<p>My son had been accepted to both NU and UMICH engineering. He is leaning towards NU mainly because of the size of the school. Is there a thread somewhere that compares the two programs? Would be especially interested in your opinion, Alexandre.</p>
<p>Your son should go with fit in this case. Both Michigan and Northwestern have great program in Engineering. Michigan is ranked higher. Here is a breakdown of individual fields and how they are ranked according to the USNWR (at the undergraduate level):</p>
<p>AEROSPACE:
Michigan #3
Northwestern: N/A</p>
<p>BIOMEDICAL:
Michigan: #8
Northwestern: #9</p>
<p>CHEMICAL:
Michigan: #9
Northwestern: #16</p>
<p>CIVIL:
Michigan: #8
Northwestern: #13</p>
<p>COMPUTER ENGINEERING:
Michigan: #6
Northwestern: #18</p>
<p>ELECTRICAL:
Michigan: #5
Northwestern: #14</p>
<p>ENVIRONMENTAL:
Michigan: #3
Northwestern: #10</p>
<p>INDUSTRIAL:
Michigan: #3
Northwestern: #8</p>
<p>MATERIALS:
Northwestern: #3
Michigan: #5</p>
<p>MECHANICAL:
Michigan: #2
Northwestern: #15</p>
<p>NUCLEAR:
Michigan: #4
Northwestern: N/A</p>
<p>OVERALL:
Michigan: #7
Northwestern: #13</p>
<p>As you can see, it is negligible at that level. I would not worry too much about the size of the school either. Michigan feels much smaller than it is. The Engineering campus is separate at Michigan and as such, Engineers have a very nice setup. Michigan does have 4,000 undergraduate engineering students compared to 1,500 at Northwestern. But Michigan has over 300 Engineering professors compared to under 150 at Northwestern. </p>
<p>In terms of research and research opportunities, both have plenty of offerings, but Michigan has more variety due to its size. </p>
<p>So your son should visit both campuses (in case he has not done so) and pick the school that he prefers.</p>
<p>Alexandre ... thanks for your response. My son has to choose between many universities (I posted his choices in the Engineering forum). I will try to keep my questions in this forum related to Michigan in comparison to other schools. In addition to UMich and NU, he was accepted at Berkeley as an Engineering Undeclared major. We are also CA residents so the total cost for Berkeley will be about $20K year. He was also accepted at UCLA and UCSD but we are eliminating those schools because Berkeley has better engineering. I am struggling to understand exactly how different his experience will be between 1) the very large schools (like UMich and Berkeley) vs. 2) the medium size research universities where he was accepted (UPenn, Duke, NU, probably Notre Dame) vs. 3) a small school where he was accepted (Rice). I don't want him to write offf two superb schools like UMich and Berkeley because of a misconception that he will get more personal attention, smaller classes, better sense of community at the medium size schools (unless this is true, of course). My guess is that the only one of his choices where he will really feel a difference is at Rice (under 3000 undergrads, approx 1200 in engineering). Your input would be much appreciated!</p>
<p>Alexandre,</p>
<p>Please also give him any info about the viability of switching majors/transferring between schools. There's a possibility that he may want to change his major.</p>
<p>i applied to umich talked to a admission officer and everything but i havent received an acceptance or rejection, but my mom doesnt want to send me from NY to michigan is there anything I can tell her about the school academically to try to persuade into letting me go, if accepted?</p>
<p>Deuxenfants, Rice, Northwestern, Michigan and Cal are all excellent universities, but very different. Penn, Notre Dame and Duke aren't that good in Engineering, so I would not recommend them as highly, unless he is in love with their atmosphere. </p>
<p>In the end, all 7 schools mentioned above are excellent and will offer your son the best in education. He should go for fit rather than think about insignificant differences, reputation and prestige. Personally, I would recommend Cal simply because it will save you $60,000+ over 4 years. Many insititutions try to sell themselves by saying that they offer personalized instruction and attention to undergrads. Most do not deliver on that promise. Of the schools your son is considering, Rice and maybe Notre Dame are the only two that do. </p>
