<p>spacygirl- did you do a revisit day at each? What did you think?</p>
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<p>This data still seems aggregate versus by major - yes there’s an engineering school - but the schools in that list still offer a broad set of degrees. </p>
<p>Also, Cornell’s not on that list. The Cornell website has data from 2011 which shows salaries in the mid to upper 60s which would place Cornell in the upper group of schools.</p>
<p>[Cornell</a> Engineering: Post Graduate Reports](<a href=“http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/resources/career_services/students/statistics/postgrad_reports.cfm]Cornell”>http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/resources/career_services/students/statistics/postgrad_reports.cfm)</p>
<p>One more point on starting salaries: I would expect areas like CA and NYC to have slightly higher starting salaries than the midwest due to the higher cost of living. Schools that place their grads in these areas would therefore have higher avg. salaries.</p>
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<p>If you bring this attitude to Cornell you will probably get beat up by some dairy farmer’s kid like Maikai likely did. To those from the Finger Lakes region of upstate NY, Hoboken would be hell-on-earth. Most Cornell students love the campus and the area.</p>
<p>Research shows that students are happiest when they are within a similar peer group. Some high-stats kids can thrive when going to a lower ranked school with a big scholarship, earning preferential treatment from the faculty. Others get bored and stop attending lectures. You will have to decide if you have the personality to attend Rutgers (or Stevens) and stay at the top of the class.</p>
<p>Magnetron I take your point but when you’re in an honors program, I think you are in with your academic peers. Even at a community college, you can find a group of motivated students, whatever your interests. And there are good and bad teachers everywhere. Going ivy is not an easy fix to becoming a motivated, accomplished adult. Plenty of students choose a state school in order to keep things affordable; that doesn’t put a lid on their future success.</p>
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<p>That is not the desired information. It only filters the list of schools by what they classify as “Party Schools”, “Engineering Schools”, etc… It does not allow comparing, for example, how chemical engineering graduates at school A versus school B do.</p>
<p>Also, the list of “Engineering Schools” includes some that have a lot of students in other majors, while others have a much higher percentage of students in engineering.</p>
<p>ucbalumnus:that’s about the amount of money my parents put away for college. i would have to pay for graduate school myself if i chose to go that route</p>
<p>the rutgers gpa minimum is 3.25. the steven’s minumum gpa is 3.0</p>
<p>also, thanks for the input so far!</p>
<p>rualum - Absolutely agree. My brother-in-law chose Rutgers Chem E over other higher rated programs, now has a PhD working in big pharma. He had the self-driven personality that would get there from either direction. Given these choices, two of my three kids would be steered toward the RU scholarship with the “honors bubble.” The third is not such a striver, more of a go-along/get-along type who needs the consistency and will perform only to the level that is expected of him, and will probably be an average student no matter where he attends.</p>
<p>A friend’s highly capable son picked his school because it was where his girlfriend (at the time) could get in. He got bored and bombed out, A-average on tests, F-average on homework. Knowing him, he would have thrived, and has in other areas of his life, in a more supportive environment with more individualized attention.</p>
<p>oldmom4896,</p>
<p>Sounds like you visited Cornell in the Summer months. They have a little surprise for you!
;-)</p>
<p>All the cold weather comes about a month earlier and all the warm weather comes about a month later than NYC. It will be cold and gray for the vast majority of the school year. Some kids have trouble coping with this. There is a bridge some children have thrown themselves off. It’s known as Suicide Bridge. </p>
<p>Take a good hard look at the photo at this site:
[Cornell</a> Installs Suicide Barriers On Bridges (PHOTOS)](<a href=“HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost”>Cornell Installs Suicide Barriers On Bridges (PHOTOS) | HuffPost College)
That’s the gray your child will see for the vast majority of the school year. </p>
<p>And did you guys even bother to go into town. They have one (1) gentrified street in town. The rest of the place is run down and looks as economically challenged as it is.</p>
<p>Methinks you looked through rose colored glasses during a trip in warm weather.</p>
<p>It’s understandable that your daughter would want to get away from home. But I highly recommend you get yourself to Cornell this weekend. Take a good look around NYC first. See all those cherry blossoms? The tulips? Buds and early leaves on the trees? </p>
<p>Now take that mental image to Cornell, because you’ll have none of that there… not for awhile at least.</p>
<p>LakeClouds,</p>
<p>The reason you see the disparity in the salaries reported is due to the difference in the way they are collected. </p>
<p>The salary data you see on college sites is the result of survey’s mailed to the graduate’s home. That data is expressly for the consumption of people like us… trying to pick a school for our children. They know darn well that only the happy and satisfied will return the survey. They might even brag a little an embellish the number. If a graduate isn’t happy with his own results, he’s not going to fill out the form. If he got a lousy job for $40K, he’s either not going to respond or he’s going to lie. This is why you’ll notice that the response percentage is rather low. </p>
