Ranking vs. Reputation

<p>I'm with sakky on this question of picking overall school vs major. This might be an exception in the technical fields where the undergraduate student generally focuses on that area from day one, but generally most students don't know what they will take, will not work in the field in which they major, and will often change fields making the undergraduate major even less relevant. Go with the best school (but make sure it is a good personal fit-choosing prestige over fit is a mistake IMO).</p>

<p>As American anthropology was fatherless until Frank Boas came allowing, it's not surprising that his unrelated Ph.D. was no impediment to preeminence. But as there have been two "turns of the century" since Frank Boas got his Ph.D. (he'd be celebrating his 150th birthday later this year if he were still alive), I would hesitate to draw too many lessons from his experiences.</p>

<p>Likewise, there were no departments of Computer Science when Peter Naur entered the field. His own proposed name for the field "datalogy" never caught on, alas.</p>

<p>I do accept Sakky's point here: deciding where to go to school based on the reputation of a single department is a risky business. Most of you will look back some day, and be astounded by the pace of change you experience in your life.</p>

<p>I work in an industry (software publishing) that barely existed when I graduated from college. My last college roommate has gone on to be a successful web publisher. Even if time travel were possible, there would be no point in going back in time to tell him how he would someday be making his living, because he would likely be completely baffled by any attempt to explain it to him. He prepared himself for that unimaginable future by majoring in English.</p>

<p>The top USNEWS schools feed into top consulting and finance jobs and place tremendously well into grad schools. In terms of engineering for example, a Dartmouth or Princeton engineer is far more likely to take a consulting job at a place like McKinsey or a finance job at a top Investment Bank. These jobs tend to be far more lucrative in the end. Similarly the top undergrad schools tend to do far better at graduate placement because of the attention and resources dedicated to undergrad. </p>

<p>Basically I would take the prestigious school 100% of the time over the "program." The only exceptions are in "skilled" or "vocational" majors like nursing, computer science, art, music, art, etc.</p>

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As American anthropology was fatherless until Frank Boas came allowing

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<p>Sure, American anthropology was fatherless. But anthropology in other countries existed, at least in a protoscience form, as an outgrowth of other social sciences and/or philosophy. </p>

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Likewise, there were no departments of Computer Science when Peter Naur entered the field. His own proposed name for the field "datalogy" never caught on, alas.

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<p>The takehome point is that simply having a degree, even a PhD, in a particular field, is no requirement that you have to or even should stay within that field. As you seem to agree with your example, plenty of people achieve great success by pursuing careers that have nothing to do with their degrees. Sometimes those future careers don't even exist at the time you're in school. But sometimes they do.<br>
As a case in point, my former roommate graduated with a degree in EECS but then later in his life became a successful real estate agent, a career that has obviously existed for many decades. He once remarked that he was making far more money selling real estate - and for less work - than he ever did as an engineer. {Of course that's probably less true these days of the housing bust.}</p>

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{Of course that's probably less true these days of the housing bust.}

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<p>lol yea.ouchh.</p>

<p>Sakky,</p>

<p>We essentially agree. I think it worth noting, though, that for well established academic fields, unlike new academic fields, a Ph.D. in the field is generally a prerequisite for an academic job. There are exceptions, but they're rarer than they once were.</p>

<p>Outside of academia, the link between college major and field of labor is far more tenuous, as you have noted.</p>

<p>My advice here would be to go with the reputation more. Keep in mind that many many engineering students find out during their college that they do not want to do engineering anymore and thus want to switch out. My roomate, who's at Cornell Engineering, is switching into liberal arts at Cornell just after 1st semester at Cornell bc he says that it's way too hard and not worth it. So, if ur able to get into some ivys, going to the ivys would be much safer bet. Also, I heard that Harvard students can take engineering classes at MIT.</p>

<p>^^ Yup, you can crossreg between Harvard and MIT, so it works both ways. Harvard students can take engineering. MIT students can take languages at Harvard (I think that is a popular choice, from what I've heard). Pretty awesome. :-D</p>

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{Of course that's probably less true these days of the housing bust.}</p>

<p>lol yea.ouchh.

