<p>OMG, you’re missing the point. People don’t go to engineering schools to start fortune 500 companies, it has nothing to do with an engineering degree but more to do with the managerial abilities, commutation skills and leadership. This isn’t a debate that who are better entrepreneurs, but rather who are better engineers. and outsourcing proves only that, why would a nation send jobs abroad when it has competent and willing people in the country itself? There would be a huge hue and cry! </p>
<p>I’d agree that research opportunities are far better at any ivy than Dartmouth because of its small size, but when you stop comparing the objective factors, you’ll just see how good Dartmouth is. The best thing I like about Dartmouth’s Thayer is the very very small size, Dartmouth has around 4k UG students but engineering students account for less than 1/3rd of that, so it’s very exclusive. I’m not talking about a particular branch, but Engineering as a whole. If you count branches, the number will be even lower. Now coming to location, Dartmouth’s in New Hampshire and it makes it a very good alternative for Bio and Chemistry related engineering branches.
Moreover, I don’t believe in research because I believe in laying a very strong foundation first, research comes in postgrad and then I’d like to go to research powerhouses like Harvard and Columbia.
Dartmouth’s rankings suffer because of the low research factor and due to the fact that it’s not a “proper” engineering college because some engineering branches are not even offered here, it all depends on enrollment which I think it only makes it better for creative purposes because you can design your own curriculum instead of being slapped one on you!
On the surface, Dartmouth seems sucky, but after careful examination, you’ll find how good it is.</p>
<p>@antialias: Are you a girl? Just asking. There are smart students everywhere! can you please clarify what exactly do you mean by density/local density?
And I couldn’t agree more that you will find IITians as hard working people. that can be largely attributed to the selection process. But the fact is, most of them are so burnt out of JEE prep that they loosen the slacks after getting into IIT’s. That, along with not so excellent opportunities and faculty, is the thing that brings the quality of IIT’s down. The IIT’s are not educational institutes anymore. You know what is the reason behind 6 of my friends wanting to get into IIT’s? they want to get into any damn branch they get as long as they can watch porn and have girlfriends. This is the ground reality. All my friends (including me :P) are among the top 20 students of FIITJEE, so we can get into IIT-Delhi fairly easily. Passion for engineering? You bet! The students can work their asses off. But they never ever do. That is one of the key factors that there is no research output because people at IIT’s couldn’t care less about academics. At my visit to IIT delhi, one of the students there told me: there are no real academics over here. It’s all about who gets the fattest package after graduation. It’s all a rat race. If you study here, people will term you as an RG. Plagiarism and cheating are rampant. if a prof has no attendance policy, the class will almost always be completely empty. Going to class is useful only when attendance is being taken…"</p>
<p>@Peepingtom: It’s coming down to personal preference now :)! You don’t want UG research, okay. I do. And one of the best methods of comparing the quality of education is Research. You are free to not acknowledge it in your rankings, but what applies to you is not what necessarily applies to anyone else. An internationally accepted methodology counts research as a factor. So, for you, Dartmouth may be the best school, but don’t generalize and say that it is better than Cornell or Brown for Engineering for your criterion doesn’t meet with the internationally accepted methodology. And if you remember, I too applied to Dartmouth solely because of the D-plan. So, I’m not saying that D is bad. It’s not just as good as other ivies when compared on the universally accepted yardstick. And yes, small size is very beneficial as you can get personal attention.
All clear?
PS. Outsourcing to me means simply that there are not enough people who take up engineering. Simple. For example, Google wants to hire 2k employees. America has only 1.5k, so it will hire Indians. That in itself doesn’t tell me about what is better or what is not. remember Obama recently asked Americans to take up engineering more? It’s because that there are not enough engineers. Outsourcing doesn’t tell me ANYTHING about Americans better than Indians or vice versa. It just tells me that there is a difference between supply and demand.