<p>On the other hand, payscale.com collects data from people looking to see what they are worth on the market. I do not believe anyone is motivated to lie, because nobody is filling out a survey for their school. What they are filling out is a general background so they can bang themselves against the database and see what people with similar backgrounds are getting paid. If they lie, they actually pollute/corrupt the very data they value.</p>
<p>Payscale.com then does a data dive to produce the ranking from their general data base.</p>
<p>Payscale.com’s ranking is not perfect, but IMHO it is more valuable than the USNews’ totally subjective ranking. That being said, I believe both rankings should be considered. </p>
<p>As for location dependent salaries, I’m not in agreement with that at all. I’m an electrical engineer living and working in an expensive part of the metroNY area (Long Island). I’m in my 50’s and I’ve had three decades of recruiters call me for positions all around the country. Not once did any of those companies ever offer me less than I was making. Oh sure, I had a few tell me about their lower cost of living and how my money would go further, but that was never ever used as an excuse to offer me the same or less than my current metroNY based salary. Furthermore, associates of mine with similar jobs but living elsewhere in the country get paid about as much as I do. So although your claim of higher metro salaries seems like it should be true, I’ve seen no evidence of it in my career.</p>
<p>ucbalumnus,</p>
<p>OK, I think I said somewhere that payscale.com was not the perfect ranking system. You’ve lost the context of what I’m saying.</p>
<p>My point is the payscale data is a heck of a lot more useful than the totally subjective ranking data from USNews… data that completely and absolutely ignores the success of the graduated student. The more exclusive a school, the higher they will appear in USNews. </p>
<p>The hard thing for people to wrap their brains around is that the exclusivity of a school is not a direct indicator of the success of it’s graduates. Exclusivity is a self feeding cycle. The more exclusive a school becomes, the more high performing kids apply there and the school becomes even more exclusive. </p>
<p>Think about it. If Cornell changed every professor this year, do you think that would have any impact at all on the number or quality of their applicants? People apply to the Ivies because they perceive these schools to be the best. The only reason they have this perception is the exclusivity of the schools. The pay of their graduates simply does not support the perception.</p>
<p>Given your stated interests I think Cornell has the most to offer. Have you analyzed the course offerings in your major? And the research centers/programs?
All of your schools are northern, so the weather should not be considered a factor 
Nor the suicides - the fact is that a suicide at Cornell always gets publicized while suicides elsewhere do not. Probably because they have gorges and that makes it very dramatic. People used to associate MIT with suicides too, but I wouldn’t tell someone not to go there unless they had a history of severe depression…
Here is how I would rate these:
Cornell
Brown
Rutgers
Stevens</p>
<p>Since money is not a factor for you, go for the very best program and the best fit for your needs and personality.</p>
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<p>What a insulting immature witty comment. Did you see that the OP didn’t say anything about money in the beginning ? After OP did mention about full rides and stuff, I added a new post explaining both situations. It was before your post. </p>
<p>So, read everything carefully before you personally attack someone.</p>
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<p>Payscale data mostly hints at the mix of majors at each school. Based on the <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/internships-careers-employment/1121619-university-graduate-career-surveys-4.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/internships-careers-employment/1121619-university-graduate-career-surveys-4.html</a> , major appears to have a much stronger correlation with pay levels than school does. So schools with a lot of students in high pay majors tend to do well, while schools with a lot of students in low pay majors tend to do worse (with some perturbation for schools heavily recruited by investment banking and management consulting companies).</p>
<p>Fortunately, both Cornell and Stevens have career surveys with some major-specific data. For chemical engineering, the average pay level of graduates with jobs was:</p>
<p>Cornell (2010): $66,686 (50% employed, 40% grad school, 8% seeking employment, 2% other)
Stevens (2012): $65,000 (80% employed, 16% grad school, 4% seeking employment)</p>
<p>[Cornell</a> Engineering: Post Graduate Reports](<a href=“http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/resources/career_services/students/statistics/postgrad_reports.cfm]Cornell”>http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/resources/career_services/students/statistics/postgrad_reports.cfm)
<a href=“https://www.stevens.edu/sit/sites/default/files/Class_of_2012_Outcomes_Report_Final.pdf[/url]”>https://www.stevens.edu/sit/sites/default/files/Class_of_2012_Outcomes_Report_Final.pdf</a></p>
<p>Although there is the caution of the possibility that survey methodology may differ to make comparisons between the schools inexact, this is much more useful information than the Payscale listings.</p>