<p>SamLee, it is very easy and automatic for Engineering students to transfer to LSA at Michigan. They just have to ask for a transfer. It is harder to do it the other way around. If an Engineer wants to apply to the B school, she/he must go through the same process as any other Michigan student.</p>
<p>Anonymous, you need to give me more information. What are your other options (universities that accepted you)? Are finances an issue? What do you want to major in?</p>
<p>Well, I think it comes down do how much you wanna spend extra $60000 and that's very personal. $60,000 is a lot to me but a drop in the bucket to the filfhy rich (I see them around too often in Los Angeles and I hate them. LOL!). If all that matter is personal attention and you are not filthy rich, then you should probably go with Berkeley too. I am not saying there's no difference in that regard between NU and Berkeley/Mich; but to me (again I think $60,000 is a lot to me) NU is not LACs and the difference is probably not worth 60,000 to buy. NU does have well-established co-op program (it's a little different from mere internship) and their "Engineering First" is quite unique. But I am sure UMich and Berkeley probably have their own little things they can sell too. However, if your son really dislikes Berkeley's environment and stress (harsher grading), then there's probably more to think about. I used to live in SF and I know Berkeley is pretty different from Northwestern (maybe also Mich?) in terms of density of people (is housing crazy at Berkeley?), atmosphere, the towns where they are located...etc also. I think your visit later will help a lot.</p>
<p>Thanks, Alexandre and Sam Lee. Your insights are making things much clearer for me. So far, we have visits scheduled to Penn, Duke, Rice and Northwestern, and maybe Notre Dame. I think the visits will help sort this out. To make things a little more confusing, he was just awarded a $30K per year Trustee Scholarship to USC Viterbi School of Engineering (which would make it about $10K per year for him to attend there) and was just admitted to Vanderbilt for engineering. Can you comment on how these two schools stack up re: their engineering programs and the personal attention issue? Thanks for all your help!</p>
<p>my mother is concerned with my well being and not being able to help me if I become ill. i have been accepted to suny binghamton, buffalo, stony brook and boston university, i am leaning towards majoring in mathematics.</p>
<p>Now that is complicated. You can pay only 10k/yr for USC! Now someone from USC is probably gonna tell you USC graduate program is ranked 6th OVERALL. So that's no brainer, right?! Well, as an engineer myself, I couldn't believe it's ranked that high. Thought I was in a shelter as I haven't heard much about it's engineering being particularly strong. Well, I checked with the US News rankings and it really doesn't have any top-10 department. It's peer/recruiter assessment is not that high; so I was't the only one that thought it's not that reputable. How in the world you can have no individual dept in the top-10 yet overall, ranked 6th? Now maybe Alexandre can explain to us what's up with that "overall" ranking.</p>
<p>On the other hand, as much as I don't believe its ranking, it's still a decent school. Only 10k/yr is very tempting and sounds like a great bargain!</p>
<p>The new Year 2006 Best Engineering Graduate School (USNEWS)</p>
<h1>6 UMich</h1>
<h1>7 USC</h1>
<h1>8 CalTech</h1>
<h1>9 CMU</h1>
<p>USC is ranked higher than Caltech ? ummmm................</p>
<p>Sam Lee ... thanks again for your comments. I too am mystified as to how USC gets ranked so highly. Maybe Alexandre can tell us. My son already visited USC and liked it well enough. But a parent of one of his friends said that he frequently interviews USC-trained engineers for positions at his company in the Bay Area and he feels that they are not well-prepared for jobs. He seems to think that USC doesn't have the resources to do a good job preparing them. That is my fear, that if my son goes to Penn or Duke where the engineering departments are weaker, he will not be competitive in the job market if he chooses to work as an engineer out of college. If that should happen, what would he need to do? Could he then go for a Masters and solve the problem?</p>
<p>deuxanfants,</p>
