<p>How is job placement and reputation (specifically for Electrical/Computer engineering) for less-selective ABET-accredited undergraduate schools like Merrimack, Western New England, Suffolk, UMass Lowell/Boston/Dartmouth, Fitchburg, (any others I may have missed), and, again, in terms of job opportunities, how do these hold up in comparison to UMass Amherst, BU, Northeastern, etc.? Of the less-selective schools, which are best recruited from/respected by employers? Sometimes it's tough to just go by US News rankings, so I was hoping somebody might have empirical information about these schools.</p>
<p>ULOWELL is also very good and for the record I would not put any emphasis on rankings from us news on engineering or business for that matter. They are not based on anything but surveys sent out to deans of engineering schools asking them to rate programs they are familiar with. The other rankings ‘National Rankings’ are at least based on retention rates, SAT scores etc.</p>
<p>Check out Wentworth in Boston also. Excellent school and it has a very good “underground” reputation among employers (I have not seen it on many national rankings although most programs are accredited, but every professional and potential employer I’ve talked to has heard nothing but good things about the school) plus is its not ultra selective.</p>
<p>was also going to mention Wentworth, their engineering program is very limited and it is better known for its engineering technology program, but they have a good co-op program.</p>
<p>Because that is what is important. In case you missed it, that was sarcasm. SAT scores and retention rates have nearly nothing to do with the quality of an engineering program.</p>
<p>agreed and I did catch it, but at least you learn something from cold hard facts - the caliber of the kids getting in, how many of them graduate etc. To me, a school with a low retention rate doesn’t know how to choose their students.</p>
<p>There is only so much that can be determined from “cold hard facts” like SAT scores, and most of it isn’t very useful. SAT scores are a very loose indicator of future academic success. I know plenty of intelligent people who went on to be successful engineers who had mediocre SAT scores, and I know numerous people whose ACT/SAT scores were phenomenal but nearly dropped out or actually did drop out of college, be it from engineering or other majors.</p>
<p>As far as an engineering program goes, all it indicates is that they emphasize SAT as one of their recruiting statistics. On the other hand, the quality of the program has to do with the quality of engineers it graduates and where they go to work and/or study afterward. SAT scores say nothing of that.</p>
<p>Retention rates are a mixed bag. On the one hand, a high retention rate may mean that the school does a good job of teaching the students. On the other hand, state schools are required to serve their state by educating a certain portion of its citizens, so they may often find themselves taking more chances on “borderline” students because it is their duty to the taxpayers of the state. That has the potential to hurt both SAT scores and retention rates. Of course, I know as many people who have had that chance taken on them and succeeded as I know who had the opposite experience.</p>
<p>The bottom line is that there is no perfect way to rank schools. The best you can do is look at careers that graduates enter from a given program and make sure that trend is aligned with your goals. For example, if Lockheed recruits from a given school, that means that school has a history of producing graduates that are of a quality and competence that Lockheed wishes to hire. Of course that approach runs the risk of taking a utilitarian approach to an engineering education, which is not a good approach either, but if you then just take rankings such as US News with a grain of salt at the same time, you should be alright. After all, programs get good peer reputation scores because of their scientific reputation, so combining career stats with reputation should give you a decent idea of how a given program fares both in terms of career and in rigor.</p>
<p>I would love to see in print the actual criteria that goes into ranking undergrad engineering programs because some of the rankings seem mysteriously chosen. I’ve tried to find them and they are not really laid out in US News website.</p>
<p>All of these things are a mixed bag – never said they weren’t - they are all just meant as a guideline though, something to raise questions with - that’s it.</p>
<p>Job #'s are a mixed bag too. Just because 98% of the students are working after graduation, it doesn’t mean that they are all working in the engineering field.</p>
<p>Here’s the criteria - from the online US NEWS and World report: To me it is a popularity contest and means nothing: </p>
<p>The U.S. News rankings of undergraduate engineering programs accredited by ABET, formerly known as the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, are based solely on the peer judgments of deans and senior faculty who rated each program they are familiar with on a scale from 1 (marginal) to 5 (distinguished). Engineering school deans and faculty members (two surveys were sent to each ABET-accredited engineering program) were surveyed for this ranking in spring 2011. </p>
