<p>I have always been a huge "prestige whore" if you know what I mean, but I am going to be majoring in Engineering. My parents have the money for me to go anywhere in the US.</p>
<p>Let's say I had a choice between a highly regarded, Top 5/10 engineering school and my state school (which is a solid state school but nowhere near this in terms of engineering prestige), what would I get out of graduating from the Top 5/10 engineering school that I wouldn't get out of the state school?</p>
<p>A lot smaller class sizes and possibly a higher GPA (from grade inflation). That’s about it.</p>
<p>What is the state school?</p>
<p>State school is UConn.</p>
<p>Do you like Connecticut and the rest of New England? I imagine UConn has a pretty good rep in that area.</p>
<p>BTW, you can also take a middle road by applying to OOS publics like U Minnesota with relatively reasonable OOS tuition and excellent engineering.</p>
<p>I’m a 3rd year mech engr and talked to a friend at Columbia who is an Econ/French Major. He didn’t feel any smarter, but he liked how his school had prestiege and even felt that I was just as smart and possibly smarter…this was a lot to hear since this guy was the Val at my HS. </p>
<p>I thought about it and realized–Calculus, is calculus no matter where you go. There is only one derivative for sin(x)–cos(x). Physics is based off of Newton’s Laws and those don’t change. The base GE requirements for engr’ing are more or less, all the same. Chem follows similar “rules” of physics/math. What I’m trying to get at is–all engineering knowledge is the same, esp. since most schools are ABET accredited. </p>
<p>Honestly, the better your skills, the better your chances of gaining admittance into grad school/job offers. Its a game of skill.</p>
<p>Yeah I mean I plan to go to grad school, whether or not I have a job company who will pay it.</p>
<p>I don’t know…it’s confusing. I work hard for 4 years to go to a school that I could have gotten into if I hadn’t worked at all? It’s just confusing.</p>
<p>My top 2 schools vs. UConn (before merit aid):</p>
<p>UConn - 25k
Top 5 - 38k
Top 5 - 41k-46k</p>
<p>^ Don’t think like that. I felt the same way back when I entered college. </p>
<p>You MUST work hard and CONTINUE to work hard if you are to be successful at being an engineer. I have met people who have the drive and intelligence to gain admittance into Cal/UCLA, but either didn’t have the stats or choose to go to my school. </p>
<p>If you don’t fight for the grade, someone will take that A from you. It is prob. easy to pass a class, but can be extremely hard to get that A. This probably applies to every other school as well. </p>
<p>Besides, who doesn’t like the idea of pwning n00bs in an easy calc course!</p>
<p>I would just save the money! Money is tight nowadays! Your parents will respect your choices.</p>
<p>It’s not that I don’t like CT or New England. I like CT and New England, it’s just that UConn has this blah appeal to me (likely brainwashed into me by my sister - my parents first child who refused UConn probably b/c it was too close or something - I don’t remember I was really young, I just know she totally refused UConn). But even the campus, it sucks, it’s boring, it’s a party school, there are no good students who go there.</p>
<p>Like I said, money is not really in the question b/c my parents just flat out make enough to where I could go anywhere (while being a hastle to go to a 50k’er, it could be handled). But I have never asked my parents for much and I don’t feel like I should impose 45k a year on them, you know?</p>
<p>Just cause calculus is the same no matter where you go does not mean that you will learn the same amount of calculus or have as many opportunities available to you to apply what you learned in calculus, for instance.</p>
<p>Just because a sheet of music is the same does not mean you will get the same result from learning it with two different teachers. There’s a reason some music teachers charge hundreds per hour and others (like me!) charge thirty. Just as there are reasons some engineering schools are better than others, even though in theory they are teaching from the same set of laws.</p>
<p>Interesting theory Senior…obviously just by reading this thread you can understand how there is not one solid answer to this.</p>
<p>Would it help to know my goals and aspirations:
I will be going into Computer Engineering. I would like to go to grad school but I’m not sure whether for Business or Computer Engineering or what-not. I would like to work for a huge corporation - something along the lines of Microsoft or Intel or IBM, etc…but then again, what are the advantages of that over a small corporation or a small business?</p>
<p>@ Senior </p>
<p>That’s a good point. But I want to point out that learning in a school setting is a 2 way deal. It involves a teacher and student. In any school you attend are gonna eventually run into a really bad teacher. Also, no school in America has a roster of infallible professors who can teach such that anyone will learn. </p>
<p>Realistically, what you learn will be more dependent on you than on the professor. It’d be beneficial if you check out the campus and perhaps talk to some of the students in each department during the Admit Weekends!</p>
<p>I know the feeling too. I have no desire to go to UCONN. I don’t even like Fairfield county which is the only decent part of Connecticut. I have no desire to move to a rural area with a decent rep in the N.E area. I think if you can afford it, go somewhere you enjoy. You only live once. This is 4 years of your life.</p>
<p>
Yeah, I mostly agree with you here. I think an important quality of a professor may not necessarily be his/her ability to teach, but rather to motivate you in the subject. A great music teacher is near-worthless for the student she can’t get to practice. </p>
<p>I’m at a Prestige U, after attending Prestige HS, and I’ve had professors/teachers each quarter/year that have inspired and fundamentally transformed me as a person. This happens in STEM a lot less than humanities I’ve found, so if you only want to focus on STEM this may not be as important a quality when searching for a school. </p>
<p>SlightManifesto: If you want to work at one of those big companies, they probably recruit most heavily at the top engineering schools. I’ve heard some popular banks will only consider applicants from HYPSM and a couple other schools maybe. I have to imagine the same is true, although probably to a lesser extent, for companies like Microsoft and Apple. Also for these companies (and tech startups), being at Stanford or Berkeley is a huge plus due to proximity to SV. I have friends at Stanford who work at Apple or random startups during the year, for instance.</p>
<p>If you want to do a startup (not just work at an existing one), you will probably want to be around students also interested in doing this. At a top 10 CS school you will likely find a greater entrepreneurial spirit.</p>
<p>Acess to elite jobs companies only recruit at certain schools for. A third of MITs typical class goes to Wall Street, that won’t happen at state U. Companies like Google have elite development teams they recruit at top schools for only.</p>
<p>If you want to be a rank and file engineer, school won’t matter much.</p>
<p>If your parents can afford it and are willing to pay, I would absolutely go to a higher prestige school. There are a lot of intangibles to the top schools that can benefit you in life. I say that as someone who went to a State U (where I was definitely well-educated), whose child goes to a top school. The level of attention and the quality of the other students in general seems to give him confidence and gives him better training than I got, even though we’re pretty evenly matched intellectually.</p>
<p>Go prestige, if you can afford it. UConn is a mediocre state school, but if you go for the prestige, you’ll nevr regtret it. Of course, it depends on which program you are talking about.</p>
<p>SLightManifesto –</p>
<p>By all means apply to the schools already on your list. Next April, come back to this thread with your actual choices, and we might have some lively discussion.</p>
<p>At present, we don’t know if you are comparing MIT to UConn, or Illinois to UConn.</p>
<p>Agree with Dunnin. We need to know what schools you are comparing UConn to. For example, Northeastern or BU are only going to be slightly better than UConn, but MIT is going to be significantly different to justify the cost.</p>