<p>if you could get into uc berkley engineering or harvard engineering which would you choose and why. The engineering schools I have been considering are MIT, Caltech, Princeton, Stanford, Northwestern, Illinois and Cornell. I just started thinking about applying to harvard and wanted to get feedback about balancing school rep (harvard) with school rank for engineering (berkley)</p>
<p>Outside of Illinois I am not sure i will get into any of them. My background: I go to one of the top stem schools, done multiple research projects, lot of volunteer work, always taken the hardest course load available with straight a's or a-'s (1 b soph year), sat superscore 2290 (single 2250) math & CR 1550, </p>
<p>You should apply to both along with the other colleges on your list, and if both Harvard and Berkeley offer you a spot, then you come back on here and ask the question again. There are many things to consider besides rep and rankings. There’s location (West Coast, East Coast), weather (no snow, snow), size (huge, small), housing (off campus apartment, on campus dorms four years), student body (mostly CA students 40% Asian, students from everywhere), city (near San Francisco, near Boston), etc. When your more realistic offers start rolling in, look at these things, and then of course don’t forget cost. You may find that $$ is what really trumps everything in deciding where to go.</p>
<p>I don’t think I would choose H. Maybe I run in odd circles, but I’ve never met anyone with a bachelors in eng’g from H. UCB? yes, UCLA? yes, Stanford, yes, Cal Tech, yes, SCU, Cal Polys, CSUs, VT, GT, WashU, tOSU, PSU, UA, AU, Purdue, UIUC, Cornell, MIT, yes, yes, yes, and a whole long list of schools that I could name…but never an engineer from H. I imagine that H engineers must all be holed up somewhere. lol </p>
<p>To paraphrase GEICO insurance ads, everyone knows that Ivy League engineering schools are not as strong as their public rivals. They are not even rivals, academically speaking, with the exception of Cornell. Therefore, like M2Ck, I can’t think of any kid I know whom wants to be an engineer (and not a hedge fund trader, etc.) would would pass up engineering at Cal Berkeley to get a degree from Harvard. Same is true of U of Illinois, one of the very best e-schools in America. Now specialties may make a difference. Northwestern’s ChE and Mats Sci departments at the top.</p>
<p>The engineering majors at Harvard probably end up in something else like venture capital. I worked with a Princeton engineer and he was useless. Somehow there were more essay than calculations.</p>
<p>thanks for your replies - with the limited amount of free time i have I don’t want to spend it on a college that if accepted i wouldn’t strongly consider and after some additional research harvard is out (not that i would get in, in the first place). All the schools I am applying to I have a better gpa, better sat on a 1600 and 2400 basis than the average student that is accepted from my school except for stanford which has a 3.97 average and i am 3.92. Hopefully i will get accepted into at least 2 of them (univ of Illinois engineering is a given)</p>
<p>If you are seeking a top notch engineering education Harvard is not the place. We visited Stanford a few weeks ago - very strong engineering and computer science but with an entrepreneurial spin. Carnegie Mellon would be another widely recognized engineering school. Some of the smaller engineering schools are also worth considering - Rose Hulman in Indiana or Franklin W Olin in Mass. Some of the Ivies have better engineering / science programs than others. Didn’t Einstein work at a Physics research center affiliated with Princeton? Brown also has some strong STEM majors. Harvard and Yale, not so much. I’m an Engineer by degree with decades in industry. When I learn that an engineer went to Harvard first I wonder why, then I wonder how strong of an engineer they really are. A powerful combination is an undergraduate degree at an engineering school followed later by an MBA at Harvard or Penn</p>
How many universities are noticeably stronger than Harvard in engineering? A dozen, possibly two? I can think of only six well-rounded private universities that can claim to have better engineering programs (Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Princeton, Rice, and Stanford). </p>
<p>Fit and generous financial aid could easily make Harvard very appealing to a prospective engineer. It should also be noted that Harvard offers cross-registration with MIT, only a 15-20 minute walk from campus. </p>
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Harvard engineers tend to go into ibanking and consulting because they pay more. This isn’t a trend limited to Harvard. Berkeley’s career survey for the class of 2013 reports that 58% of employed engineering majors went into business. </p>
<p>That doesn’t mean Harvard engineers can’t go into engineering. Indeed, I don’t see why they couldn’t. Engineering is notoriously one of the most egalitarian careers, and career surveys readily reveal that engineering graduates from Mississippi State are making exactly the same amount of money as their counterparts from MIT and Harvey Mudd. </p>
<p>One should also consider the national drop-out rate for engineering…a rather high 60%. Personally, I’d much rather be at Harvard than Illinois if I decided engineering wasn’t for me. Perhaps something to consider now that it’s trendy for every high school senior with an A in calculus to be convinced he’s destined for CS or engineering. </p>
<p>Huh? <a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/Major.stm”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/Major.stm</a> lists employers and job titles for various majors. While most employed graduates report private sector employment, the job titles mostly indicate engineering or other major-related jobs, rather than finance, consulting, or other “business” type jobs (with the exception of IEOR, where such jobs are major-related).</p>
<p>Interesting. One of my son’s ChemE classmates was hired by Goldman Sachs and is now working on Wall Street. It thought that was odd, but I guess it’s not. </p>
<p>@warblersrule, what does being well rounded and private have to do with being a good engineering program?</p>
<p>There are many publics that are as good or better in engineering than every school mentioned in that post except for Stanford. That includes Cornell and Princeton.</p>
<p>I’d choose Berkeley, Illinois, Purdue and Georgia Tech, Michigan, and Texas over all but Stanford on your list and they’re just the easy, low hanging fruit? There are easily 50 publics and 50 privates, all of which I’d choose over Harvard without blinking an eye.</p>
<p>People who choose engineering as a route to banking are simply math majors by a different name, not engineers.</p>
I was stating that Harvard is one of the best schools for engineering within its type. Nothing more, nothing less. </p>
<p>US News typically has Harvard at #20-25 in the country for engineering. AWRU has Harvard at #28 in the US and #39 in the world. Not amazing results, but it’s pretty far from the weakest program out there.</p>
<p>If someone wants to compare Georgia Tech to Harvard, well, be my guest. Engineering is just about the only field in which Harvard doesn’t excel, so I won’t begrudge engineers at other colleges the opportunity to beat their chests. </p>
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How many of those offer financial aid to OOS students? How many have eliminated or capped loans for all students? </p>
<p>Yes, Berkeley is great…but only if you can afford to shoulder the entire $50K+ price tag. I singled out private universities due to their extensive financial aid programs.</p>
<p>Just a few thoughts: Caltech is very small. Broadly speaking, the faculty are the best researchers in their specific areas, but it is still really small, so this is probably not desirable at the undergraduate level. One of my favorite professors went to Harvard for his BS, MS, and PhD in Engineering he liked it and did well-he was also an astronaut later on. The point about balancing name vs ranking is a tough one with no easy answer. The people who matter (those doing hiring and grad school admissions will be familiar with both and impressed with both). Also, Princeton (and Stanford) in particular, provide the best of both worlds-reputation and ranking. You didn’t include U of Chicago -which is surprising. </p>
<p>Harvard has a sub-par engineering program as does Yale, two schools that frequently come up in this forum because of their Ivy reputations. Regardless of ANY ranking, they do not turnout engineers that are respected by engineers. Every time those rankings come out, engineers scratch their heads. It’s because the ranking methodologies are so flawed. You could go to almost any state flagship and many many privates and get an engineering degree as good or better than Harvard or Yale. I’m sorry, but other than the overall cache of the names, there’s no there, there.</p>