<p>Hello all! this is my first post so I hope this site works out for me. Basically my top 4 schools right now are Lehigh, Bucknell, University of Pennsylvania, and WPI. I want to go for mechanical engineering. I just got my SAT's back and now I am wondering if I should apply to some more prestigious Ivy League schools, but do you think that they have a good engineering reputation and facilities? Also I hate Cornell, I visited it and seems like a real dead place. My SATs are 800 reading, 710 math, 710 writing. 33 on ACT, 3.85 GPA, VERY rigorous courses (5 sciences, 5 maths, 4 English, 9 honors classes and 8 ap's) as well as ery involved in extracurriculars and service. </p>
<p>Your math SAT might hurt you. You could try Princeton. The worst that could happen is that you would be out $100 application fee. Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, and Brown do not have very well developed Engineering programs. Other Ivies might seem dead to you also. Students spend a lot of time studying. If you are looking for a party atmosphere, you should look elsewhere. Columbia, Penn, Princeton, and Cornell are the best for engineering, especially Cornell.</p>
<p>Brown doesn’t have “well-developed” engineering? They’ve had it at least since my Dad graduated in 1950 with a degree in mechanical engineering.</p>
<p>Other than Princeton and Cornell, Ivy League is not that great for engineering. Consider JHU, Carniegie Mellon, Northwestern, or even Stanford (reach).</p>
<p>That’s completely incorrect. Brown offers ABET certified degrees in biomedical, civil, chemical and biochemical, computer, electrical, materials, and mechanical engineering.</p>
<p>You can check the date of original ABET approval as well. According the ABET webpage:
Biomedical [2004]
Chemical and Biochemical [1985]
Civil Engineering [1936]
Computer Engineering [2003]
Electrical Engineering [1936]
Materials Engineering [1967]
Mechanical Engineering [1936]</p>
<p>I don’t have any contacts now that the registrar has changed to answer why they report that way, but I can tell you that we have and do offer 7 programs and have graduates in all of them.</p>
<p>Gheis, you hate Cornell but intend on applying to Lehigh? Lehigh is a smaller version of Cornell.</p>
<p>Anyway, I would definitely give Cal, MIT and Stanford a shot. I would also check out Michigan, Northwestern, Rice and Texas-Austin. If you are really set on the Ivy League, Cornell and Princeton are excellent and Columbia is also solid.</p>
<p>The link you provided seems to actually confirm what collegehelp says. “Biomedical engineering” is a separate line item from “Engineering” which has multiple “Tracks”. Those “tracks” are probably concentrations/specializations under the “Engineering” degree, not <em>majors</em>.</p>
<p>I have often read the comment that most Ivies are not great for engineering. Can anyone give specifics or refute this claim? Are there any engineering alums here from Yale, Dartmouth, etc. that can tell their story?</p>
<p>The allure of the Ivies is that the brand is like a seal of approval, with unbeatable recruiting and employment opportunities at graduation. While other schools mentioned here are great, I have a hard time believing that employers would look down on Ivy engineering grads or consider them inferior candidates.</p>
<p>I think the “unbeatable recruiting and employment opportunities at graduation” really depends upon the field that you want to enter. Employers will recruit where they think they will be most successful/efficient in meeting their recruiting goals. I started my career as a chemical engineer and am a parent, so my experience is dated. I work for one of the largest chemical companies in the world. We have hired a few engineers from the ivies (I know of one each from Princeton and Columbia) and they have been successful. But the lion’s share of the hires are from leading engineering schools in the discipline that is being hired or strong regional engineering programs in any type of a university for attracting recruits to certain geographies. In certain disciplines that may include ivies, but it is not as clear cut of an advantage as, for instance, investment banking.</p>
<p>For engineering jobs, I think you really have to look serously at the cost of private and Ivy engineering programs versus schools like Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, Purdue and the like. The marginal difference in salary you get from the Ivy is not going to offset the extra costs of tuition in this particular profession. This is not like law where the Ivy school puts you in a 160-500k pay band for national firms versus a 100K -250K pay band for smaller and regional firms. The engineering pay band for the career is going to be about 55 to 160 wherever you go to school, as long as the school itself is solid.</p>
