<p>What are your thoughts on attending a school such as Penn/Columbia's SEAS Engineering program as opposed to a school like Carnegie Mellon for engineering?</p>
<p>What type of person should choose an ivy school for engineering as opposed to one with specific guidelines?</p>
<p>um...Cornell and Princeton are the best in the ivy league.</p>
<p>Look into Northwestern, Michigan</p>
<p>It would be incorrect to assume that Ivys don't have good engineering programs. Engineers at Penn and Columbia find jobs as well as engineers at "tech" schools and the salary data shows. I'm going to Penn engineering this fall. In short, this is how I would sum it up</p>
<p>Cornell - If you want a harcore and traditional engineering school that is strong in all fields, including liberal arts. Cornell engineering has the most reputation in the ivy league among Academics, better than CMU's.</p>
<p>Penn - If you're want a less traditional engineering school with people who are more buisness focused. Make friends with Whartonites for buisness connections. Double majoring with Economics or Wharton is fairly common. Good for Bioengineering. </p>
<p>Harvard - If you want an elite ivy league liberal arts experience, a non-traditional engineering school while still being able to cross register engineering courses at MIT. At Harvard, you'll be more of a general engineer than of a particular field. Good if you want engineering knowlege and then go on to Law or buisness.</p>
<p>Princeton - If you want elite liberal arts core cirriculum in a university that emphasizes undergrad AND a strong traditional engineering program well respected in the Academia. Like Harvard engineers, you'll be doing a lot of english, history, etc.</p>
<p>Columbia - New York City. lol </p>
<p>Yale - Like Harvard, but you won't be able to take courses at MIT. Other than Mechanical engineering, Yale's program isn't that distinguished.</p>
<p>Brown and Dmouth - Not familiar with their programs</p>
<p>Brown and Dartmouth both take a liberal arts approach to engineering; Dartmouth calls it Engineering Sciences and trains students in a broad range of ideas</p>
<p>At Penn I don't know how many people double major in Wharton...I think double majors are mostly in Arts and Sciences</p>
<p>30% of Penn engineers have a dual degree with either College, Wharton, or Nursing. I would assume that at least half of those are with economics. Wharton-SEAS is more difficult, but also possible.</p>
<p>oh alright, i just heard at pennfest (errr campus visit) that it was hard to do a dual degree with wharton, whereas it was easier to be allowed to try to do a dual with college of arts and sciences</p>
<p>Columbia SEAS- Most weel-rounded of the Ivy engineers. They have to take a modified version of the Columbia College Core program that forces them to learn many different skills and study many different subjects including english, history, non-western civilizations, art or music.</p>
<p>"What type of person should choose an ivy school for engineering as opposed to one with specific guidelines?" -OP</p>
<p>Cornell Engineering has specific guidelines and some Liberal Arts courses are required. What type of person should choose Cornell? Students good in math and physics who can focus on studying and doing endless problem sets. Enthusiasm for engineering/applied physics is important. Tolerance for stress helps. It's very hard work but 95% of students who start in engineering, graduate from engineering. Help is readily available. But, not much time to pursue other interests.</p>
<p>If you want engineering in Ivies, avoid Dartmouth, Yale, and Brown. Harvard engineering is also pretty weak, but they are attempting to expand it w/o disturbing their liberal arts sector.</p>
<p>At traditional schools like the Ivies, engineering is not a main focus in their education. This is simply due to the long history of the Ivies and the traditional thought that engineering is not a "proper" field of study. Therefore, all of the Ivies except Cornell did not have engineering departments since they were founded. </p>
<p>I believe that is why schools like Stanford are unique, because for instance Stanford had the engineering department ever since it was founded. So if you want to seriously study engineering in an environment where engineering is actively promoted as a major field of study, I would avoid the Ivies and go for schools like, Stanford, MIT, and Caltech. But, of course, there is nothing wrong with engineering education at the Ivies, because they certainly offer very high quality education in all disciplines.</p>
<p>'Cornell - If you want a harcore and traditional engineering school that is strong in all fields, including liberal arts. Cornell engineering has the most reputation in the ivy league among Academics, better than CMU's.'</p>
<p>CMU>Cornell for 'hardcore' engineering. At least thats what our good friend USNews suggests. But if you're looking to get an engineering degree just to go to business/ibanking i suggest Cornell. If you want to be a real engineer, I suggest CMU. Take CS/Computer Engineering. More students from CMU get into Google/Microsoft than Cornell even though its smaller school.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Therefore, all of the Ivies except Cornell did not have engineering departments since they were founded.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, I think part of that simply has to do with the fact that Cornell is by far the youngest of the Ivies. Back when the other Ivies were founded, few if any schools in the world taught engineering. </p>
