<p>OK so I scan through these forums a lot and I see a lot of people say," O, thats a good program it just doesnt have the wow factor." I just want to make a thread to see what people really think of school programs. So i will start; Iowa State what do you really think of this program.</p>
<p>Feel free to post schools and get peoples honest opinions</p>
<p>The overall thing to keep in mind about engineering is that if you seek a job in actual engineering, the highest ranked school's average salary and the lowest ranked school's are very close, probably the closest you will find in any discipline.</p>
<p>If you go to one of the handful of elite engineering programs you will have access to non traditional engineering jobs or a few elite groups within tech companies. But the bottom line in general in engineering is that outside of MIT/Caltech and a few others, the wow factor does not matter,</p>
<p>Honestly, I don't think very highly of Iowa state in general.</p>
<p>Iowa State has engineering?</p>
<p>I love it. I like the responses, unless I sense some sarcasm. But I like what you have to say</p>
<p>Alot of people from low ranked state schools have gone on to do great things and alot of folks who went to top 10 schools haven't. In depends on the person and what you want from the education.</p>
<p>you don’t have to go to the best school. you just have to go to a school that is good ENOUGH.</p>
<p>I didn’t know they had engineering; then again, I’m only marginally familiar with east coast schools.</p>
<p>iowa state is not an east coast school… its midwest.</p>
<p>Thats why he is saying he wasnt aware that it had a respectable engineering school, what is your opinion of it Explorer?</p>
<p>I didn’t say it was on the east coast. I said I’m only familiar with east coast schools hence why I’m not familiar with Iowa state…
Edit: Ah, I was too slow with posting. Come<em>Sail</em>Away beat me to it.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t be surprised if reputation varied greatly with distance from Iowa.</p>
<p>Yea, lets hope it doesnt vary from Iowa to Chicago because thats where I want to work</p>
<p>The thing I’ve heard the most from employers of engineers and from engineers themselves is that it doesn’t really matter what school you go to. The laws of physics at MIT are the same at Chico State. They have all said that the most important thing is being able to work well with others and apply what you’ve learned.</p>
<p>^^ Let’s hope so. All of the employers I’ve been around looking for hires always demand the student graduated from an ivy league; and refuse to even interview if they haven’t.</p>
<p>Then again, that’s more CS companies in NYC.</p>
<p>Why in the world would an engineering company want an Ivy League grad? I think 2 of the ivy league schools have actual good engineering programs, and they’re nowhere near MIT or CalTech.</p>
<p>Ivy League engineering</p>
<p>Princeton
Brown
Dartmouth
Cornell</p>
<p>All excellent engineering schools with low attrition rates (like MIT) and high first salary and life-time salary.</p>
<p>“Excellent engineering programs” are found in a fair handful of universities, you could easily defend the claim for about a dozen.</p>
<p>Fun fact: The Ivy League is a sports conference, so engineering programs should be judged independent of IL/non-IL status (as above).
[Ivy</a> League - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League]Ivy”>Ivy League - Wikipedia)</p>
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<p>Uh, perhaps because the Ivy engineering programs, relatively speaking, are actually some of the best engineering programs out there? The fact is, there are hundreds and hundreds of engineering programs out there, most of them being no-name low-tier programs. Even the worst Ivy engineering program is still going to be better than the vast majority of them. </p>
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<p>Yeah, so they’re not as good as MIT or Caltech. So what? Many (probably most) engineering companies don’t have any graduates from MIT or Caltech working for them. Their engineers came from low-tier schools. Whatever you want to say about the Ivy engineering programs, they’re still better than that of the low-tier schools.</p>
<p>How are you defining low tier? Like, what does that actually mean in terms of math SAT percentiles or other measures of quality? Because I personally think that it makes sense to create these tiers based on math SAT 75th percentiles: </p>
<p>Tier 1 750-800: MIT, Caltech, Ivies, Olin, Harvey Mudd
Tier 2 700-750: Top State schools, WPI, RPI, Rose Hulman, Stevens
Tier 3 650-700: RIT, Drexel, Maryland Baltimore County
Tier 4 650 or lower</p>
<p>Is that roughly how you’d define the tiers, with “low tier” being tier 3 or 4.</p>