<p>Note that the fact that there is insufficient data to give average pay levels for majors other than engineering, business / quantitative finance, and computer science at Stevens indicates that its high standing in the Payscale listings is likely mainly due to most students being in majors with good pay prospects.</p>
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<p>In the <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/internships-careers-employment/1121619-university-graduate-career-surveys-4.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/internships-careers-employment/1121619-university-graduate-career-surveys-4.html</a> , you will see plenty of listings of pay levels below $40,000 for various majors’ graduates from various schools. Yes, low paid graduates do reply. So do unemployed ones. (Try biology majors in the surveys to see the bad results in terms of unemployment and low paid jobs.)</p>
<p>Payscale listings do not allow for seeing “major M at school S”, which make them less useful.</p>
<p>Oh, I read everything, and I stand by my original statement.</p>
<p>It’s virtually impossible to know enough about an individual’s situation via information gleaned on the forum to give them such dogmatic, rigid information. Yet, this happens here on CC multiple times everyday. </p>
<p>My point wasn’t that Rutgers is a “no brainer,” but rather, there’s NEVER a “no brainer.” The decision is always nuanced.</p>
<p>M</p>
<p>That’s right, eyemgh. That list of 4 schools will be ordered according to each student. No one can say which order is the most suitable for any one individual in any respect. Too many variables.</p>
<p>ucbalumnus,</p>
<p>Well… you stray from the context of my original point. My point was, and is, that USNews rankings include ZERO metrics on the success of the graduates. This is a severe flaw for a ranking system aimed at parents who primarily want to know: “How might this college prepare my child for a financially successful career?” Correct me if I’m wrong, but that <em>IS</em> their main target audience, is it not?</p>
<p>You seem to be arguing that the metrics Payscale uses don’t go far enough. On this, I agree with you, but again, the data they offer is still very valuable… a “must have”, if you will… for parents.</p>
<p>As for your reliance on survey results supplied by the universities, I don’t agree with your assumptions at all. I tend to completely ignore such data. I’ve studied a fair amount of social sciences, particularly aimed at how people answer questions/surveys. The limitations are profound, especially when someone is answering a survey with a pointed and obvious aim. The takers will, as an overwhelming majority, try to manipulate the results for various personal motivations. Because of this, social-science/scientific surveys obfuscate the true aims/goals of their inquiries. </p>
<p>This is why I would put more stock into the payscale metrics. The respondents of these surveys did not realize the data would be extracted to rank colleges, therefore had little incentive to manipulate that data. The pay data they reported was for their own personal need to know where they stand in their industry… and was completely anonymous… so the chance for manipulation to make particular colleges look better or worse is minimized.</p>
<p>Getting back to the survey data from the colleges…
Many colleges have very effective placement offices and maintain very specific databases on offers their graduates have received. Both Cornell and Stevens most certainly do. The very fact that this information is not made public supports the idea that the survey results are inflated compared to their real results. Any college sharing their real results would look less appealing against the inflated results of surveys. </p>
<p>They could tell us the percentage of kids getting offers before graduation, in the first six months after graduation, in the first year. They could tell us how many of the graduate students were seeking a job before giving up and deciding on graduate school (an unfortunately large percentage these days). Etc, etc, etc… </p>
<p>You can get this data when you visit the schools, <em>IF</em> you make an appointment with the placement office. I had quite a few candid and enlightening conversations with placement offices during my son’s visits. I did not have such a conversation with Cornell, because my son did not like the location (too far, too gray, depressing town, etc…), but I did have this discussion with Stevens. Their placement statistics (their <em>REAL</em> placement statistics) are extremely impressive. None of the other schools my son was interested in came close.</p>
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<p>Payscale would be a thousand times more useful than it is if they would stratify data by both school and major, rather than either-or. What it shows now obfuscates differences between schools and majors, misleading people like you into believing that a school is “better” simply because it has more students majoring in subjects that are more likely to lead to high paying jobs, even though, for a student in a given major, the difference may not be significant. Stevens looks good in Payscale listings because it is a heavily-engineering school, not laden with biology and other majors who would drag down its graduates’ pay levels in Payscale listings.</p>
<p>Payscale is absolute nonsense. Obviously, schools with higher % engineering enrollments will rank high on this list. Not to mention, schools in California and other high cost of living areas will rank very high.</p>
<p>Also, from personal experience, I find the information on Payscale very inaccurate and perhaps outdated.</p>