<p>We have internal company metrics correlating on-the-job performance with a number of factors, including undergraduate institution for 10s of thousands of employees. Purdue engineering is not inferior to Cornell's. In fact, it may score slightly better IIRC. In either case, both schools make our preferred institution list, so it will come down to the individual and not the school.</p>
<p>Cornell is a bit overrated though.</p>
<p>The SAT range in Cornell engineering is about 1400-1550. At Purdue engineering the SAT range is 1170-1360, which is lower than Steven's Institute of Technology. There isn't any overlap at all between the ability levels of Cornell and Purdue engineering students. The least capable students in Cornell engineering are better than the most capable students at Purdue engineering.</p>
<p>At Cornell, 89% of the freshmen who start in engineering graduate from engineering. At Purdue, 57% of the freshmen who start in engineering graduate from engineering. </p>
<p>The US News ranking of engineering programs is based solely on peer assessment (reputation). Purdue's reputation is evidently not derived from student ability. The reputation must be based on something else. The overall peer assessment rating for Purdue is about the same as Notre Dame but, when statistical facts are taken into account, Purdue is ranked 60th overall and Notre Dame is ranked 18th (last year's rank).</p>
<p>Purdue is a great place to study engineering, especially at the graduate level. My interest is in providing prospective students the information they need to find the school that fits them best. </p>
<p>rogracer-
That is interesting about your company but I am skeptical about the validity of your company metrics. I suspect they do not detect true differences in capabilities. The working world does not place everybody on an even playing field. In higher ed, the SATs are standardized. Exams are the same for everybody in a class. Performance is measured in a relatively precise, fair, and objective way. Companies measure performance in a subjective, imprecise, nonstandardized way. There are subjective performance evaluations by supervisors. Personal style can overshadow competence. Tasks are assigned so that their difficulty does not exceed the person's ability to perform them. People often work in teams and are evaluated based on team performance. And so on. It is almost impossible to compare work performance in a precise way.</p>
<p>I want to again make the point that the quality of education cannot be reduced to starting salaries and work performance.</p>
<p>You can be skeptical of our company metrics all you want. But they have produced a company with the world's best employees. We hire the best-of-the-best, and those may come from Cornell or Purdue...or gasp...even schools like LSU. Identifying engineering talent based on average SAT scores of the freshman class is like trying to find the world's best tennis players by analyzing their tennis rackets. Purdue produces some outstanding talent.</p>
<p>The SAT's may be standardized, but the impact of money and preparation for the test are not. I doubt kids in Indiana spend anywhere near as much effort in preparing for the SAT as kids targeting Cornell. Many more Cornell kids have attended private preps schools or highly funded suburban high schools. Hardly a level field. Put the average Indiana small town kid in that environment for 18 years and you might add 200 points to his SAT too.</p>
<p>"Identifying engineering talent based on average SAT scores of the freshman class is like trying to find the world's best tennis players by analyzing their tennis rackets."</p>
<p>This has got to be a new classic!</p>
<p>With which I largely agree, based on my own engineering work experience.</p>
<p>IMO, working as a "typical" engineer is not the same as becoming an engineering professor or other type of academic or researcher. Or becoming a doctor or an investment banker. It's possible that many of these types do not seek employment at Rogracer's firm to the same extent, and hence do not proportionally enter his company's metrics . And these "atypical engineer" types might be more highly represented, proportionally, at Cornell than at Purdue. And they might, as a group, have (somewhat)higher SAT scores than the people who actually become real engineers.</p>
<p>But as for the work of a practicing engineer, I encountered a number of graduates of state universities in the workplace who were at least as skilled and capable at the particular tasks at hand as I was. I could tell that I had verbal skills far outside the norm for that company in that job, perhaps more educationally well-rounded than some of my colleagues. But frankly that really didn't matter there.</p>
<p>I don't know that this is the case, but I can see how a school which focused more on advanced math-oriented concepts could spend relatively less time on more concrete nuts-and-bolts aspects more directly useful for real engineering practice than a school with lower average SATs might spend. Such a difference in emphasis could have some results in the workplace, early-on. If it exists. Particularly if this high-level math orientation was really only highly useful to the pool of "atypical engineers" I described.</p>
<p>In each of my three different work careers I've worked closely with (different)graduates of the University of Illinois. These individuals were top intellects and top achievers in their respective fields. They would have thrived at Cornell, or for that matter anywhere. One of them led a major corporation. I've had limited contact with Purdue grads, but offhand I wouldn't see why a top engineering program at Illinois's state university would be so very different, talentwise, from grads of a top-ranked engineering program at Indiana's state university.</p>
<p>the stats posted above do clearly suggest that the weed-out method is actively employed at Purdue. I'm sure the grads who finish are a stronger group than the freshmen that start.</p>
<p>I agree. You shouldn't judge all on SATs but rather on postgrad success and what these students learn in college.</p>
<p>Cornell isn't overrated in any way. </p>
<p>"You shouldn't judge all on SATs but rather on postgrad success and what these students learn in college"</p>
