<p>I'm a high-school senior living in Spain who's interested in applying to US colleges. I am interested to major along the lines of engineering (though I haven't decided upon the specific field of engineering yet).</p>
<p>I recently received catalogues from USC and Washington & Lee, which state that they're liberal arts colleges with professional schools or something like that. Both of them have schools of engineering, though it seems to me that USC is much more specialized in that field. My questions are: Does it make a difference if I go to a liberal arts college to study engineering? I'm specially interested in comparisons with colleges which are known for their engineering: Stanford, MIT, UC Berkeley... And is USC's Viterbi School of Engineering good for studying engineering? </p>
<p>As sakky said, Harvey Mudd is the best LAC for engineering. There are some excellent LACs that offer engineering as a major such as Swarthmore, Lafayette, and Bucknell. However, I think most would agree that the best engineering education is found at a larger university. The resources required for engineering specialties are generally beyond what an LAC can provide. It might be possible to get a general engineering degree at an LAC and then attend a larger program for a masters degree.</p>
<p>USC is a university, not a liberal arts college (LAC).</p>
<p>USC is like the UCs in that it has different colleges within the larger institution. USC's college is very good. If you go into engineering, chances are the program will be very specialized.</p>
<p>Does it make a difference if you go to an LAC or a University in engineering? Kinda, but either way the academic part will be rather similar. The only thing is that not many LACs have engineering programs. Berkeley, MIT, and Stanford all have very different atmospheres and requirements of their engineers, as in MIT's common core, Stanford's IHUM, ect. </p>
<p>It is possible to go to a quality liberal arts college for engineering, but it is easier to find good engineering programs in top universities.</p>
<p>the last columns of these lists might interest you</p>
<p>The table was very interesting, though I couldn't find any of the LACs that the others mentioned. </p>
<p>So what is USC exactly? According to the Application Form I have... "Academic Structure: Liberal arts college linked to 17 professional schools". Does that make it more of a university? I understand that Liberal Arts colleges usually are small, and yet USC is anything but small.</p>
<p>The table is flawed in some ways. Harvey Mudd is amazing for engineering, no doubt, and produces perhaps the highest percentage of PhDs in engineering besides maybe MIT and CalTech.</p>
<p>USC is considered to be a medium sized school, I believe. Like many schools, it has multiple schools within its large name. The distinction between LAC and Uni is not clear-cut, but I don't know anyone who would call USC, as a whole, a liberal arts college. The same is true of Berkeley. I am in the "liberal arts college" within Berkeley (called Letters and Sciences), but obviously I go to a university (not that the distinction really changes my life).</p>
<p>"Everyone has heard of M.I.T. and Cal Tech, but most laymen would be surprised to learn that Harvey Mudd College has a higher percentage of its graduates go on to receive doctorates than either of these renowned institutions. Many would be surprised that Cooper Union comes next among engineering schools in this respect."</p>
<p>"... a ranking of those colleges, universities, and technical institutes with the highest percentage of their graduates going on to receive doctorates in math, the physical sciences, and engineering can be one of these useful lists:</p>
<p>INSTITUTION %
1. Harvey Mudd College 34.4
2. California Institute of Technology 33.7
3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology 17.3
4. Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art 12.5
5. Webb Institute of Naval Architecture 11.0
6. Reed College 8.7 "</p>
<p>HMMI screwed up their data search in that table somehow. Swarthmore grads received 49 PhDs in Engineering during the 10 year period from 1994 through 2003, according to the NSF data base. </p>
<p>The likelihood of none of those 49 PhD occuring for five years in the middle of that ten-year period is remote at best.</p>