<p>cltdad is right. The “unbeatable recruiting and employment opportunities” that the Ivies offer are primarily in fields like finance (especially IB), consulting, etc. The Ivies are not known for their engineering programs. The Ivy programs are certainly adequate and meet ABET standards, but with the exception of a few majors at Cornell (which includes mechanical engineering), the facilities and teaching in Ivy engineering departments are generally not considered among the top engineering programs in the country. MIT, CalTech, Stanford, Harvey Mudd, GA Tech, CMU, Northwestern, Cooper Union, Purdue, UMich, even RPI and Rose-Hulman, have more highly-regarded programs for engineering than the Ivies.</p>
<p>A potential advantage of the “good” engineering schools is more national, out-of-region recruiting. This was a feature at Cornell, I don’t know if the good state u’s had this to same extent or not. But a good chunk of engineering recruiting seems to be highly regionally based, or it was at my firm anyway. Also I don’t know how far down in the class recruiters go at some schools vs. others. Salary is not affected either way, but its possible there may be more mobility and options at entry level. Can’t say for sure.</p>
<p>As for small “engineering” programs that graduate few individuals who actually want to be engineers, these probably don’t hardly get recruited at all, do they? Why would firms waste their time?</p>
<p>I can say for sure that later on, after I chose to leave engineering and got an MBA, without an Ivy undergrad I almost certainly would not have been hired at the investment bank. So it may have provided more mobility and options for “exit strategies”, if such are desired. For continuing within the profession it would have meant nothing special at all. Engineering is one of the most “where’s the beef?” professions around, performance is everything.</p>
<p>“The Ivy programs are certainly adequate and meet ABET standards…”
Actually I think some or most of them do NOT. Or some schools have different tracks, one of which leads to ABET, and that is the track less often selected.
Interested people should check.</p>
<p>Not an engineering alum, but the claim is more or less true, if a bit overstated. Cornell has one of the top engineering schools in the country. Princeton is also very strong. Columbia and Penn are very good but nowhere near the top of the heap (US News ranks Columbia #26 and Penn #32 for undergrad engineering). Harvard (#26 US News) doesn’t have a full-fledged engineering school; it has very strong undergrad programs in applied math, biomedical engineering, computer science, and “engineering sciences,” but no mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, electrical engineering, civil engineering, or other traditional engineering disciplines. Yale (#40) has a few more engineering majors—biomedical engineering, chemical & environmental engineering, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering/materials science—but again, it’s not a full-service engineering program offering the full range of engineering majors. Brown (#40) offers even more engineering concentrations. Dartmouth (#45) offers only a B.A. in engineering sciences, or a Bachelor of Engineering degree in general engineering.</p>
<p>The engineering students at these schools are very talented and no doubt they get a very strong foundational undergraduate education, and many go on to successful engineering careers. But they lack some of the specialization that many employers look for in their engineering hires; that means they’ll need a ton of on-the-job training, or they’ll need to go to grad school to fill out their specialization. Frankly, except for Cornell and Princeton, the Ivies as a group are not where major employers are going to go first to look for engineers. On the whole the Big Ten (US News #6, 7, 8, 13, 13, 17, 22, 26, 40, 56) far surpasses the Ivy League (#8, 11, 26, 26, 32, 40, 40, 45) in engineering. </p>
<p>Down here at Texas Instruments we are a pretty big company and I would think our view of engineering schools would be similar to other big companies. When we do hire from the Ivies for engineering they tend to be from Cornell and Princeton. A broader cross section of our engineers come from the good public schools like UIUC, GaTech, Michigan, Purdue and of course UT Austin and Texas A&M. Finally the elite private engineering programs like MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Rensselaer, Stanford and Caltech are there. I dont think the Ivies would give you any advantage over those places.</p>