Is Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute a good engineering college? Why?
Hi,
I’m not familiar with that school, but a way for you to figure that out would be to check out its ranking on US news ranking for engineering majors. They have a set of specific criteria involved when choosing the top schools for engineering majors, so you should consider the schools listed.
RPI is ranked 4th in a USA Today online article, “Top 10 Engineering Colleges in the U.S.”
Rensselaer’s undergraduate engineering program is ranked 31st in its category by USNWR based on the single metric of peer assessment.
Yes, it’s a highly respected engineering college by top employers.
For example, it’s ranked #12 by a 2015 Business Insider survey of business professionals. http://www.businessinsider.com/best-computer-science-engineering-schools-in-america-2015-7
Also ranked #22 by employers in a WSJ survey - this was 2010 and it’s ratings have improved since then (and acceptance rate decreased):
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703376504575491704156387646
Carnegie Mellon lists it as a “peer institution” on their website.
As far as employment outcomes go, it’s one of only 6 Universities that, according to the US Gov Scorecard, have a graduation rate over 80% and average salary over $80K (the other 5 are Harvard, MIT, Georgetown, Stanford, Babson). https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/search/?completion_rate=0.8…&median_earnings=80000…&sort=salary:desc
RPI is ranked 36th in a Business Insider analysis of student standardized scores, “The 610 Smartest Colleges in America.” Considering the number of colleges in the U.S., this is stratospheric.
Yes, RPI is a very well known engineering school among many big tech companies like Google and Intel etc. and many grads end up working for these big companies once they graduate. I actually attend right now and am a rising sophomore so if you have any questions, you can always ask me!