^^It’s kind of hard to avoid that big hunk of cement in the middle of the hall, so you might as well talk about it.
So @CU123, you not only put down lower ranked engineering schools but now civil engineers as a whole? Hope you don’t need to go over a bridge any time soon.
Yes we need civil engineers to build bridges just like we need sanitation engineers to collect the trash. I’m sure both are good jobs. 
Well at least I wasn’t on that interstate bridge in Minneapolis that collapsed.
This person seems to be unnecessarily provocative. Worst stereotype of people that think they’re so much smarter than everyone else . And that some engineering fields are so superior. My kids are 5th generation engineers. Husband and kids could have studied anything within engineering, gravitated toward their interests. And civil was one of them - for H.
But somehow defends Yale…YALE! There are countless numbers of schools that have far better facilities and deeper/broader curricula than Yale. If you you want to defend an Ivy, go to bat for Cornell (the only decent undergraduate program in the Ivy League). I’m sure Yale is fine if you want to be a banker, but if you want to be an engineer, any generic state flagship will offer better facilities and a deeper curriculum than Yale.
And I’ll defend Yale too. ANY engineering school can produce a good engineer. They do the work, they learn the material, they become engineers. Just don’t look down on other programs that aren’t highly ranked by some arbitrary magazine.
Yale’s fine, just can’t win the cement canoe challenge.
Yale’s entering freshman stats:
Again these are entering freshman not admitted applicants:
ACT Middle 50% 32-36
Top 10% of class 95%
That will stand up against any engineering college, except maybe CalTech and even then its fairly close…
My H was accepted to Yale decades ago. Decided not the best fit for engineering. However, Yale is perfectly fine for engineering and CS and is really making an effort in those areas . My nephew is a Yale CS grad, doing well . As are graduates from MANY schools. Of course, the numbers are going to be very good for a school like Yale. They are private! State schools , particularly those with top engineering programs, have kids with very high scores . Surprised you have not realized/recognized that by now!
I have, have you looked at the AAU list I mentioned as Tier 1 engineering schools, a lot of state schools in there and its certainly not an all inclusive list.
However, that is no reason to judge a college graduate based on how s/he did in high school, since the more relevant and recent college record is available.
Also, most college students’ college choice is primarily based on parental financial circumstances and choices.
@CU123 Okay, let’s use some real data, the average SAT scores of admitted students to the engineering programs for 2018. Shall we?
Yale 1505
Tennessee 1508
Houston 1335
Alabama 1350
RPI 1430
Lehigh 1395
Harvey Mudd 1525
Johns Hopkins 1520
Penn 1525
Harvard (for giggles) 1515
Virginia 1455
Colorado Mines 1370
So, is the cohort at Yale actually better than that at other schools? Well, no it isn’t. It cannot even beat the Vols (and in football, everyone is beating the Vols these days). It cannot beat Penn, Harvard, or Harvey Mudd. It may be better than 'Bama, but it really isn’t standards of deviations better than 'Bama.
The cohort argument falls flat, when you ACTUALLY look at the data.
We are drifting well off target here, but no one is arguing that Yale doesn’t attract high stats students (although I will say that it’s very well established that standard test scores are a proxy for affluence and not intelligence). Take a bunch of smart students and turn them over to pedestrian facilities and a weak curriculum and that’s what you have at Yale (or Harvard or Brown or Dartmouth or Swarthmore). The argument that “they are the best students, so it must be a great engineering program” is silly. Sure they can walk out with a useable degree, but they will not have the advantages in engineering education that students at most of the state flagships.
Brilliant students will be sought after and recruited for “high-end” jobs because they are brilliant.
That doesn’t mean that those same students were optimally served by the education they were offered. Lack of breadth and depth of course offerings limits the type of engineering fields and sub-specialties they are likely to be exposed to. The sub-specialty I eventually practiced wasn’t even offered at a number of the smaller programs. There are programs calling themselves engineering colleges that don’t even offer one of the staple fields, such as civil engineering.
These smaller programs tend to target some subset of areas and sub-specialties within the overall field, and their offerings are sufficiently robust in those particular areas. Some of them also may offer good research opportunities within those subareas. [Because giving kids a research opportunity means you don’t have to offer more courses instead].
A small program can be fine for someone who knows and wants what they are getting. And may not hurt their job prospects at all. But there are tradeoffs. The biggest perhaps being lack of comprehensive exposure to the overall field.
Where you end up may be perfectly great and remunerative, but may not be the same path you would have taken if you had been exposed to more options.
IMO, YMMV, etc.
Their “brilliance” will be vetted by their collegiate accomplishments in classes, clubs, internships, their senior project and how well they interview, not by their SAT score.
We pretend that standardized tests are somehow a measure of “brilliance” when in fact they are well known not to be. They are a proxy for wealth and opportunity. We also pretend that there are real differences between relatively close scores, say 1400 to 1600 when in fact there isn’t. Those scores differ sometimes by just one or two questions.
Those type of score differences also sometimes represent the amount of extensive prep some kids have done .
Success in college is highly correlated to SAT scores. That is a fact. While there maybe other factors that influence scores the correlation is undeniable.
It’s the “CONCRETE canoe competition,” not “cement.” Sigh. One of my pet peeves. It’s like calling bread “flour.”
Civil engineering has been a wonderful career for my father, husband, and myself. Dad got inducted into the National Academy of Engineering and the Russian Academy of Engineering based on his research in polymer concrete. 
Oh, and concrete is fascinating stuff. Anyone who thinks it’s boring is showing his/her ignorance.
@Peruna1998 Again the figures I used for Yale and emphasized were actual matriculants. This can be hugely different from admitted students, as many colleges will admit large numbers of high scoring applicants who will not attend the college, there by skewing the scores upward. Apples to apples.
That is actually not a fact. GPA is, by a long margin, the most predictive factor, because it is more predictive of the long term work ethic. Test scores count for only a minor variation.
More importantly, regardless of the strength of cohort argument, high stats students in substandard facilities with lagging curricula does not a great engineering program make. High stats students are known to be equally successful irrespective of the institution they choose. Dale and Kruger first published this in 2002 and it has been updated by them and replicated by others. High stats students are better off in institutions with good facilities and strong, deep curricula.
High stats kids are better off in institutions that they feel fit them, have a good program, and are affordable to the family.