<p>i.e. in terms of the quality of the respective engineering departments.</p>
<p>Ivy Engineering is a different animal in that a majority of graduates pursue 1) strategy consulting, 2) finance (with the goal being VC or PE) or 3) engineering graduate school. As feeders into these areas they are superb and these tend to be preferred routes. </p>
<p>As feeders into actual engineering jobs (i.e. working at 3M as an engineer) they are not as strong as some other schools. If you had to rank them based on this last criterion I would say:</p>
<p>1) Cornell, Princeton
2) Columbia, Penn
3) Yale, Harvard, Dartmouth, Brown</p>
<p>Cornell/Princeton
Columbia/Penn
Brown/Harvard
Yale/Dartmouth</p>
<p>I’m sorry, but Princeton is not as good as Cornell at Engineering. </p>
<p>1 Cornell
2 Princeton
3 Columbia
4 the rest</p>
<p>According to U.S. News, it is:</p>
<ol>
<li>Cornell</li>
<li>Harvard/Princeton</li>
<li>UPenn</li>
<li>Yale</li>
</ol>
<p>for “best engineering schools”.</p>
<ol>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Cornell</li>
<li>the rest are 3rd equally</li>
</ol>
<p>But I suppose that when you get an offer from Harvard, you’ll go to Harvard. Very few students turn down an offer from Harvard.</p>
<p>For bioengineering, Penn is #1 in the Ivy League (don’t even know if any of the others offer it).</p>
<p>Just for the record. :)</p>
<p>Cornell and Pton seem to be really good for engineering. </p>
<p>I wonder if Columbia is actually not that good in the engineering dept, or if it is the uber awesomeness of other universities that is bringing its rank down, for engineering i mean.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Hmm . . . not sure what US News you’re reading. The 2011 US News online edition rates the “best undergraduate engineering programs” as follows:</p>
<ol>
<li>Cornell (#8 overall, tied with Purdue, Carnegie Mellon)</li>
<li>Princeton (#11, tied with Texas)
(big drop)</li>
<li>Harvard/Columbia (#26, tied with NC State, Ohio State, RPI, USC)</li>
<li>Penn (#32, tied with UC Davis, Colorado, Florida)</li>
<li>Brown/Yale (#40, tied with Case Western, Iowa State, Michigan State)</li>
<li>Dartmouth (tied with Arizona, Arizona State, UC Irvine, Rutgers, Notre Dame, WUSTL)</li>
</ol>
<p>Cornell and Princeton are distinguished engineering schools. The rest of the Ivies are not. Not to say they’re bad, but frankly even at the Harvard/Columbia level there are a couple of dozen BETTER engineering schools—at least according to U.S. News. It makes me wonder what the fuss is about when people talk about Ivy engineering. There are 7 Big Ten schools ranked ahead of Columbia and Harvard in engineering, and an 8th Big Ten school is tied with them. The 9th-best Big Ten school for engineering is tied with Brown and Yale. Two Big Ten schools are ranked higher than ALL Ivies in engineering. There are 5 UCs—count 'em!—ranked ahead of Brown, Yale, and Dartmouth in engineering.</p>
<p>So the question I’d ask is, why would anyone bother to go to an Ivy for engineering, other than Cornell or Princeton? I assume the Ivies are really difficult to get into, even for engineering; but if you’ve got the academic chops to get admitted to an Ivy, why not go to a BETTER engineering school? Or study in a better part of your Ivy university?</p>
<p>You speak the truth. </p>
<p>I would guess people choose big name Ivies like Harvard and Yale for engineering because of the name. To the commoner, Harvard engineering probably sounds better than Georgia Tech engineering or Purdue engineering. However, in the engineering world, it is well known that the latter two are much more distinguished in the field.</p>
<p>Why do you want go to Ivy for engineering?</p>
<p>There are many great colleges for engineering.</p>
<p>I have a feeling Ivy League undergraduate engineering programs are poorly ranked (relative to their normal ranking and with the exception of Princeton/Cornell) because the size of their SEAS department is small and doesn’t offer the breadth of other Engineering programs. That being said I think the actual quality of teaching and the quality of the professors will be fine in such schools–but the research might be compromised for this reason.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Most students do not benefit from attending a school that is ‘better’ in their specific major because they will not be pursuing that major professionally anyway. Let’s face it - most history majors will not become professional historians, most poli-sci majors will not become professional political scientists, most math majors will not become professional mathematicians. So if you’re probably not going to pursue your major professionally anyway, who cares how strong that specific major was? What matters far more are the general recruiting, branding and networking opportunities at your overall school.</p>
<p>That logic holds even for engineering, in spite of the fact that engineering majors do tend to enter engineering careers at a higher rate than do students in other who majors enter their corresponding professions. Engineering firms provide relatively little pay premium for graduates from higher ranked programs. For example, surely we can agree that San Jose State is a ‘worse’ engineering school than is Berkeley or MIT. Yet, with the important exception of computer science - which is arguably not even an engineering major at all - SJSU engineering students are paid comparably to those from Berkeley or MIT. In certain majors such as mechanical engineering, Berkeley/MIT graduates are paid higher, but in others, notably civil engineering, the SJSU graduates are paid higher. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.careercenter.sjsu.edu/Downloads/Salary_Info/SJSU_CareerCenter_Salary_Survey.pdf[/url]”>http://www.careercenter.sjsu.edu/Downloads/Salary_Info/SJSU_CareerCenter_Salary_Survey.pdf</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/graduation09.pdf[/url]”>http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/graduation09.pdf</a></p>
