<p>The latest parents email mentioned a brand new ThomsonReuters study on the top research schools. TR's methodology was to look at schools which generate something like 2000 articles a year and then rank them by how often that work is cited, meaning they use references and relations as a proxy for importance (like the original idea for Google). A score of 1.0 is average. </p>
<p>UR is listed in the email as 17th but it's actually in a tie for 15th-17th with Yale and Boston University with scores of 1.71. The top schools are MIT and CalTech. 4 schools hit 2.0 but 10th place is in the 1.7 to 1.8 range.</p>
<p>This is big name company because the other schools are either the top prestige schools and/or are very big - like U of Washington (48k total enrollment) and Colorado (over 30k undergrad). The only real surprise is UC San Francisco; Berkeley is separately listed, as is UC San Diego, Santa Barbara & UCLA - something that one would hope would give pause to California politicians who want to cut university funding even more because they have 5 UC schools listed. </p>
<p>The rest of the list is Princeton, Stanford, Harvard, Chicago, Penn, Johns Hopkins & Columbia.</p>
<p>You can also see the most prolific publishing schools in another chart. UR is not on that one, but you can see that the California schools are very prolific, as is Washington and Oregon, which helps This makes UR's performance more impressive because they didn't have as large a base of articles to be cited. </p>
<p>The study is free to download if you register with them.</p>
<p>Would be interesting if the rankings changed significantly if the pubications generated by the medical school faculty members were excluded, or members of university research institutes/programs where no undergraduate education takes place.</p>
<p>I don’t think one can separate medical research / graduate centers for this study. First, the existence of these attracts resources, including faculty, to the school. Second, they do a social sciences ranking separate from a sciences ranking - stuff you generally pay for - so you have to realize that data collected is sliced in different ways already. This study is a general ranking.</p>
<p>I hope not to sound naive, but even though our D is interested in Engineering, I can’t see her as a “research engineer”? U of R appears to be so heavy into research and the sciences, are the students also getting the job offers, not just graduate research opportunties? (my husband was a mechanical engineer too (Purdue grad), and “way back then”, never did research). I could see our daugher being a project manager and benefiting from business courses too.</p>
<p>Suebinor, I am with you. It would be interesting to see a ranking based on “occupational preparedness” for undergraduate engineering schools and departments. (It might be pretty tough right now with the employment market so depressed for recent college grads!)
Maybe there would be some correlation between that ranking and a ranking based on measures of contributions to scholarly research?</p>
<p>Employers have changed what they expect from bachelor degreed students in the past couple of decades. Now the expectation is that STEM students will have “hands on” experience in addition to their academics. The hands-on part can be fulfilled by either research lab experience or internships. (So, in a way, lots of research money is a good thing.)</p>
<p>One thing to consider–UR does not offer an undergraduate business degree (the closest would be economics and business strategies). There is a business minor. You should take a look and see if the course offerings would apply to your D’s interests/career plans.</p>
<p>I tried to find job placement stats for last year’s graduating class–but it’s not broken down by degree field so I’m not sure how useful that info would be for you.</p>
<p>Wayoutwest mom - my D interviewed with a West Coast rep and was told that their undergrad business school was in the process of being accredited - I know many who got their MBA’s from Rochester - so it looks like the business school is going in that direction. Thanks for your post - I had never thought of the research vs. business experience as an either or, but, in many ways, it makes sense. We just want to make sure that Rochester is “pumping” out both types of engineers. When we went to visit Lehigh, they also boost about research -</p>
<p>I’m not quite sure what people are saying. You go to an engineering program and you emerge with a degree in that field. These programs are all accredited by the same bodies. Some, WPI, are essentially tech only and some, like RIT, have more of an emphasis on occupational training. The big name schools - like MIT, GaTech, etc. - attract money for research because that’s more cutting edge and the faculty and students go with that. A place like PennState attracts employers to their civil engineering program, something you can see from their research dollars. You can bet that UR attracts employers in the various fields related to optics because if you want to work in that field UR is a great place to go. </p>
<p>Research money is a reasonable but not exact proxy for the amount of interest the outside world has in that particular field at that particular school. That doesn’t mean a bright student must go to a program that gets a lot of research dollars in his or her area of interest but think of it like this: if you really want to be in that area then why didn’t you go to x? As in “you want to do biomed, so where did you train?” The better answer is that you went to a place with a reasonable biomed major and that correlates with research money. Most engineering employers will know the engineering schools, which is one reason why research dollars are just a partial proxy. A school like WPI, to pick a school I know, is an engineering specialty school that is pretty small and doesn’t get a lot of research funds but it’s known in the engineering field - generally speaking - because it is an engineering school. </p>
<p>So … you graduate with a degree and get a job. The name on your diploma helps some, but if you want to be an aerospace engineer it’s better to go where they get money to do work in aerospace. Truth is that salaries in the field are mostly determined by the field, not by your school name. Otherwise, you pick a program that you think fits you and a school that you like and a place that you like and where you can rationally afford.</p>