<p>I am interested in majoring in aerospace engineering but I don't know whether to attend MIT or Princeton.
MIT would seem like the obvious choice because it is ranked #1 in the field and has an excellent overall reputation. I spent the entire last summer at MIT, so I am used to the work it entails and am very comfortable with it. I absolutely love Boston and the overall vibe of the campus and I love the amount of freedom that you have, which allows you to become an independent adult, as opposed to other schools that make you feel like you are in a bubble.
My worries are:
1. MIT is a tech school instead of a university and produces "techies" as opposed to well-rounded graduates of universities. And my whole life goal has been to be a well-rounded graduate. I don't just want to be an engineer and nothing else. I want to be well-rounded. When we went to Princeton, the head of the department of mechanical and aero engineering was giving honest assessments of other engineering schools (believe me he was honest and acknowledged when other schools had excellent programs) and said "MIT graduates work for Princeton graduates" and basically what he meant was that Princeton graudates get higher ranks than MIT graduates because they are more well-rounded and have a reputation for being more wholey educated than MIT graduates who are just "techies."
2.Im not sure if university as opposed to a tech school will better prepare me to go to graduate school (because I want to get a masters in Physics) because graduate schools want to see and are geared towards well-rounded individuals who excel in several fields.
3. I've also heard that MIT puts more emphasis on their graduates while Princeton places more emphasis on their undergrads.
I do not know if any of this is true but it seems like it could be valid. I have debated whether or not it would be better to attend Princeton for undergrad and apply to MIT's graduate program later.
Princeton, of course, is an excellent school and I have visited and liked it. I am simply not quite as familiar with it as MIT as I did not spend an entire summer there.
Basically, I am open to either school, I just want to attend the school that will provide me with the best prospects in the future (in terms of receiving internships during school and a job after).
Any opinions?</p>
<p>My husband is an MIT aerospace engineering graduate, and he works for other MIT aerospace engineering graduates – as far as I am aware, most Princeton engineering graduates are not working as engineers. I certainly don’t know any Princeton alums who work in aerospace engineering in the Boston area, but I know a lot of MIT alums who work in aero engineering, from engineers to managers to CEOs.</p>
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If you want to be well-rounded and take classes in a wide variety of areas at MIT, you are perfectly able to do this. It’s your choice. You have the entire course catalogue of MIT (and Harvard, by cross-registration) open to you.</p>
<p>I would also dispute the idea that MIT alums are “techies” and nothing else. As an MIT student, you are required to take eight courses (about 25% of your total courseload) in the humanities, arts, and social sciences. As far as I am aware, this is more courses in the humanities than, e.g., an Ivy League humanities major would be required to take in science.</p>
<p>MIT is an “institute of technology” because it does not have professional schools, not because MIT students are somehow deficient in non-science/engineering areas.</p>
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Graduate schools most certainly do not want to see well-rounded individuals who excel in several fields. </p>
<p>Graduate school admissions is very different from undergraduate admissions, and the only factor considered is whether you will excel in the particular field in which you’re applying. Science and engineering graduate programs will sometimes not even look at your overall GPA – they are concerned only with your performance in technical subjects. </p>
<p>Have you looked into the availability of physics master’s programs? Generally speaking, top pure science programs do not offer master’s degrees, just PhDs. If you’re interested in a terminal master’s, you may want to consider entering an engineering master’s program and doing your thesis research on a more physics-oriented topic.</p>
<p>At any rate, MIT places a very large number of its graduates in top graduate and professional programs every year. About half the class goes to graduate school directly upon graduation, and another thirty percent will return to school at some point in their careers.</p>
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Well, Princeton doesn’t have many well-regarded graduate programs, so it’s not as though they really have a choice.</p>
<p>I don’t think MIT puts more emphasis on its graduate students than undergrads, and I don’t think graduate education is prioritized at the expense of undergraduate education. For one thing, as a graduate student myself, I can tell you first-hand that nobody cares about graduate students. I think it’s true that research is a high priority for all MIT professors, but the great thing about MIT is that undergraduates and graduate students alike are valued participants in the research process. And in coursework, many upper-division undergraduate courses are joint grad-undergrad courses, and talented undergrads are more than welcome to take on advanced graduate-level courses as well. In the end, it’s not that either undergraduate or graduate education is prioritized, it’s that there’s not much distinction made between undergraduates and graduate students. </p>
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I can’t speak for Princeton, but you will have no problems getting internships or research positions while a student at MIT, nor a job or a graduate position after. </p>
<p>You can see the graduating student data for the past few years at this link: [Survey</a> Data | MIT Global Education & Career Development](<a href=“http://gecd.mit.edu/resources/data]Survey”>http://gecd.mit.edu/resources/data)</p>
<p>^Just to add that I just came back from CPW – son has committed to MIT - and amazed at the global opportunities available for summer research/work through MISTI: [MIT</a> international internships](<a href=“http://web.mit.edu/misti/]MIT”>http://web.mit.edu/misti/). I think this program is unparalleled in any undergrad experience and provides real world paid working experience around the world during summers.</p>
<p>Everything that Mollie has said is correct (as usual). I don’t have much new to add, but you should definitely pay special attention to:</p>
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<p>In addition, I may have a biased sample, but all of my MIT friends who applied to grad school this year (about 10, half in computer science and half in physics) got in.</p>
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This is total bs. Sorry if that offends anyone, but I couldn’t think of a better term.</p>
<p>I live in Silicon Valley. Back when my daughter was deciding between Yale and MIT, we went to talk with an engineer who was a Yale grad, and his comment was something like this: “With an MIT degree, you’ll be able to walk into almost any job out here. I have to admit that my Yale degree didn’t really help.” Ditto Princeton, for what it’s worth. Unlike many MIT alums we knew, the Yale grad we spoke with had not been able to move up in position at his company (nor had it occurred to him to found a company of his own).</p>
<p>^CalAlum, I couldn’t agree more with your first point. I also think that a Yale degree vs. an MIT may make a difference out of the gate. In fact it probably does make some difference. But moving up into higher positions in a company has to do solely with the individual and not where that person earned his or her degree.</p>
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<p>Which makes sense - if a junior in college is clueless about research, why should a first-year graduate student suddenly be knowledgeable! </p>
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<p>There’s not even close to a guarantee to get accepted to MIT’s graduate program though! Depending on your field, it might either be very beneficial or neutral to attend MIT as an undergraduate for that goal. </p>
<p>My opinion here - if you want to do engineering and would like to be well-rounded, it really depends what you mean by 'well-rounded" … if that means you don’t want to heavily specialize within engineering, graduate school is a bad idea. If it means you want to do things other than engineering in your life, sure, you can do that at any school. </p>
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<p>This is an incredibly generic, sweeping statement; I think you can end up going to either Princeton or MIT and come out incredibly not well-rounded. Again, it depends what you mean by well-rounded. If you want to get higher-ranks, you’ll probably have to do something other than be technically very competent for sure. I’m pretty sure there are a lot of people at MIT and any other good technical school who achieve this. I’m sure there are Princeton undergraduates who spend 99% of non-leisure time just studying math.</p>