I have already posted this elsewhere but no reply 
Why is pen SEAS ranked so low on many rankings? I mean , Penn engineers have some of the highest starting salaries in the nation. If the employers are splashing the money, surely they must be good? Whatâs up with those rankings then?
You have to know how undergraduate engineering rankings are done by USNWR. Deans from other colleges of engineering are asked to rate each program and these ratings are averaged. These deans primarily know about the research reputations of other programs (influential research/papers, researcher centers, NAE members), and not much about their undergraduate programs.
Penn is not an engineering research power-house.
@theglowingone I agree definitely with what @osuprof is saying. Penn seas has not one of the traditional engineering research powerhouses but is really on the rise and over the last few decades it has been doing pioneering research in fields like bioengineering, biotechnology, nanotechnology and robotics. The rankings are mainly based on reputation that is why it is not ranked higher. if it keeps making progress the way it is, it is sure going to rise in the rankings in the future. As for undergrad, it is true that Penn Seas has incredible career, salary and graduate school outcomes (the most schools Penn seas ugrads go for grad schools are engineering powerhouses like MIT, caltech, Georgia tech etc) and the quality of teaching is top notch, with amazing access to professors and research opps.
You have to understand when you look at rankings (especially USnews) what the metrics are, and to what degree these metrics actually reflect quality of an institution. This is the case for Penn for the best college rankings. Penn is ranked currently at 9 below some schools that Penn is arguably at least at the same level with, because Penn does not benefit as much from the metrics us news uses. Penn gives immense emphasis on GPA (the incoming class has a higher GPA than even princeton) but it does not focus as much on SAT scores. The us news formula gives a lot of weight on SAT but does not realy factor in GPA. Penn has a higher yield than all other schools apart from Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Yale but us news has stopped using yield rate as their metric (when they used it Penn ranked much higher). Lastly Penn has a slightly bigger class than the other top 10 schools which prevents its acceptance rate from dropping to the levels of a school like Chicago. Does that mean that Penn is in some way inferior to schools like Columbia, Chicago or Duke? of course not.
I think that from a rating perspective, Penn SEAS will be rated as marginal until some objective criteria are introduced into the rating process and it becomes clear what criteria are being measured.
If you focus on average gpa, test scores, and achievements of incoming students, Penn will be at or near the top. If you focus on the level of requirements and assignments that are expected of Penn students, Penn is at or near the top. If you consider job placement rates and salaries, Penn is at or near the top. If you look at opportunities for research, clubs, leadership and other ECS that undergrads are provided and actively involved with, Penn is at or near the top. If you ask undergrads how they like their experience, Penn students are very positive about their school. So given all of that, you have to ask yourself what these surveys really really saying?
The academics who complete these surveys are the exact type of person who may be well advised to not choose Penn for undergrad. They are likely to be interested in theoretical study in a very specific subject, the are likely to find balancing theory with practical skills to be uninteresting, they may not think that there is much value in exploring broader interests, and may not prioritize having skills that employers expect when they graduate, and may not have much interest in collaborating with other students. For someone with that overall perspective, Penn SEAS may not be the best choice, and that is how they complete their surveys.
Applicants need to consider what it is that they want to get from their college experience, and investigate which schools are doing the best job of providing those things that they care most about. Penn SEAS is definitely for everyone, but is an amazing experience for the right student.
Thanks a lot people! This was something ive been wanting to hear for a long time. For sp long ive researched online and penn has had a tremendous record, yet for some reasons people dont talk about it as a strong engg school. Research is also good at penn as far as ive seen. What about when compared with princeton? I know i might get a biased answer, this being in the upenn forum, but what better than the answers of those who have already experienced it.
Here is research spending by university. Penn is the second Ivy on the list after Columbia.
http://www.bestcolleges.com/features/colleges-with-highest-research-and-development-expenditures/
Much2learn â the total research funding numbers are dominated by who has a large medical research program. National Institute of Health by the far the largest funding agency, and its dollars go to medical school (primarily).
^ Which is good news for Penn students interested in the sciences. Thanks to Pennâs one university policy, it is easy to participate in research at the Medical School and the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Clearly Penn is attracting huge sums of money and undergrads benefit from that money greatly!
@osuprof they do break it down into engineering research. I was surprised that I did not see Princeton on the list. I am not sure why.
Princeton does not have a medical school and the engineering program is relatively small (especially when you consider it has only about 500 engineering graduate students - in comparison, for example, Georgia Tech has 3000+). This is why Princeton is not high on the total research funding. I think their basic science graduate programs are also small.
There may not be much of a positive correlation between research funding and quality of undergraduate teaching. Faculty at places with a lot of research funding may be too busy with their post-docs/full-time research staff + graduate students, and may not be thinking about undergraduate teaching all that much.
@osuprof That makes sense. They donât show spending per student either, so it favors larger programs.
To your point about teaching, Penn SEAS classes are all taught by professors. Grads can lead a recitation, but not teach new material. Princeton is probably like that too. Very few engineering undergrad programs do that.
Ivies also just tend to teach subjects in a more sophisticated way than most schools. For example, DD is taking Intro to Probability and Stats this semester and next. It probably looks like high school AP Stats. However, this is a 400 level course and is calculus based. Her intro to systems eng course is dif. Eq. Based. Her CS programming course presumes that you have an understanding of discrete math and linear alg. That is pretty advanced for a sophomore, and it has nothing to do with DD. Her peers are all in these courses. The school starts with amazing students, establishes a strong theoretical understanding, then assigns extensive programming projects to ensure that the students also have strong practical experience. That is why it is amusing when people claim all eng. programs are the same. They just arenât.
Many âhigher rankedâ programs could not possibly even attempt this because they donât have a student body that arrives with advanced enough skills, or the ability to manage the workload. In addition to Penn and Princeton other schools that I think can pull this off include Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Berkeley, Cornell, and I am sure one or two others I am omitting, but not many. That is why ranking the program in the twenties for engineering is just silly.