<p>Which Schools offer which? I am interested in Cornell, Berkeley, michigan, northwestern, carnegie mellon, UIUC, georgia tech and of course MIT and Stanford if I can get in. I have a feeling I would do better and enjoy a practical approach more. I intend to major in mechanical engineering.</p>
<p>What are the merits and drawbacks of each? Which is more valued by employers, if you intend to go into industry and not academe?
I hear that the schools that offer theoretical supplement their curriculum with an optional co-op experience. Is this generally the case?</p>
<p>The universities that do not offer a PhD program <em>generally</em> are more practical. Such an example would be Cal Poly: San Luis Obispo. At Cal Poly, they start you off in engineering in the first quarter. The universities you listed seem to prepare you both for graduate school and the industry which is a mix of theoretical and practical. I think employers would value the theoretical more but its marginal for industry.</p>
<p>I've talked to lots of employers and I can tell you they value the practical skills a lot more. They value things like communication and management skills a lot more than most engineering programs do. There's been a shift to more of these "soft skills" because most employers don't want technically smart engineers who can't communicate. Of course theoretical is important, but if you want to work in industry most managers are not too concerned with theory, they just want to get the job done. Of course some jobs are highly theoretical and would require that skill set.</p>
<pre><code>One way to see how the need for "soft skills" has effected engineering education is to look at the FE exam. Recently there has been a change in the exam towards more of these type of questions. This was motivated by industry.
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<p>Oh of course not. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that schools without a PhD program are more practical like Cal Poly. The schools you listed to my knowledge all give out PhDs and damn well respected ones at that.</p>
<p>All the top schools give you a pretty good balance of both.
Cornell- don't underestimate its practical education... very good practical masters programs. Also strong theoretical.
Berkeley- very theoretical
Michigan- strong in both; good research opportunities, also good in practical (wide range of course choices)
Northwestern- Not as familiar with their undergraduate program. If I had to guess, I'd say it's probably a little stronger in theoretical
CMU- Good practical, also reasonably strong in theoretical
UIUC- Very strong research programs, wide array of course choices and so good practical
Georgia tech- excellent practical, also strong theoretical
MIT, Stanford, CalTech- Very, very theoretical... Many employers are actually pretty unimpressed by grads from these three because there's a stigma that they're not good with client relations, communications, practicality, etc.</p>
<p>Very strong schools in practical mechanical engineering:
*Check out Kettering, if you're at all interested in automotive engineering
*Harvey Mudd College
*Olin College</p>
<p>All three have very interesting and progressive programs... they focus on forming the "whole engineer," which includes a lot of things like working in a machine shop, co-opping with engineering firms and design corporations, engineering ethics and business, and other such things.</p>
<p>"MIT, Stanford, CalTech- Very, very theoretical... Many employers are actually pretty unimpressed by grads from these three because there's a stigma that they're not good with client relations, communications, practicality, etc."</p>
<p>Interesting; does your observation apply only to undergrads, or to masters and PhDs as well? Not that US News & World Report is infallible, but the GRADUATE programs at these three schools did receive fairly high recruiter assessment scores. Is that a distinction between undergrad vs grad programs, or would you say that the recruiter they sampled do not reflect the "real world" population of employers?</p>
<p>Arent cornell/michigan/UIUC etc. students just watered down MIT/Caltech/Stanford students? I could see caltech students being distant, but not really stanford ones.
