Is engineering at yale really worth it

<p>I've seen that yale ranks in the top thirties and forties in its engineering programs.is their engineering program really worth it?</p>

<p>i'm applying there. here are some of my stats
I am a ghanaian living in ghana
SAT CR 670 WR 710 M 720
SAt II PHYS 780 MATH II 800
IB DIPLOMA CANDIDATE : MATH HL Physics HL Chem HL EConomics SL Spanish ab initio SL English A1 SL
Predicted grades: 7s in all subjects, TOK grade B
TRanscripts: IGCSE 7A*s and 3As
IB Transcript : all 7s apart from a 6 in last years second sem english sl grade
ECs: Interact (sergeant at arms) ,College magazine ( News EDitor) ,Member of Motion Picture Club, Entertainment committee head for funfair that raised $15000, SRC class representative, Head prefect for several years at my junior high school( was member of pioneering class). School Choir and Spartan choir member, Pan-African Club Member.
Awards: Not many, Galois contest silver standard, Unilever award for student who best combines maths and business.
Job/Work Experience: School Tuck Shop, cashier work at local hospital
Applying for financial aid</p>

<p>I'm looking to major in engineering</p>

<p>i'm applying to
Stanford (got deferred from scea)
Yale
Cornell
Duke
Dartmouth
Upenn
Drexel
Bucknell
Lafayette
Gettysburg</p>

<p>Depends. Is prestige all that matters to you? If so, you seem to already know that Yale is not the most prestigious undergrad engineering school, so I'm not sure what you're asking. If experience is more important to you, you need to tell more about what you want from a college.</p>

<p>well. I do know its not the most prestigious. But i though that being ranked 30th or 40th in a country of so many colleges made the engineering program at yale som much more than average...... in fact very very good.</p>

<p>I wouldn't even apply to Yale if my goal was to be an engineer... There are other top 30-40 schools that do not have an acceptance rate of 8 percent (or lower in the RD round)</p>

<p>Depends what you want to do. Most engineers at Yale (and all of the Ivies) end up going into high finance or Venture capital. If you want to work as an actual engineer there are better places, but its hard to beat yale if you want to use the engineering degree in a business context.</p>

<p>if you're looking to be an engineer after graduation, you should definitely add MIT to your list.</p>

<p>That is not neccessarily true. I am majoring in engineering or applied physics and I plan to get a PhD in engineering. For this Yale is a perfect school bc the engineering program is small enough that students actually get to work with professors (in fact one student co-authored a paper with a professor for Nature-which is a VERY prestigious) so for me, Yale is perfect bc for PhD programs you having research is a HUGE plus. And to that, the fact that the research possibilities at Yale are literally almost limitless (since so many ppl are not doing science) whereas at MIT grads students dominate research, at Yale the undergrads can.</p>

<p>^ fyi, once you get out of grad school, I think the MIT grads would have a pretty big leg up on connections and etc. </p>

<p>In all honesty, I think employers value a Berkeley BA in EECS, CS, or EE a lot more than the Yale equivalent (actually, my mother has recruited for big companies before, she says Yale and Duke Eng. degrees are worth less than most of the other degrees just because Berkeley, LA, Stanford, Princeton and UPenn tend to get much more attention in terms of engineering degrees). I think that Yale's a good choice overall, so even if you don't want to do anything other than engineering, apply and check your chances. If you get in, maybe you'll find you like art more than engineering, in which case you are set.</p>

<p>=]</p>

<p>thanks for your views. may i know if it would be difficult to get into grad school to major in engineering after undergrad engineering at yale.</p>

<p>No Yale will be incredible preparation. Ivy engineers usually take two routes: 1) Elite Business jobs (finance, VC, consulting at places like McKinsey) or 2) PhD programs. In both cases they do very very well. Better than almost any other track you can take.</p>

<p>Depends. Yale gets higher quality students imo then say, Berkeley. Thus, in the end, Yalies can get into grad school for engineering fine. Usually though, a Berkeley grad (in EMPLOYMENT) gets a leg up because employers know the rigor of a Berkeley EE, ME, CS, EECS degree and can trust the GPA. While Yale is growing its engineering, that doesn't mean it's good at it just yet. Thus employers can't really check your GPA against anything.</p>

<p>^^ If you're going into something like business, I'm pretty sure the Yale advantage/name is as powerful as HPMS even if you're an engineering major.</p>

<p>Engineering employment may be another story.</p>

<p>This may be speculation on my part as I have never taken a single class at yale, but it seems that it would be easier to maintain a high GPA in engineering at yale. Which would be good if you wanted to get a PhD (like me)!</p>

<p>All the Yale engineers I knew who pursued Phds got into top programs and this was before Yale made its big investment in engineering recently. Going to Yale is NOT going to hurt your chances for graduate school.</p>

<p>Selection of a particular program may depend partly on your particular objectives.</p>

<p>If you want to be a practicing engineer:
suggest look into/ compare the # of engineering courses offered, # of engineering faculty members, # areas of study offered, comprehensive coverage of the major areas of engineering such as civil engineering, etc. And the major sub-areas as well.</p>

<p>If a school doesn't offer something, you will be funneled by necessity into what it does have. Which may be fine in and of itself, but may not be the path you would have chosen if you had more selection.</p>

<p>Also look into the # of recruiters who come to campus recruiting specifically for engineering jobs.</p>

<p>If you want to do research, the above also is applicable, but you should also check into opportunities related to that path. It's possible that schools that are geared towards producing future researchers are not identical to those geared more towards producing more practitioners.</p>

<p>If you want to be an investment banker: suggest don't go to engineering school, suboptimal use of your one shot at a college education to expend so much effort learning all that technical stuff you don't plan to ever use. But that's up to you.</p>

<p>Arthura - there is a thread on the Engineering forum here titled "Does prestige of undergraduate school matter in Engineering?" that discusses some of your questions. You can access the Engineering forum from the Home page under College Majors.</p>

<p>Since you're giving it some weight, another thing you might consider is what the basis is for that 30-40 ranking , and whether it actually pertains to what matters to an undergraduate intending to practice engineering- e.g, the breadth and depth of course offerings in the various areas and sub-specialties of engineering.</p>

<p>Some of the smaller programs get higher rankings by having high-quality research groups, but only in a few select, sparse areas of engineering, hardly comprehensive at all. The ranking reflects the quality of these research groups, publications, etc., and if you are in fact interested in the few areas that these schools happen to have covered that's great.</p>

<p>But if you have not altogether ruled out interest in one of the major areas of engineering; for example, say civil engineering, just taking one of the huge major areas randomly; and your school has not so much as a single major in any one of the numerous sub-areas of this huge practice area; then for many this might be considered a problem. Even if there are a few strong research groups in a few particular areas which you may or may not become interested in.</p>

<p>Don't know if this pertains to Yale, but you might want to investigate if you care.</p>