<p>Sadly, I have fallen victim to these threads, but I really am looking for any information to help me make my decision. I will be visiting both schools next week to see which "fits", but I'd like some opinions from CCers as well. Money is not an issue since I've received generous aid from both schools.
My current interest is engineering, either mechanical, computer science, or even operations research. However, I'm not 100% sure that I want to go into engineering at all. I'm almost certain that I'm going to grad school, so maybe MIT or Stanford for that. Current dream jobs are working for Disney or NASA, but of course none of this is set. I'm a female btw, if that means anything.</p>
<p>Princeton
PROS:
-undergraduate focus
-teachers connect with students better
CONS:
-grade deflation policy/rigor: low gpa would be bad for grad school admissions?
-no double major
-kinda isolated? i've lived in the suburbs my whole life</p>
<p>Columbia
PROS:
-Egleston Scholar (this is like Rabi Scholar for engineering/ perks, guaranteed research, stipend, etc)
-NYC (don't know if this is good or bad, actually)
-bigger engineering department
CONS:
-cannot switch out of SEAS
-poor teachers?
-grad>undergrad
-social life on-campus not good</p>
<p>I'm actually leaning towards Princeton for its undergrad focus, but the Egleston Scholar is pulling me to Columbia since apparently only about 10 people receive this opportunity...And does anybody have any information on research opportunities or job prospects for engineering out of these schools? </p>
<p>Any help is greatly appreciated (especially from current students), thanks! :D</p>
<p>If you are not sure about engineering don’t apply to Columbia Fu-</p>
<p>Princeton isn’t really a good engineering school. I would recommend looking at MIT, Tulane, Carnegie Mellon, or Lehigh. If you have to go to an ivy then I would choose Cornell.</p>
<p>-no double major The Princeton approach is to major in a field and combine with a certificate program. Popular certificates for ME are Engineering Biology, Applied and Computational Mathematics, Materials Science in Engineering, Engineering Physics, Robotics and Intelligent Systems, and Engineering and Management Systems . Popular certificate programs for computer science majors are The Program in Quantitative and Computational Biology, and The Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics. OR courses can be combined with either major. See the list of certificate programs: [Princeton</a> University - Certificate Programs](<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/main/academics/departments/certificate/]Princeton”>Areas of Study | Princeton University) </p>
<p>-kinda isolated? i’ve lived in the suburbs my whole life
There are too many activities on campus to want to leave. If you must you can take the train from the edge of the Princeton campus and be in NYC in a little over an hour.</p>
<p>I’m a female btw, if that means anything.
42% of the Princeton engineering class of 2015 are women. Nationally women are about 18% of engineering students. The president of Princeton, Shirley Tilghman, a noted scientist, is committed to ensuring that women succeed in math, science, and engineering at Princeton. There is a sufficient number of women engineering majors to have an active Society of Women Engineers chapter. See: [Princeton</a> University SWE](<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/~swe/]Princeton”>Princeton Society of Women Engineers) You may also be interested in the Women in Science Colloquium where female faculty discuss careers in science, engineering, and math.
You can easily switch out of engineering into any other major if you want.