aibarr, I am not interested in automotive engineering, as it seems like a dwindling field. Harvey Mudd is off my list for certain, nonacademic, reasons, and Olin is a possibility, though I'm bearish on my chances, as it looks more selective than MIT. Olin and HMC actually looks like the best college experience of them all.</p>
<p>I attended Cornell for a little while and I have a relative who got an engineering degree from there. I didn't go beyond my sophomore year at Cornell but I had a prof who explained that the engineering education at Cornell (at least in MechE) was based on theory but they wanted to students to also get good at "back of the envelope" calculations. He meant that we should not rely on computers to do all analysis for us because out in the field we may be required to do quick problem-solving to fix something. I attend a small engineering program that is practical in its approach to engineering. We don't have the funds to conduct cutting-edge research so the profs rely on teaching fundamental skills in engineering. However, there doesn't seem to be much of any hands-on work (such as machining) prior to the senior year design projects (I'm only talking about MechE). I think machining is good for MechE students because it gives you the idea of what is and what is not possible to do in a machine shop. It helps you out when you have to make CAD drawings for a machinist to use.</p>
<p>I prefer the practical education but my job may end up in theory. My internships have been in plant engineering but one field I am interested in is the development of alternative energy sources and finding economical ways of using them on a large scale.</p>
<p>justin, do the schools that have a largely theoretical curriculum expect to you learn the practical side through research?
aibarr, I wouldn't give much credence to your observation about employers and caltech/mit/stanford students, when after all, those students are payed more, right out of school.</p>
<p>I know that at Cornell students participated in projects like Robocup, AUV, etc. But those required in-depth knowledge from a variety of engineering backgrounds and only a small percentage of students were able to be on the teams. I suppose they are practical in the sense that you want to create solid and efficient designs with the least amount of cost. But I'm would assume that theory is used when it comes to programming robots. I really can't say for sure because I wasn't on any of those project teams. </p>
<p>One of the best places to learn practical knowledge is from internships.</p>
<p>The most theoretical schools are: Princeton ,MIT and Cornell,</p>
<p>Stanford, uiuc, michigan, Berkeley all emphasize practical courses....much more so than the Ivies and East coast schools!</p>
<p>That's the reason for Yahoo and Google....these are very practical projects that require hands on programming, and that is something that stanford is great at.</p>
<p>However, princeton, mit and cornell publish many more Theory papers, i.e. non-systems related stuff.....which often don't have a practical application.</p>
<p>The theory at the Ivies is much, much tougher in general than the west coast schools from what I've heard.</p>
<p>4thfloor- My observations apply primarily to the undergraduate engineers. Of course, it's not universally true... You can't say, "You're not going to get a job because you're from MIT and MIT people are nerds who can't string a sentence together," because that's just not true. There are some interesting and very intensively practical MEng programs that I'm familiar with, especially from MIT, that prepare students very well for practice. For the most part, though, MIT/Stanford/CalTech graduate engineers will end up working in research for one of the national labs or for a university or something. Still very theoretical. </p>
<p>(Something to consider: USN&WR polled a lot of employers, but I imagine that the distribution of companies that actually employ M/S/C grads is rather small... So it could perhaps be the case that a lot of employers who say that they'd hire an M/S/C grad haven't actually had the pleasure of doing so... I need to research how they do those polls!)</p>
<p>ashernm- I dunno... I haven't seen the statistics on starting salaries for MIT/Stanford/CalTech engineering alumni vs. everyone else, but I know that in talking to a lot of major practical-application-heavy engineering employers (primarily in civil/structural engineering, but several were in mech), I was really surprised to a lot of them say that they weren't as impressed with grads from M/S/C as they thought they'd be... Nothing concrete to offer as support, all I know is what I've been told. I just think that unless you're really set on going into the academic world and doing heavy research, that it's probably not worth your money (or your blood, sweat, and tears...) to get an engineering degree at MIT or Stanford of CalTech. There are better bargains out there for engineering undergraduates. (30K/yr for just tuition!? 45 K/yr including room and board!? Then pile on the eventual bitterness and angst from the cut-throat competitive environment... Ai ai aiiii....) Just one gal's opinion.</p>
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phpguru, few would would to cal poly over the schools I listed.
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<p>Actually my S is one who turned down CMU and Cooper Union for CalPoly SLO - he was not interested in ranking or prestige, just happy finding a place that felt right.</p>
<p>Good for him. That's my advice for students. In the end it's not so important where you went to school but how you did and what you learned. Go where you will be happy and enjoy it.</p>