But I guess it makes sense why people do that. A lot of us feel we didn’t get the recognition we deserve from the local dude on the street when we told him we got into Emory. FWIW, I could have gone to “a more prestigious university”. Whatever the hell that means. So we’re not rejects of everywhere else.I think I’ve already given my views on this and why I attend Emory instead of somewhere else so I won’t bother restating it. I just want to agree on this thread that we’re really good at a lot of things, and people need to stop being bitter about trivial things such as rankings and not getting into their first choice or whatever and start taking advantage of the (amazing) opportunities we have.</p>
<p>I get the feeling that even if we were between 10 and 15 we wouldn’t have that much street cred. I mean, think about, it’s not like every “layman” knows about Chicago (which has accomplishments and an intellectual atmosphere comparable to the top Ivies, Stanford, MIT, etc. suite), Northwestern, WashU, or even some Ivies like Brown. and they are ranked extremely well. So I don’t know why we care that much about it. If someone says they don’t know about Emory, one should simply think “your loss” if they actually like the school (then again, some people only like a school based upon how many people hear and know about it, and not based on what they get from it, if they choose to get anything at all. To these people, “never heard of it” inspires a loss of respect for the school and perhaps deflation of their ego). The word should be getting out to people who matter; Future scholars and professionals who want a solid education, and future faculty members and staff who have something wonderful to add to what is already offered, or potential benefactors interested in what this school is trying to accomplish through its mission or some internal initiative. It’s better for these people to know so that the Emory “product” (the students and research) is solid and not just the name. The latter will improve after the former. </p>
<p>I feel like Emory would benefit more from constructive criticism among students, which mean they would have to care enough to provide legit ways to improve the academics or atmosphere here instead of merely saying, “we’re not as good as… because of [insert stupid, vague, misguided, trivial reason]” (it would also be nice if we compared academics issues moreso than just say: “They have football and better parties”. How about “It would be cool if this course was offered at Emory, students at X seem to enjoy it”) without having done any research outside of hearsay and the rankings. They need to decide what they want. And honestly, if they want the status quo, but a higher rank, they are wasting their time complaining. We have to move forward with something other than erection of shiny new buildings (the main question is, what do these buildings do other than contribute to research or a morale boost for whatever department? Will it facilitate innovative pedagogy or accommodate more robust events? Basically will such additions result in changes that inspire us) .</p>
<p>bernie12, that’s a noble and very good goal, but the chance of it happening in the next 10 years is low. People who truly like (or love) to learn are in the minority EVERYWHERE. More people care about getting ahead of others, climbing up the rank, having a good life, having a family, makeingmoney (though they usually won’t openly admit this) instead of getting a good, deep, and solid education for its sake. The medical schools are trying hard to rule out those kind of people. Most colleges are failing to kill off many of those people before they walk in the admission gates.</p>
<p>They should let us carry stun guns so anyone who says, “The point of going to college is to get a job,” gets shot on the spot.</p>
Just because Emory isn’t a top engineering school doesn’t mean it’s a mediocre school in general.</p>