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<p>Well, to continue the story, the reason why he left engineering in the first place in order to become a real estate agent is because of the dotcom bust that wiped out thousands of tech jobs in the Bay Area, culminating with the huge housing boom that created numerous high-paying real estate jobs.</p>

<p>But that simply illustrates another feature of my general theme: what if you earn a degree from a top-ranked department, only to later find out that the market for that particular degree is ice cold? Then you'll have little choice but to migrate to a different industry that probably won't know or care about the quality of your particular department. During the dotcom bust, there were engineers with literally decades of experience who were laid off and couldn't find decent jobs. </p>

<p>You never know what is going to happen to the economy. You never know what fields are going to become hot and what is going to become cold. As Greybeard mentioned, today, thousands of people hold jobs in industries that barely even existed just a few decades ago. You can't major in something that doesn't (yet) exist. The best that you can do is obtain a general education from a well-branded school that will allow you to easily transition to whatever happens to be the hot industry of the future.</p>

<p>The general consensus here seems to be that since college entering students are not entirely sure about what they want to do when they are first entering college, it is better to go to a school with a better overall reputation than one with a better ranking. But after a student has decided on a particular major - however late that might be - which school would be better - one with a better reputation (say Princeton or Harvard for engineering) or one with a better ranking (say Georgia Tech or UIUC) ??</p>

<p>I would say unless you are *absolutely sure (have done internships, etc.)*about what you want to do, go for overall prestige.</p>

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But after a student has decided on a particular major - however late that might be - which school would be better - one with a better reputation (say Princeton or Harvard for engineering) or one with a better ranking (say Georgia Tech or UIUC) ??

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<p>Like I said before, even if you know what you want to major in, that's not to say that you are actually going to work in that particular field. After all, how many history undergrads actually become historians? How many poli-sci undergrads actually become political scientists? How many sociology undergrads actually become sociologists? Hence, what does it matter if you graduate from a top-ranked specific program if you don't end up working in the field that corresponds to that program anyway? An employer will neither know nor care if you graduated from, say, the #1 ranked philosophy department if the job in question has nothing to do with philosophy anyway. </p>

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I would say unless you are absolutely sure (have done internships, etc.)about what you want to do, go for overall prestige.

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<p>To continue the story, we should also keep in mind that the kind of job you end up taking may not be entirely up to you. Even if you are absolutely sure that you want a job in your field, you simply not be able to find one because the market for those jobs just happens to be poor at the time that you graduate. For example, in 1998, the price of oil had crashed to $10 a barrel (from the Asian economic crisis), and hence, the oil industry was engaging in layoffs like it was going out of style. Many students who graduated at that time with degrees in Petroleum Engineering or Chemical Engineering couldn't find a job in the oil industry and hence had to find other work. Similarly, during the dotcom bust of the early 2000's, many Computer Science and MIS grads couldn't find jobs in their field and ended up having to do other things. {Like I mentioned in my other post, during the bust, the CS guy that I knew ended up becoming a real estate broker}. </p>

<p>The point is, you never know what's going to happen in the future. You may not want to get a job in your field. Even if you do, there may not be any jobs available in that field because you may have the bad luck to graduate during a bad economy.</p>

<p>Even if u are very certain that u want to pursue engineering as major, I would still recommend going to a school with better overall rep. Keep in mind that many top schools have excellent overall reputation as well as excellent enginnering programs. You should definitely look into schools like MIT, CalTech, Stanford, UC Berkeley, USC, Carnegie Mellon, and Cornell - all of which are ranked top ten in engineering field and have much better overall rep than georgia tech or uiuc. Also, other schools have very good engineering rankings as well including Princeton (#18) and Columbia (19). And, like i said b4, u can't go wrong by going to Harvard since u can choose to take engineering classes at MIT as a Harvard student if u wish.</p>

<p>What was that again? USC a better school than GT and UIUC? Give me a break.</p>