<p>If I remember correctly (I read it pretty quick at a bookstore few days ago), the overall ranking is based largely on % faculty being members of National Academy of Engineering and the annual research funding per professor. The former range from 1% to 15% among most schools (meaning even the best ones would still have just a minority of faculty being members of that club) while the latter varies probably widely each year. I am really not sure about the significance of % of that membership so I can't comment on that much. But it sure has a lot of weight on the ranking. Most of the USC's prof who got that membership are in EE depts. In terms of funding, if a school is focusing on fields such as, say, electrical or whatever, it probably can get more (can be a lot more) money per prof than schools that are not as strong in electrical but good at, say, chemical or environmental engineering. Also you may also have a case where few projects happen to get insane amount of funds but that few projects don't really necessarily represent hundres of other smaller ones and the school as a whole. The funding also can change sigificantly from one year to the next.</p>
<p>As for the recruiter's comment, I'd also heard that USC's general education (like distribution requirement) is pretty easy. I actually just looked at USC's ChemE's undergrad curriculum and it definitely looks less rigorous than the one at NU. But that's just one department I was looking at.</p>
<p>deuxanfants,</p>
<p>I wrote some more stuffs under "Prospective Engineers" on NU's board. And I asked knb for you to describe his experience with Engg First but he hasn't responded yet.</p>
<p>I have been saying all along that the overall rankings in the USNWR are usually not very accurate and can sometimes lead to strange results. Unfortunately, people are blinded by the overall rankings. At the undergraduate level, the USNWR is even more flawed. In the case of undergraduate institutions, almost nobody in academe or in the corporate world would rank Duke and Penn among the top 5, ahead of Stanford and MIT. Almost nobody in academe or the corporate world would rank Washington University in the top 10. Almost nobody in academe or the corporate world would rank Cal out of the top 10 and Michigan out of the top 15. And yet, the USNWR overall undergraduate ranking does and unfortunately, the masses believe it. The same thing goes for USC graduate level Engineering rankings. But as always, I will urge people not to look at the USNWR rankings as an absolute and I would encourage everyone to look at the only ranking that matters...the reputation score. </p>
<p>USC being ranked among the top 10 in Engineering at the graduate level over the last 2 years is one of those strange results I menionted above. UCSD being ranked #11, over Cornell, is another strange result. And Cornell being ranked out of the top 10 is an abomination. But if you were to ignore the overall ranking as I suggest and focus on the reputation score, you get a completely different and far more accurate picture. USC's reputation score is 3.7. No fewer than TWENTY THREE programs get higher reputation scores. What makes USC jump over those countless programs is research spending and research spending per professor. CalTech spends $50 million on research and $0.5 million per professor. USC spends $150 million on research and $1 million per professor. That is the ONLY reason USC even craks the top 20. If you look only at the reputation score, you get a far better ranking:</p>
<h1>1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 4.85/5.0</h1>
<h1>2 Stanford University 4.8/5.0</h1>
<h1>3 California Institute of Technology 4.7/5.0</h1>
<h1>4 University of California-Berkeley 4.65/5.0</h1>
<h1>5 University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign 4.5/5.0</h1>
<h1>6 Georgia Institute of Technology 4.4/5.0</h1>
<h1>7 University of Michigan-Ann Arbor 4.35/5.0</h1>
<h1>8 Carnegie Mellon University 4.3/5.0</h1>
<h1>9 Cornell University 4.25/5.0</h1>
<h1>10 Purdue University-West Lafayette 4.2/5.0</h1>
<h1>10 University of Texas-Austin 4.2/5.0</h1>
<h1>12 Princeton University 4.1/5.0</h1>
<h1>13 University of Wisconsin-Madison 4.05/5.0</h1>
<h1>14 Johns Hopkins University 3.85/5.0</h1>
<h1>14 Northwestern University 3.85/5.0</h1>
<h1>14 Pennsylvania State University-University Park 3.85/5.0</h1>