PPS. Fortune 500 companies don’t necessarily want you to have something other than engineering. Google was founded in Stanford by two CS students-not by Entrepreneurs. So Engineers can create companies if they’re creative enough. You can always hire CA’s for you companies economics, after all :)</p>
<p>@antialias
I take it you’re a girl. I never said that girls were stupid, I said that there are less amount of girls in STEM due to unknown reasons which may be that they’re stupid or just plain disinterested.</p>
<p>@BetterThanBest
My above^ statement applies to Americans too, it’s true that there’s a dearth of engineers in the US but I can assure you that it’s not because of lack of interest, because believe me plenty and plenty are interested, it’s just that they leave it midway which may be due to the poor instruction (by profs) or poor performance (by students). Now you must be wondering how can I say that plenty are interested, here’s a statement by a US college professor lamenting about the quality of students in engineering classes, I pulled this statement from Scientific American magazine (you must’ve heard of it?). The id of the professor and which school he teaches in is kept anonymous. Enjoy the bold words (pun intended):</p>
<p>“The truth is that there are very few US students prepared for a career in science or engineering. The few who are (and they are very good) go to MIT, Caltech and Stanford leaving the tier IIs and tier IIIs burdened with those who might have done better to major in basket weaving instead of engineering. I have had undergraduates in my classes who never had a physics class or a math class beyond trigonometry in high school and yet decided to get a degree in electrical engineering. I have almost never had a domestic student in a graduate class. I have seen high school sophomores who cannot add 11 and 24 in their head and yet aspire for STEM careers (how did they pass elementary school?). Our labs will close without the Indians and the Chinese since our own stock who have been brought up on smiley faces and gold stars despite pathetic performances (lest their self esteem be damaged) cannot do anything. In one semester I had to fail 60% of my undergraduate class in solid state device engineering because I was honestly alarmed to turn them loose on the unsuspecting population with a certificate. Yes, we have some of the best universities in the world (see the QS rankings), but we also have some of the worst high schools in the world turning out illiterates masquerading as literate. Obviously many, if not most, of our own high school graduates are not in a position to populate our universities. Hence the Indians and the Chinese to the rescue. This is not by choice, but by compulsion. There is no foreign aid involved here, and if there is, the US may be the recipient in some sense. If this has to change, then our high schools need to put away the gold stars and start dishing out “F”-s where they are deserved. Maybe then they will have raised the bar to the point where students entering universities are actually prepared for the rigor.”</p>
<p>So it all comes down to this, some US students work really hard and are brilliant but overall, the american education system is not strong enough to manufacture a lot of engineers.</p>
<p>And yes,
might I add that research are almost irrelevant at the undergraduate level, placing emphasis on research is the most common criterion but not necessarily the best. And the rankings we get are for the university as a whole (UG, graduate and doctoral), now you wouldn’t wanna choose a college for UG because it ranks high for its research (which is mostly done at graduate and doctoral levels). The main thing is teaching, which you can’t get at research powerhouses because the professors are too busy winning Nobel prizes and posing for the camera and getting their papers published and giving TV interviews, even if they get some time from all of that, the time goes to graduate students and not to UG students. Because Professors at research powerhouses have a thing I like to call “I’m not gonna waste my time with undergraduate” mentality.</p>
<p>@BetterThanBest writes</p>
<p>“can you please clarify what exactly do you mean by density/local density?”</p>
<p>There are smart students everywhere. Sure. What’s the probability, however, that they will be concentrated in a small space (e.g. CS dept at, say, IIT D)? </p>
<p>Because many schools in the US are equally good, plus/minus delta, you get top notchers from Reed College (say). When Maria Klawe decided to quit Princeton, she went to Harvey Mudd. Turing award winner Leslie Lamport left MIT to go to Brandeis. This sort of thing diffuses “cleverness” and thus the density.
(No doubt there are terrible colleges in the US too.)</p>
<p>I note what you way about IIT D and burn out. That’s a different matter and we start getting anecdotal opinions. Opportunities for doing excellent work (including top notch research) is extremely high in the IITs. Whether people take it or not due to burn out, societal considerations for jobs, absence of the opposite sex, is a different matter. </p>