Non-cutthroat yet competitive engineering programs?

<p>Thanks for all the discussion - and as for the NYU Stern, I can tell you I had a group project outright stolen out of recycling bins in the grad computer lab. It was presented in class by the other group right before ours. We were given the lower grade. When the prof was told about what happened, he could care less and told us "what do you think happens in the real world?</p>

<p>"what do you think happens in the real world? "
How would he know…</p>

<p>Well, much of Stern’s profs were only p/t teaching and were in the real world consulting. But this was before business school got all touchy-feely and “ethics” were added to the curriculum.</p>

<p>I’m in the University of Washington engineering department, and it is a fairly grueling curved program, especially before you are admitted. But it is in fact the one of the most student-bonding environment in the school. In our labs we are literally helping each other out as much as we can. But UW is pretty good at setting up work that involves teamwork, and even individual, curved work often requires to some degree teamwork.</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>Ross is different than Engineering. Ross is very competitive/cut-throat, since every single person there wants a job that ~18% will get. Many of the premed classes are as well, same reason you described later.</p>

<p>That is why I mentioned that most of the students in my son’s department have been successful landing jobs. If the job market continues to be so competitive, will the students become more competitive with each other as result?</p>

<p>^I think that because engineering students feed into so many disciplines (law, medicine, business, engineering, teaching, research, etc.) that competing with students looking for similar jobs/grad schools would not be much of a problem, because a student may only find a couple people with the same intentions as him. </p>

<p>Not true in a major with a lot of premeds, because they are all gunning for the same thing.</p>

<p>Well…</p>

<p>Even if there was some competition, I never got into it.</p>

<p>One of the outside reasons I went into Math/CS/I.T. is because there were always more job opportunities than graduates, so there was no need to compete.</p>

<p>It’s great because most skilled and in-demand folks in I.T. do not have issues with their supervisor. That supervisor knows that you can leave that job and be on some other payroll by the next day at 9am.</p>