<p>We have separate rankings for undergraduate engineering programs at colleges that offer doctoral degrees in engineering and for engineering programs at colleges whose terminal degree in engineering is a bachelor’s or master’s. Research at the graduate level often influences the undergraduate curriculum, and engineering schools with doctoral programs in engineering tend to have the widest possible range of offerings.</p>
<p>Students who prefer a program focused on undergraduates can consult the list of top programs at schools whose terminal degree is the bachelor’s or master’s. Thirty-five percent of those surveyed returned ratings of the group whose terminal degree in engineering is a bachelor’s or master’s; 54 percent did so for the doctoral group. </p>
<p>We also asked those same respondents for nominations of the best engineering programs in specialty areas; those receiving the most mentions in each appear here ranked in descending order. The rankings of the best engineering programs in a specialty also are based solely on the same spring 2011 peer survey. Schools offering any courses in that specialty are eligible to be ranked in that specialty area. The specialty rankings were not based on whether an engineering program has specific undergraduate level ABET accreditation in that specialty area.</p>
<p>I’m no statistician, but 35% and 54% don’t sound like high enough numbers to base results on. Imagine if they were being asked if a cream resolved a rash. Would you buy the cream based on the results that it only helped 54% or 35% of the time?</p>
<p>I also don’t know how deans and faculty of one set of schools can judge the performance of those teaching at another school, unless they personally attended some classes or worked with graduates of the undergrad programs themselves. </p>
<p>Then you have the same people from the first survey (who may be biased) give their opinion about which specialty area of engineering is best at what school. Where is the “control” in this determination. </p>
<p>I don’t know how rank can be done differently but this method seem fraught with problems. </p>
<p>The overall engineering rankings have a more varie formula. The above cited ranking system is for engineering specialty.</p>
<p>Also, faculty base their opinion of other programs on a number of things. For example, experience with their graduate coming to graduate school, dealing with their graduates when workin on projects with companies, working with graduates in the same research area, reading journal articles from graduates and knowing or knowing of the faculty at a given school. It certainly isn’t a perfect system, that’s for sure.</p>
<p>boneh3ad - I’ve been looking at this for quite a number of years. These are the overall ratings. If you disagree please post criteria because I would like to see them. And I know they look at a number of things - but they really are all subjective and popularity-driven in my opinion. </p>
<p>Lakemom - my thoughts exactly.</p>
<p>In summary I don’t think you can trust any ratings - the only sure-fire way is to know the school and talk to graduates from the school about their friends experiences etc., but even that will only be a small amount of kids you can talk to. We went to a school the other day to look at their engineering program- not highly ranked on US news (#75) but I talked to the tour guide who was a senior and he said all of this friends had jobs (before graduation) and he event cited company names. Even though that was just 1 kid - it still gave me some valuable information to know it is a good program because it met the most-important criteria - employment after graduation.</p>
<p>Additionally, the schools with the higher performing students are self-selecting. The schools with the higher performances are often the schools with a higher bar to gain acceptance. eg Cornell. </p>
<p>Meaning, the pool of graduates are “smarter”, got into better schools so of course they perform better. Those same students would perform well even if they went to a lesser school.</p>
<p>Or they, by shear number of students enrolled, eg Penn state, their graduates are more often encountered so their name is more often heard.</p>
<p>Either way, I never said that the US News rankings were perfect. If you look at my posting history, you will see me repeatedly caution kids not to take them too seriously. However, you can’t completely write them off either, because while it is part popularity contest, the schools get popular largely through legitimate academic means. It just means that you will also have some great, less-known schools that fall through the cracks, which is why I always stress that looking at career surveys and recruiting lists (not career statistics, which are misleading) in addition to the rankings.</p>
<p>The problem is that pretty much any ranking system ever devised is inherently subjective in some way unless it uses measurable criteria to determine the rankings. Even then it is imperfect because which criteria one chooses can subjectively influence the rankings. The bottom line is that kids need to just do their homework when it comes to looking for colleges.</p>
<p>Graduates of a school will be biased 9 times out of 10. The best way is to combine methods and try to “average out” the biases. Additionally, looking at what companies recruit at career fairs is a really good way to see what industry things of a school.</p>