<p><a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major2009/Major.stm[/url]”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major2009/Major.stm</a></p>
<p>It is surely for this reason that many graduates from the ‘better’ engineering schools, ironically, do not really desire engineering jobs at all, instead preferring careers in consulting or finance. For example, before the recession, nearly half of all MIT graduates who entered the workforce took jobs not in engineering/science but rather in finance or consulting, and even after the recession, over 1/3 of them continue to do likewise. Many Berkeley engineers do the same, including notably Ankur Luthra, who became a Rhodes Scholar as an EECS student…and now works at a venture capital firm. </p>
<p>Consider somebody considering majoring in engineering at, say, Yale. You ask why wouldn’t that person choose to attend a ‘better’ engineering school, but I would turn that question around and ask, why should he? How would he benefit from doing so? Look at the situation from his point of view. He’s probably thinking to himself: “I’m probably not going to be working as an engineer anyway, instead opting as many Yale graduates do for a job in an elite finance or consulting firm or heading to a professional graduate school such as law or medicine. Even if I do have to work as an engineer, perhaps as a backup career because I can’t garner a finance/consulting job, I won’t really be hurt because engineering firms pay little premium to graduates from higher ranked engineering programs. So why shouldn’t I choose Yale and leverage the premier brand and recruiting/networking access? In particular, why should I turn down Yale for, say, a higher ranked engineering program at UCDavis and basically forfeit all of my opportunities to garner a elite finance/consulting offer, as such top firms do not recruit at UCD?” </p>
<p>{Personally, I think the root problem is that engineering firms simply refuse to pay higher salaries to engineers, including those who graduated from higher ranked programs. It is precisely for that reason that many graduates from those higher ranked engineering programs are (ironically) unenthusiastic to work as engineers. As long as engineering firms continue to refuse to provide any premium for graduating from a top engineering program, then students are behaving entirely rationally in placing little premium upon attending a top engineering program.} </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Which is all the more reason to discount engineering rankings. Engineering research at schools such as Yale are surely not as impressive as that at higher ranked engineering schools such as Illinois, but, let’s be frank, the vast majority of engineering students are not going to become engineering researchers anyway.</p>
<p>That is an excellent post sakky. </p>
<p>On the other hand, what do you think makes a school a good school for engineering? I mean if the quality of teaching in Ivy engineering is as good as that found in top engineering colleges, and the pay for engineers from both is about the same, what else is left?</p>
<p>
Research. But most undergrads doing engineering don’t care about research.</p>
<p>What about being well rounded? Might those Ivies be better at providing a broad education to their engineering students? Maybe teach the tools to become good executives or entrepreneurs in addition to being good engineers?</p>
<p>question on a related topic: Why haven’t the Ivies done more to improve their engineering programs? They have the money to expand their departments, hire top faculty and generally invest in the engineering programs at their respective colleges. Why haven’t they done so?</p>
<p>I believe most Ivy League schools don’t like the idea of granting vocational degrees. An extensive engineering program, contained away from the actual university, would amount to just that. </p>
<p>The same reason that certain Ivies don’t have pre-professional journalism. They prefer you enter that vocation through a liberal arts education and then perhaps a professional degree. It’s just my guess.</p>
<p>I’m a prospective engineering major who chose an Ivy! Which was a very financially-motivated decision, I have to admit. (I have tuition and room and board covered - no other school gave that to me.)</p>
<p>With that being said, we have too many research opportunities and too few students, at least at Yale. I’m an undergrad who actually cares about research, so maybe I was better suited than other students. Yale has also invested $1+ billion in science and engineering in the past ten years, with no signs of stopping either. And I might not actually pursue engineering anymore, not sure yet.</p>
<p>I don’t think there’s much of a reason to reject an Ivy, besides finances. However, if the Ivies aren’t giving much money to you, part of the reason is because you can afford it. For a lot of people though, an Ivy is probably cheaper. It was less expensive for my cousin to go to Columbia for engineering rather than go in-state at Berkeley. </p>
<p>When I went to tour several Ivies, all the tour guides touted the abundant research opportunities at the school for the scientists. Obviously I don’t know how accurate they’re being, but I’m not sure why it wouldn’t be that hard for a somewhat motivated person to find an opportunity for themselves.</p>