Here is an interesting article on the recent success of Princeton computer science majors. [Undergraduates</a> win computer science research competition ?*Princeton Engineering](<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/engineering/news/archive/?id=4543]Undergraduates”>http://www.princeton.edu/engineering/news/archive/?id=4543) </p>
<p>Princeton students have done very well getting into top grad schools and obtaining engineering jobs; however, that is probably true for Fu grads also.</p>
<p>GreedisGood, see if you can find Tulane, Carnegie Mellon, Lehigh or Cornell in the below list of the top ten from the most extensive set of Engineering Rankings done in the last 15 years. Couldn’t find them much?..Now try finding Princeton Engineering…How did that turn out?</p>
<p>Columbia fails to include the admissions stats for 25% of its undergraduates, which would bump up its acceptance rate if they ever became transparent and included these students.</p>
<p>Princeton pwns Columbia in engineering. Neither is particularly excellent (in the MIT sort of way) but, Princeton is the better one. If you were cross-admitted to Cornell too, I’d look there, they’re better at engineering.</p>
<p>If nothing else, I believe Princeton’s strength in engineering lies mostly in Mechanical and Chemical.</p>
<p>so the 2nd, 2nd and 4th rankings of Princeton’s Electrical Engineering, Computer Science Engineering and Civil Engineering, respectively, aren’t really that signficant to contribute to the strengh of Princeton Engineering?</p>
<p>^I’m sorry, I meant to say I knew Princeton as strong in mechanical and chemical. I didn’t think of electrical (I personally hate electromagnetism, so I never looked too much into this field). You see, Pton is awesome for engineering :D</p>
<p>If I were to say the top ivy engineering, I would say Cornell, Pton, and UPenn (especially their bio-med).</p>
<p>Columbia, doesn’t really have a focus on engineering. Many (most?) of their engineers don’t end up working in Engineering (many end up in finance). The students are a more renaissance-man type of engineer, and I feel because of that they sacrifice some strength in science/engineering. If I were to study science/engineering (which I am) I would definitely pick Princeton over Columbia.</p>
<p>Also, note this. Columbia may be in the city, which is awesome, but a train station to the city is right on Princeton’s campus and weekend excursions are not unheard of. Also, this way you wouldn’t have to live with the hassle of big city life.</p>
<p>Jalmoreno, again, I would ten to disagree with you on this, particularly when the most entensive study done on engineering departments in the last 15 years results in Princeton’s much higher ranking than Cornell on a departmental basis:</p>
<p>USNews engineering rankings for Ivy’s paint a different picture. You have to take all these rankings with a grain of salt, including NRC, which for whatever reason seems to have inflated Princeton standing.</p>
<p>The USNWR undergraduate engineering rankings are based on peer assesment from the Deans of the engineering schools around the country.</p>
<p>The USNWR graduate engineering rankings that you posted are based on a combination of peer assessment, recruiter assessement and other factors such as TOTAL RESEARCH EXPENDITURES which gives a faulty bias towards larger engineering schools, instead of using Total Research Expenditures per engineering student.</p>
<p>The NRC rankings are the single most extensive rankings of engineering school departments completed in the last 15 years and is widely known as the more accurate one.</p>
<p>For the USNWR graduate engineering school rankings, the following are the rankings based solely on the peer assessment and recruiter assessments for the top 25 schools that were included in the partial list that you provided:</p>
<p>**Rank – college – (Avg of Peer and Recruiter Assessment score out of 5.00)
**8 – Cornell (4.30)
10 - Princeton (4.20)
.
.
16 - Harvard (3.85)
21 - Penn (3.70)
21 - Columbia (3.70)</p>
<p>and finally, if you want to see another extensive ranking of top engineering schools, here you will find a ranking of the top 50 engineering technology schools in the world:</p>
<p>My child is an engineer. ALL schools claim to be supportive of women engineers and scientists. Ask each school about what it is doing to help women engineers and scientists to get summer jobs in their fields. THat’ll tell you how supportive they are. </p>
<p>The statistics on “entering” students are meaningless. The important statistics are how many women GRADUATE in engineering and the proportion that graduate. The fact is, MANY women select engineering and hard science as a “notional” major in order to get admitted. They then change over to liberal arts where it is harder to get in. It’s a good strategy. Any school that attracts women AND keeps them in engineering and the sciences is a winner.</p>
<p>I have to say, were one of my children an engineer in training, I’d tell them Princeton no question. However, if that same child wanted some urban thrill, was more independent, etc. I’d strongly consider Columbia.</p>
<p>Hopefully anyone smart enough to get into Columbia and Princeton can recognize that you aren’t comparing apples to apples and can’t keep your facts straight.</p>