<p>If there was a way to measure this (I wish there really was), then i'm sure the winners would be schools like MIT, Cornell, Cal, Stanford, Caltech, etc. Say there was an exam like the GRE for engineers measured out of 800 points. Those students at Cornell who score 760-800 on the math SAT are unlikely to do poorly on a test like this after 4 years of a tough education at an ivy league institution (maybe if they screw around for 4 years, but ignore this idea for now). On the other side, those who score in the 550-600 range for the math SAT aren't likely to get in the 99th percentile of an engineering-style GRE unless they've had a really awesome education. If this were to happen, then we could celebrate a place like Purdue for providing a phenominal education. But, until then, we can only look at things like the strenth of the incomming classes and recruitment activity to judge a school's strenghts.</p>
<p>If SAT scores were good metrics for recruiting engineers, you would have to conclude that JHU, Brown and WUSTL engineers are better than Cornell's ... and they are superceded by Harvard, Yale and Penn...</p>
<p>SAT may be a measure of the quality of students going in (and a poor one for that purpose), it certainly doesn't measure the quality of students coming out. Purdue has been a traditional engineering powerhouse, even if you go back 30 years or more. Purdue has turned out a lot more fine practising engineers than Cornell (hence a stronger network in the industries).</p>
<p>p.s. As a chemical engineer working for the top reservoir simulation and consulting company (yeah we do a lot of maths) in my earlier career, I've worked with a lot of engineers from all the majors. I've met quite few Purdue engineers ... but I don't recall meeting one from the Ivies.</p>
<p>"Purdue has turned out a lot more fine practising engineers than Cornell (hence a stronger network in the industries)."</p>
<p>my observations have been different on the east coast. </p>
<p>"SAT may be a measure of the quality of students going in (and a poor one for that purpose)"</p>
<p>as 'poor' as you may call it, it's the only piece of information we have that can assess both student bodys on an even playing field. We could, of course, use % of students in the top 10% of the class, but Cornell would once again prevail there as well.</p>
<p>Umm just a few comments from me.</p>
<p>Cornell's my dream school and I'd love to go there more than anywhere else. </p>
<p>But saying the best students at Purdue are comparable to just plain average ones seem to be the Ivy League go-er prestigious mentality. "Sure nothing can compare to my great ivy league education and anyone that says they can are obvious liars."</p>
<p>To clear this up if it isn't already: I love cornell and owuld much rather go there than anywhere else (including Purdue). but what I won't say is that Cornell is superior to any non ivy, non stanford, mit caltech. Also sat scores are such a poor indication how how well someone is going to apply themself in college. It's utterly ridiculous to rely on them to predict which person is going to be a more qualified engineer.</p>
<p>I turned down both Cornell and Purdue for Northwestern engineering. I'm majoring in Materials Science and Engineering.</p>
<p>krk3561:</p>
<p>Maybe I missed something, but did you forget to include your observations about Cornell vs. Purdue that you developed during your college application & selection process, per the thread topic, in post #32 above?</p>
<p>
[quote]
The SAT scores in Cornell engineering are only about 30-40 ponts lower than at MIT and Caltech
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Perhaps, but the relevant metric would be to compare the Cornell engineering students vs. the MIT/Caltech engineering students. Of course this would be difficult to do because MIT and Caltech don't admit people by major or by school the way that Cornell does. However, if they did, I suspect that the delta-SAT score would be more pronounced. Even MIT and Caltech have some easier majors (at least, easier relative to other majors at those schools).</p>
<p>sakky-
Yes, that would be a better comparison. But most of the students at Caltech and MIT are in math/science/computer science/engineering fields. They all tend to have pretty high SATs. Caltech graduates are 95% in technical fields. MIT is 75% technical fields. I am not sure the disparity would be much different if I could compare specifically with Caltech and MIT engineering. </p>
<p>I might have a way to find out the SATs of MIT engineering students. I will look into it next week.</p>
<p>I have a friend who just finished up engineering at Cornell and he really disliked the culture there. Personally, I think he would have been much happier at Purdue in the midwest. So - different strokes for different folks.</p>
<p>It's really hard to compare Purdue and Cornell, because Purdue is a public. As such, it has a much higher admit rate and, I would imagine, is significantly cheaper. To compensate for the overall less qualified group of entering students, Purdue's intro engineering classes are very hard. Typically, this weeds out the weaker performers, which probably puts the average junior or senior Purdue engineering student much closer to his or her peer at Cornell. Also, FWIW, some rediculously large percentage of the first couple dozen astronauts were Purdue grads.</p>
<p>a tad off topic, but if you look at the top 30, harvard, penn, and columbia and other great schools are at the lower end. last time i checked, they are better than purdue, georgia tech, and other schools ranked higher. having said that, if you dont want to go to an ivy and would rather be at a big 10 school for whatever reason, what you learn wont change much between schools. the general population at an ivy will be more diriven and carreer oriented than a state school. they will also be richer. the only schools that separate themselves as the top engineering schools are mit, caltech, and stanford. the rest of the top 30 are comparable. why students pick RPI and CMU over places like ivys is because they want the school to be engineering oriented and like mit. if you graduate in the top 5% of cornell engineering or purdue or any place like that, it may look better than being an average student at mit. o, and these rankings are bs. they dont tell you anything, and anyway, an undergrad degree from either place is good. a masters in engineering from purdue may look better than cornell tho. purdue is bigger and may offer a wider range of engineering classes than cornell, but cornell is a much better school than purdue in the humanities and liberal arts. it all depends what you want to do in college.</p>