<p>I was reading a thread in the Engineering forum and I came upon this:
Further proof is demonstrated by some of the more enlightened engineering programs that are far less painful than average. While all engineering programs are painful to some extent, some are far less so than others. Nor are the ones that are less painful necessarily less respected. Stanford, for example, is an indisputably elite engineering school that is also widely noted for being quite humane (relatively speaking) in the delivery of its engineering education. I think other engineering schools should be more like Stanford.
Is this true (hopefully)? And if so what is the 'average' grade of an engineering student at Stanford? Thanks</p>
<p>As a Stanford EE grad student, many of my peers and I feel that the undergrad program is much easier than what we experienced at other top schools like MIT, Berkeley, Caltech, and UIUC. The classes are curved to a B+ median (3.3), which is quite high compared to the typical 2.9-3.0 median at other programs. It's usually the case that classes are taught to the intellectual level of the students, but I haven't found that to be the case for Stanford EE (or even Stanford in general, if my experience in taking undergrad math, chemistry, and Chinese classes is an accurate indication). I think the culture here tends to be too laid back, which doesn't bode well for a rigorous major like engineering.</p>
<p>I have to ask: who makes sure these people are actually Stanford students? Some of these remarks make Stanford sound really bad and contradict almost everything else I have seen especially here in CC.</p>
<p>who makes sure anybody here is a stanford student?</p>
<p>trust me, i was pretty shocked myself when i read these comments.
i'll agree, you can't simply take these comments for face value and make your decision based on it, but they do provide startling insight into Stanford's engineering and science programst. i personally think that these are actual comments from students and alumni, because there were also many humanities and social sciences majors who loved their experience at Stanford. If these really are Stanford students, then most of the commentors are either really biased, or are really telling the truth.</p>
<p>if those responses are based on voluntary response, there is bound to be a negative bias. meaning a higher percentage of the responses will be negative than the actual percentage of people with negative experiences in the entire population of Stanford students.</p>
<p>Well, that's only partially true. Voluntary responses lead to bimodal responses, the very positive and very negative, generally. Certainly places like that (and cc) allow the most negative to vent, but generally in voluntary surveys, it's skewed to the extremes (not just the negative).</p>
<p>Really though if you look at other sites like campusdirt.com where Stanford gets an overall total ranking of 8 and had high scores in almost everything. Also Princeton Review says Stanford has the happiest students who have one of the best qualities of life. I personally chose to believe them over the other site.</p>
<p>that's true (the part about bimodal responses) but I think voluntary response still tends to yield more negative responses than extremely good ones, at least from what our book said last year. I don't actually know this from doing thousands of voluntary response surveys all around the world. haha thank goodness!</p>
<p>actually student review's revieew of stanford is notoriosly known to not resemble the average stanford student's opinion of the place. If the whole world tells me that Stanford is one of the best places to be I'll believe them not a survey consisting of 60 people in which one person could easily manipulate to his advantage.</p>
<p>how then, can you explain the wide dichotomy of the opinions between the liberal arts and the science/engineering experiences at Stanford? In my opinion, the majority of humanities and social sciences students enjoyed their experience at Stanford, while many of the undergrad science and engineering students believed that they could have recieved a better education elsewhere.</p>
<p>How many Students/alumini posted on the website? If you ask me these are a few disgruntled students who don't represent the majority of those who take engineering. I've reviewed this matter extensively and I don't think its fair to a university like stanford to judge it based on a very limited no. of students. Its absurd.</p>
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I've reviewed this matter extensively and I don't think its fair to a university like stanford to judge it based on a very limited no. of students. Its absurd.
<p>The very idea that you can judge engineering at stanford from a crappysite like that just gets me mad. I spent time and effort to chose my universities and I trust my choices.</p>
<p>As one of Stanford's biggest fans (well along with all of my friends... and aquaintances, from ME/CE/EE/CS majors all the way down to us lonely drama majors- actually the drama kids might be the least happy of all stanford programs given a lack of space and funding, but hey as one of them i bring the average up), I have never once looked to review Stanford anywhere, nor have I ever looked for Stanford review sites (with the exception of this site- which is a review in a way). I have no need to explain why Stanford is awesome- if people don't believe it then they shouldn't come here anyway.</p>
<p>Also, relating to the OP's post from an undergrad point of view, the EE program is one of the harder programs to do well in... which is why the curve is so high.</p>