<p>Put another way - Cornell was founded in 1865. The Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth was founded at 1867. The Harvard University Department of Engineering and Applied Sciences traces its ancestry back to about 1850 to the defunct Lawrence Scientific School (which used to be one of the schools of Harvard). The Columbia University engineering school (the Fu Foundation SEAS) is really the old Columbia University School of Mines, which was founded around 1865. </p>
<p>The point is that many of the Ivy engineering departments were all founded at about the same time. I don't think that Harvard should be castigated solely for not having an engineering school back when it started in 1636.</p>
<p>collegehelp-
Your stat about 95% of engineering students at Cornell complete the program is most intersesting especially with the competitive nature of the program. That is really quite encouraging news.</p>
<p>Would you share where you got that info??</p>
<p>southjerseychessmom-
This is a statistic that I heard from students about the 1998 class. I tried to track it down. There is a ton of cornell info on the website. Here is a link to the graduation rate report.</p>
<p>On page 6, figure 6 you see bar graphs that go up to 1997. It looks like the grad rate for 1997 engineering is 92% on the bar graph. It is reportedly higher for the engineering freshmen who entered 1998. However, the graph shows that the percentage who started in engineering and graduated from engineering in 1997 was actually about 84%, not 95%. The 1998 data probably came from the same office that did the graduation report. </p>
<p>I am quite certain that the 1998 grad rate for freshmen who start in engineering (from anywhere at Cornell, not just engineering), increased from 92% to about 95% but I now think the percent of engineering freshmen who graduate from engineering itself is probably closer to 86% (unofficially).</p>
<p>The web site <a href="http://dpb.cornell.edu/irp/%5B/url%5D">http://dpb.cornell.edu/irp/</a> is a good source of Cornell data.</p>
<p>I'm an old geezer (Cornell '81) ... but if you were accepted to Cornell Engineering you could handle the school just fine. Most people who left the engineering school decided they wanted to change majors (they stayed at Cornell but switched schools). In my experience most people who had problems with grades that was driven mostly by a personal issue (drinking, drugs, no discipline at all, etc) ... in my time at Cornell I probably met 2-3-4 engineering kids who busted their butt and just couldn't handle the work (not everyone got a "A" average but virtually everyone did OK). Some other people left Cornell because they didn't like Ithaca. I'd expect the graduation rate to be high but not 100% ... engineering and Ithaca are not for everyone ... but the punchline is that the work is quite doable if the student focusses on their schoolwork.</p>
<p>"CMU>Cornell for 'hardcore' engineering. At least thats what our good friend USNews suggests. But if you're looking to get an engineering degree just to go to business/ibanking i suggest Cornell. If you want to be a real engineer, I suggest CMU. Take CS/Computer Engineering. More students from CMU get into Google/Microsoft than Cornell even though its smaller school."</p>
<p>Solely CS/Computer engineering does not make the engineering school.
CMU is stronger than Cornell in those departments and possibly EE too. Google and MS mostly hire, of the engineers, CS/CEs. But other than that, Cornell is comparable or better.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Solely CS/Computer engineering does not make the engineering school.
CMU is stronger than Cornell in those departments and possibly EE too. Google and MS mostly hire, of the engineers, CS/CEs. But other than that, Cornell is comparable or better.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I don't disagree, but to clarify a few things...
1) CMU CS isn't in the engineering department. The School of Computer Science is a separate college.
2) There is no CE major at CMU or Cornell, only Electrical and Computer Engineering. CMU is ranked higher if you combine the EE and CE US News rankings, but only slightly.
3) I don't know if Google has been hiring any CMU CS students straight out of college. However, I've heard of some people getting internships there. 36 CMU CS grads from the class of 2004 were hired by Microsoft (see <a href="http://www.studentaffairs.cmu.edu/career/scs/statistics.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.studentaffairs.cmu.edu/career/scs/statistics.html</a>)</p>
<p>Cornell seems to be stronger in departments other than ECE and CS, but then again CMU is usually ranked >= Cornell in the US News overall engineering list.</p>
<p>As one CMU guy (double major EE and math), CMU is very strong in all things computer. That stat about MS though is very impressive. CMU's SCS is the best or tied for it, in CS.</p>
<p>Just curious people, how strong is CMU in the natural sciences like biology?</p>
<p>thank you collegehelp and 3togo</p>
<p>I have been consistently reading about how Cornell "grades on the curve", and the "fiercely competitive" climate, and was very concerned about this. I have been told that approximately 40% of engineering majors switch, but that may be a national figure, and according to Collegehelp's information not applicable to Cornell. </p>
<p>Thanks 3togo for sharing your personal experience. Do you think the competitive atmosphere may have changed since '81, or are these descriptions just inaccurate? All of the college guide books seem to portray Cornell as a real pressure cooker.</p>