<p>OK, another question for my ds...at Michigan, our guide made a point of telling us how Michigan offers lots of support to ensure that everyone succeeds in achieving an engineering degree and that while courses are difficult, students are not cut-throat. At Cornell, all we seemed to hear was how cut-throat engineering and premed majors were due to the curve (and how recent suicides were mostly engineering majors). DS is a peace loving cooperative leader who doesn't want to cut anyone's throat.</p>
<p>From this list, can you tell me which are cut-throat, eat or be eaten types of programs and which are not (if any!):</p>
<p>Pitt
Penn St
Michigan (AnnArbor)
UW Madison
UIUC
Cornell</p>
<p>Cut-throat like spiteful? Snobby? Unwillingness to help others? What exactly does cut-throat mean here?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’d say all of the top 40 engineering schools will be graded on a curve. Since you’re competing for grades there will always be people who don’t want to share work or help you out. I never experienced this but im sure it happens. I think the majority of people want to work with others because frankly, engineering isn’t easy. Whatever you can do, to learn what you need to learn, you’ll do.</p>
<p>I go to Michigan and I’ve found that when I’ve needed help I could find someone who could help me. It could be another student or a GSI or a professor or whoever, but there is a lot of support there when you need it. However I’ve only really taken the prerequisites. </p>
<p>I assume by cut-throat she means that the attitude of “the more people that graduate, the more people aiming at the jobs I want.”</p>
<p>I went to that MUCH BETTER school in Michigan…the one in East Lansing (always have to take a jab, lol) and I did not experienced this with the CS majors even though I was a Math major.</p>
<p>I will say only a couple of CS majors made a remark (not really snide) when they saw me at Placement Services interviewing for software jobs as a senior…but then again, usually those were scientific software positions and most MSU compsci majors were not into that.</p>
<p>Cut-throat to me is when your classmates are less than helpful, sabotage others work, and in gen’l treat classmates as competition - for that grade, for that research opportunity, for that first job. From what I have read, Michigan (the other one in AA) has alot of group work that promotes working cooperatively.</p>
<p>From what I have heard, Cornell is more on the cut-throat side while Michigan is less so. I realize that in every program, there will be bleepity-bleep people who will do anything to ensure their personal success. I experienced some of this in business school.</p>
<p>Any feedback on the other schools or whether I have Cornell and Michigan all wrong?</p>
<p>I have a son at Penn State and would not classify his program (ArchE) as cutthroat. I think the esprit de corps comes in part from group work on things like the Solar Decathlon ([DOE</a> Solar Decathlon: About Solar Decathlon](<a href=“http://www.solardecathlon.gov/about.cfm]DOE”>http://www.solardecathlon.gov/about.cfm)), the small number of students in the program (100), and number of students who study abroad together (in Rome). I have been to awards ceremonies and seen slideshows of students both working and playing well together. Also, the grads have historically been very successful in landing jobs. There are some programs in the College that have enrollment caps (ArchE, Aero, Civil, not sure what others), and award places by GPA but I believe that anyone who meets a minimum GPA will be admitted to the program, even if it means a slightly larger class size.</p>
<p>I go to UIUC and it isn’t like this at all. I would be surprised if any engineering program was like this. I can see premed students doing stupid crap like this, but not engineering students.</p>
<p>Thanks 1moremom! Penn St. is top on his list right now (blue band and all!). When you say based on GPA, and programs being capped, is that from time they declare major (like sophmore) or as incoming? My ds has no clue what to put on app as his major, so he might just go in DUS.</p>
<p>In all of the departments other than on S’s, engineering students begin taking classes in their department junior year. I’m not sure of all the enrollment numbers. but in ArchE and Aero, the 100 applicants with the highest GPA will be admitted, though anyone with a 3.0 is guaranteed a spot.</p>
<p>My son is also looking at 4 of the colleges on your list for mechanical engineering. Have you (or your son) considered Purdue?</p>
<p>PSU calls it “Enrollment Control”. If you have a program where only the top X number of students are going to be admitted (after a year or more invested in the university) and there are more students than seats…is it cut-throat competition for those limited openings or just competition? </p>
<p>I wouldn’t really call it cut-throat. The mid-range H.S. GPA campus-wide at UP is 3.52-3.97; it is higher in the College of Engineering. These students have proven themselves on the whole to be capable. The expectation that they achieve a B average in their introductory courses does not seem unreasonable to me. (And some that qualify still struggle in the upper level courses.) I’m not saying there is no competition, but if a student doesn’t feel they can handle it, they can always go somewhere less competitive, like Purdue. (J/K, I have a BIL who got his bachelor’s there.)</p>
