<p>I don’t know much about how they did the undergraduate engineering rank, but there’s 2 points i wanna make that hopefully will help you in making decision.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>for undergraduate education, it is a lot more important about the school’s overall quality. you will be learning math/physics/social sciences/finance/marketing, etc… Princeton is obviously one of the best overall.</p></li>
<li><p>for engineering rank, what I know is the rank for Graduate engineering, which ranks Princeton around 18th or 20th…harvard is ranked around 20th and schools like UIUC and GTech are ranked high. But if you look into the peer review and employee review, all the smaller schools move up considerably, the point I’m trying to make is, obviously bigger school have bigger funding, and more PHD issued which lift their rank up, but seriously do you care about funding per Student/funding per faculty more or total funding more? the only relatively useful indicator is the peer review and employee review in the rank. and even these 2 favor bigger school, which i will not go into detail to explain. use the numbers in the rank but forget about overall ranking.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>in conclusion, it worth every bit as much as MIT and Caltech. i would also suggest Stanford(probably the most well rounded university in the world, top notch in almost every field) and Harvard(you can take engineering courses at MIT) as top choices</p>
<p>this isn’t as big as of an effect when comparing engineering programs because engineering, more than any other major, requires that you take almost all your courses in-house.</p>
<p>I find myself in a similar position as you. </p>
<p>I am very seriously considering Stanford and Princeton, and at least in my moderately researched opinion, they have very strong engineering programs. I’m also considering MIT/Caltech/Harvey Mudd/RPI.</p>
<p>Let me know if you ever want to talk about it.</p>
<p>It is wonderful that you have such superior options. My S is not quite at your level, but we are facing the problem of deciding between okay schools with phenomenal engineering programs or phenomenal schools with okay programs. You have to speak to the students who attend the programs you are interested in; also find out about the alumni network that will be available to you once you graduate. Finally, talk to the graduate admissions offices of some competitive schools to find out which undergrad programs they respect the most. Oftentimes, they are in the best position to know whose program is most competitive - they can help guide you to the best program at the best school.</p>
<p>That is some very ignorant advice. That is the absolute most subjective opinion out of all of the USNWR ranking system, and one of the most hotly contested. Basically, it is an opinion. That score is really only useful to determine a school’s overall reputation out in the engineering community, not its overall strength of program.</p>
<p>To the OP:
Princeton is a fine engineering school and of course a wonderful school overall. Personally, though, I don’t believe it is worth the money. While Princeton gives a good engineering education, you could pay significantly less and get a better engineering education at places like UIUC, Michigan, Georgia Tech and other similar schools (ignoring California schools since you said you were tired of Cali). I would have to get some pretty good financial offer to consider an engineering degree from Princeton over one of the cheaper, “better” schools. The exception is, of course, if you are interested in a nontraditional position in the financial sector, in which case Princeton has a distinct advantage.</p>
<p>My other advice… take a little focus off of MIT/CalTech. Aside from the obvious difficulty everyone has getting into those school, it is really easy to use that as the example you want and end up overlooking some very high quality schools simply because they aren’t MIT. This is especially true because you are still just “thinking about” engineering, and if you end up at MIT, there is no guarantee that you will even fit in. Of course that is true of any school, but for someone who is still so unsure about engineering, a school whose bread and butter is engineering may not be the greatest fit.</p>
<p>I know a professor, my friend’s dad, who went to Princeton. He went on to graduate school at MIT and got his PhD from Stanford. He’s published many papers in aerospace engineering, and has worked for many top companies (NASA included). He started out at Princeton… apparently he did very well. There is no reason why you should underrate a school just because it isn’t the absolute best. Many people who don’t graduate from top schools still get into the top graduate programs.</p>
<p>Some anecdotal evidence… Princeton has their stuff together, so underrating a top school like them is just looking for trouble. Besides, MIT and CalTech frequently reject perfect students… and so do other top schools as well. It’s pretty hard to get into Princeton anyway…</p>
<p>If I had the grades, I would have loved to enter the MEng program at Princeton. I could have basically obtained a graduate engineering degree by taking a bunch of operations research/applied math courses.</p>