<h1>14 Rice University 3.85/5.0</h1>
<h1>14 University of California-Los Angeles 3.85/5.0</h1>
<h1>19 Harvard University 3.8/5.0</h1>
<h1>19 University of California-San Diego 3.8/5.0</h1>
<h1>19 University of Minnesota-Twin Cities 3.8/5.0</h1>
<h1>22 Texas A&M University-College Station 3.75/5.0</h1>
<h1>22 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 3.75/5.0</h1>
<h1>24 University of Southern California 3.7/5.0</h1>
<h1>24 University of Washington-Seattle 3.7/5.0</h1>
<h1>24 Virginia Tech 3.7/5.0</h1>
<p>To me, that's a far more accurate ranking.</p>
<p>Hey deuxanfants,</p>
<p>How's your son's college decision going? I wrote the following in response to RichardDad; just some final push to sell NU. ;) You can't go wrong with UMich regardless. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>NU's quarter system, while kinda hectic, makes double-major quite easy (esp if your son has some AP under the belt) within 4 years. A popular combo is econ and industrial engineering (both ranked in top-10)</p></li>
<li><p>The co-op program at NU is well-established and popular--great way to jump start one's career. Many people graduate with the certificate--a year and a half of work experience upon graduation.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>P.S. A friend actually did 6 quarters of co-op (hence getting the co-op certificate) and graduated with dual-degree in econ/comp engg in 4 years! I learned from another old friend that she's in Harvard biz school now. I know two others, an IE and a ChemE, are now in MIT and Northwestern b-school. I have no idea how they happen to be all in MBA at the same time. It's possible they planned it as they all know each other and came from Hong Kong. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>Unique Engineering First curriculum through which you start solving practical engineering problem the first quarter of freshman year instead of just taking bunch of basic sciences/math like in most other schools.
<a href="http://www.mccormick.northwestern.e...st/courses.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.mccormick.northwestern.e...st/courses.html</a>
GREAT FOR UNDECIDED!</p></li>
<li><p>Other certificate programs like "Certificate in Engineering Design" under IDEA (Leadership in Engineering Design Education) <a href="http://www.idea.northwestern.edu/about.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.idea.northwestern.edu/about.html</a> and "Business Basic Certificate". <a href="http://www.mccormick.northwestern.e...nessbasics.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.mccormick.northwestern.e...nessbasics.html</a></p></li>
<li><p>I heard the Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center is almost completed (or maybe it's completed already). I don't know much about it but you should find more info about it to see how/if an undergrad can take advantage of it. <a href="http://fmcedc.mccormick.northwestern.edu/index.html%5B/url%5D">http://fmcedc.mccormick.northwestern.edu/index.html</a>
DEFINITELY ASK ABOUT IT DURING YOUR VISIT!</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Note: 3 through 5 are either new or fairly recent. The First Engineering curriculum has been receiving positive feedback from students since the pilot program started in 1997.</p>
<p>Hi Sam Lee! Thanks for your posts and for your interest in my son's decision. He did visit NU with his Dad last week (I did not go with them). He stayed over in a dorm and spent the following day doing Preview NU. He definitely liked NU (was turned off by the fact that his overnite host smoked 2 packs a day and my son is a non-smoker!) but when he got to Duke he fell in love with it. Of course, the problem now is that the engineering programs are not comparable, NU being much better. Stay tuned ... and thanks again for your help.</p>
<p>It is true that Duke is not as good as Northwestern in Engineering, but it is respected nonetheless. A good friend of mine majored in Electrical Engineering at Duke and is now getting his PhD in Electrical Engineering at Stanford. So obviously, Duke is very respected. I hope your son also visits Michigan. I think it is worth a visit.</p>
<p>How easy is it for students to transfer from LSA to the engineering school (for Biomed eng.)?</p>
<p>take math/science course and get A's and you're in</p>