<p>I don't want to make this a thread defending Brown engineering.</p>
<p>I will say this-- for many good reasons Brown, university-wide, does not provide academic credit for internships or co-ops. This is the source of much frustration for potential engineering students and certain kinds of engineers once they are here. It does also, however, make our program very well suited for another kind of engineer.</p>
<p>And that's my point-- the OP needs to move both beyond Ivy and beyond simply well-respected engineering and into some of the less assignable characteristics that make a program unique. Otherwise, the OP will only find the right fit by sheer luck, if at all.</p>
<p>modestmelody-
I did not find any record of students graduating from Chemical Engineering at Brown last year on the US Dept of Educ IPEDS website. How do you explain that? Brown is a great school but I don't think it is a good idea to recommend Brown for chemical engineering. I think Brown has a very good program in Biomedical Engineering, better than Cornell's.</p>
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And that's my point-- the OP needs to move both beyond Ivy and beyond simply well-respected engineering and into some of the less assignable characteristics that make a program unique. Otherwise, the OP will only find the right fit by sheer luck, if at all.
<p>I'm not recommending anything, just drawing from my personal experience to make a point. You have poor reading comprehension skills.</p>
<p>That being said, I know we have it, and I also know that we have some members of our faculty in both chemistry and chemical engineering that do tremendously important work in the field. Shouheng Sun, though he's in the chemistry department, has the most cited paper in chemistry ever. He does work on iron oxide nanomaterials and their application in fuel cells, data storage, and cancer imaging/drug delivery, for instance.</p>
<p>Brown doesn't break down the number of concentrators in the different areas of engineering externally, but I'd know if my school offers the program or not.</p>
<p>As one simple measure, of many: go to the registrar's list of course offerings for the semester, count the chemical engineering courses actually being given this semester. This pretty much indicates the breadth and depth of what you will be able to learn in this field, at that college.</p>
<p>Based on my reading of the websites, Brown offers about 4 courses per semester in Chemical Engineering whereas Cornell offers 30-40 courses per semester in Chemical Engineering.</p>
<p>At Brown, I think all engineering students except biomedical receive a degree in general engineering. You can't get a degree in Chemical Engineering although you can "concentrate" in ChemE. That's what I read, anyway.</p>
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I just know of a couple of Brown alums who were less than blown away by the amount of resources and opportunities available to students vis-a-vis other engineering schools like MIT, CMU, Cornell, etc. Admittedly, it's not nearly as bad as say, Dartmouth or Yale.
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<p>Anyone who suggests that Yale has fewer "resources and opportunities available to students" for engineering than Brown (and plenty of other schools as well) really isn't that informed. With a 1:1 student:faculty ratio in engineering, one billion dollars of investment into hard sciences in engineering, research opportunities everywhere, the resources at Yale are pretty amazing. Engineers here are more than satisfied with the major, the courses, and the new focus Yale has placed on engineers. US News rankings (and general perceptions) are static because once one school's department has a bad reputation, it's hard to break it no matter how much better it gets. Yale does not have as great of a program as Stanford or MIT in engineering, but it definitely has one as great as, if not better than, Brown's.</p>
<p>Cracks me up sometimes, I read on CC stuff like, "I'm considering MIT or Stanford, what other top engineering programs should I be considering?", and then someone pipes in [insert name of small liberal arts college that has an engineering major] or [insert name of prestigious university not known for engineering, but that has an engineering major].</p>
<p>Then you go on the websites of these places and find out that they have like 4-8 engineering professors total, don't even have some major areas of engineering at all, offer only the basic courses, etc.</p>
<p>All these places may be the right choice, for the right student, whose objectives match what that school offers. They may be great schools. They may be better for a particular student in many ways.</p>
<p>But, at the end of the day, if they don't offer any courses in something they can't really be considered as having a great program in it, can they? Even if they happen to have some hot research group in the one particular sub-area they actually cover. Which is the basis for their top-40 ranking, or whatever, when you dig into things.</p>
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As one simple measure, of many: go to the registrar's list of course offerings for the semester, count the chemical engineering courses actually being given this semester. This pretty much indicates the breadth and depth of what you will be able to learn in this field, at that college.
<p>Yes, that's the courses that are offered for a particular semester. I agree with this way of measuring the quality of a program. It also roughly gives you an idea of the resources of your department.</p>
<p>yeah, looks like it. don't look at the catalog, that will list courses that aren't necessarily being given all the time, maybe not ever. Look at the registrar's list of what's actually being given this semester. Looks to me like that's what you have. Not positive, but looks like it.</p>
<p>BTW, I don't regard this as the be-all and end-all either. I regard having substantial course offerings in an area as a necessary condition for being considered a good program, but not sufficient. </p>
<p>Other factors may also be highly relevant- class sizes, peer-group capabilities, research opportunities if research is what interests you, co-op programs and design projects if practice is what interests you.</p>
<p>But to me, these other factors don't replace having actual course offerings.</p>
<p>modestmelody, no need to attack someone's reading comprehension especially when you write "defer to my expertise". One defers to someone other than oneself. Or to someone else's expertise. Also, whilst you did not RECOMMEND the chemical engineering program, the poster's use of the word recommend was an allusion, a figure of speech. I have read some of your writings and it seems you are very very touch about Brown. F.Scott Fitzgerald aptly remarked that a good test of intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in one's head at the same time and still function. Can you realistically entertain the possibility that Brown is a worse school than you think it is?</p>
<p>Brown is an incredibly great school. However whether it has the best engineering program for a particular individual is up to them to determine .</p>
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Most Brown engineers I know wish they attended Cornell or Princeton.
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<p>Well, speaking of Cornell, I am quite sure that there are plenty of Cornell engineering students who wish they were going to Brown, especially those Cornell engineering students who are doing poorly, of which there are quite a lot. If nothing else, Brown offers a relaxed grading atmosphere in which it is nearly impossible to actually flunk out. You might not get top grades, but you'll still pass and so you'll still graduate. Cornell offers no such assurance. It's better to graduate from Brown than to flunk out of Cornell.</p>