<p>BTW, only five of the fifteen undergrad programs have enrollment caps; the number of students actually affected is fairly small. (I realize ME is one of them.)</p>
<p>Also, in my son’s case, I think knowing that he had just one shot at getting into his program kept him focused and helped him avoid some of the temptations that go along with one’s first experience living on one’s own. He really wasn’t interested in any of the other departments.</p>
<p>Funny we saw a friend of my son’s back from Michigan a while ago and he remarked how everything was on the curve there. He is hoping to be a business major there if he can get into ross. He made it sound pretty competitive to me.</p>
<p>Cornell engineering was not cut throat when I attended. It was tough because the work was hard and the students were smart. But it’s not like people were stealing your homework or anything. We studied together, went over problem sets together. The intro courses where this was relevant were too big to feel like you were in competition personally with particular individuals who were your friends, it felt more like “us against the system”. It was tough, no doubt about it, but not the way you are teeing it up.</p>
<p>The recent suicides were a few individuals, they constitute a statistically insignificant number about which one can draw no meaningful conclusions.</p>
<p>I don’t know about these schools particularly, but in general state schools are thought to admit a wider swath of people initially, but flunk more of them out. that’s why an engineering employer like CC poster Rogracer can say that grads of many engineering programs, including many state schools, have similar capabilities in his firm’s evaluation. Because by the time they get through to graduate the ones who are left are more similar across schools than different. </p>
<p>If that theory is true, then a student who can qualify for Cornell initially might be somewhat more likely to be quite comfortably atop the curve at the state U in the first two years, after which things should look pretty much the same.</p>
<p>But to your question, a dad on the Cornell subforum advocated RPI as a place that had a somewhat warmer tone than Cornell did, in his family’s experience. If one of my kids was interested in engineering I would suggest he look there. Of course it has its own particular issues, engineering aside. Everything’s a trade-off.</p>
<p>Yeah I think engineering students as a whole aren’t very cutthroat. We seem to be pretty down to earth. Although studious, it never seems to get to the point where like a grade is our life. </p>
<p>I hear premed students in graded chem or bio labs will be uber intense and some will even sabotage others’ setups. I’ve never heard of this in engineering.</p>
<p>Even the most intense schools like MIT and Caltech I hear have a very cohesive and helpful atmosphere for engineering.</p>
<p>I haven’t really heard of any engineering programs that are cut-throat (defined as students competing against each other). Even if students wanted to be, it wouldn’t make sense strategically. I had a ton of group projects and we always went to each other for help in classes, so there’s no reason to screw somebody else over.</p>
<p>However, I had heard of a case at NYU Stern where there was sabotage. This was mainly due to the 1 or 2 lowest performing students in the class automatically failing the course, even if they did well on an absolute scale.</p>
I wasn’t suggesting that PSU’s engineering program was any more (or less) cut-throat than any other. As far as I have been able to determine most of the top public colleges have some sort of GPA cutoff after the first or second year to get into a number of the different majors within their engineering school. My point simply was that there will be some competition for those seats. How good natured that competition is, would IMHO be more dependent on the individuals in the program than the college itself.</p>
<p>"I hear premed students in graded chem or bio labs will be uber intense and some will even sabotage others’ setups. "</p>
<p>Premed is a whole other ballgame, I make no representation about what that’s like, anyplace. My guess is those stories are exaggerated, but really I’ve no idea. But there is no reason to think that experience has anything much in common with life as an engineer, at any particular institution.</p>
<p>The difference is, pre-meds must have top grades to become doctors, of any kind. For engineers of course often better grades correlate with having more options, but one does not absolutely need very top grades merely to become any kind of engineer, of any sort, altogether. Getting a “B” in E&M will not absolutely prevent you from gaining eventual employment as an engineer.</p>
Also, the grads have historically been very successful in landing jobs. There are some programs in the College that have enrollment caps (ArchE, Aero, Civil, not sure what others), and award places by GPA but I believe that anyone who meets a minimum GPA will be admitted to the program, even if it means a slightly larger class size.</p>