<p>Just want to see how many A&M engineers are on this forum.</p>
<p>I suppose I am half an A&M engineer. I owe the other half of my allegiance to UIUC.</p>
<p>also any comments on their engineering program would be great!</p>
<p>lol. unfortunately not aero. however, in general does it seem like a good atmosphere for the education?</p>
<p>Texas A&M has an excellent engineering program</p>
<p>gstein: have you enjoyed your undergrad experience so far?</p>
<p>I disagree with pierre0913. UT Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering is the most superior in the state of Texas (ranked 8th in the nation on Newsweek i think).
Thanks and Hook’Em 
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<p>Iambored10, let me throw this fact out at you:
texas a&m engineering is ranked 8 out of all public schools in the nation for engineering.
I don’t believe that you can possibly say that UT is “superior” based on this number even if UT were to be ranked 1. In fact I was accepted into Cockrell about 2 months ago and GTech recently, however I am not making my decision based on numbers from a system with criteria that I do not fully understand. Obviously you are partial to UT, and I will respect your opionion in saying that UT has a great engineering program. And I would also like to point out to you that you did not answer the question I asked at the beginning of the topic.</p>
<p>both Texas and A&M have top engineering programs, it’s up to personal preference which one you want to go to in this case</p>
<p>Yeah that is pretty ignorant, iambored. The two are basically identical in the engineering department and the only way to differentiate between the programs is what each individually specializes in.</p>
<p>As boneh3ad said before, it depends on your area of specialization, and as pierre said, your own personal preference.</p>
<p>Texas A&M has an excellent engineering program, and is clearly one of the top programs in the country. Not to detract from A&M at all, but UT-Austin is still a little stronger. UT has the distinction of having the 4th highest number of National Academy of Engineering members on faculty (after MIT, Stanford, and Berkeley), a number that is greater than A&M and Rice combined. It’s not diminishing A&M’s strengths by any means to point out that UT has one of the most elite engineering faculties in the country. It’s not just that A&M doesn’t (yet) match this - most engineering schools in the country don’t.</p>
<p>You have to also look at the specialty rankings. Texas A&M is ranked higher for Agricultural and Industrial engineering while Texas is ahead in most other fields. The difference as JWT86 said is very negligible though, you’d be fine at either schools but UT-Austin is slightly ahead</p>
<p>JWT, I disagree. Rankings aside, when you look at the quality of engineer or researcher produced from the two schools, there is no difference. I’ll give you one example:</p>
<p>I am studying aerospace engineering at TAMU, where according to rankings, UT is ahead of us. At TAMU, we have some world class facilities that UT does not have or come close to matching. At places like Lockheed Martin, NASA, Boeing, and other large-scale aerospace companies/agencies, the number/quality of engineers from TAMU and UT are both great and unmatched (within Texas that is).</p>
<p>The number of NAE members on faculty may be great for UT, however that does not mean that better researchers or engineers are being produced. And that, IMHO, is the best way of comparing different engineering schools of similar rankings.</p>
<p>Really, all the NAE members signify is that the faculty at UT is, on the whole, more accomplished as judged by their peers. It does not actually signify anything about how good those professors are at teaching or how brilliant they may or may not be, only that they wrote some series of papers that were judged to be outstanding by other NAE members.</p>
<p>The number of NAE members really applies more directly to the quality of a school’s graduate program.</p>
<p>Still, for me it is a wash since my graduate advisor at A&M is an NAE member, so whatever. haha</p>
<p>I’m not so much concerned about rankings because I seriously think there is more to a school than that. I just don’t like it when people make such a big deal about there being such a HUGE difference between number 8 and number 12. </p>
<p>As far as the latest comments, I think that it is clear that UT probably has its advantages especially with faculty, however, I’m more interested in A&M’s itself since I’ve already accepted admission there disregarding the slightly higher rankings of other schools I can choose.</p>
<p>^I agree. For me, as long as a school is reputable in the major field, that’s all that matters to me. There’s more to a school than subjective rankings and there really isn’t a huge difference between number 1 and number 5. You also have to look at campus life, the student body etc…</p>
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<p>That may indeed be possible. I’m not aware of the specifics of A&M’s research facilities. However, just as an aside (if you weren’t already aware), most of UT-Austin’s large scale research facilities are not actually located on the main campus, but a few miles away at the Pickle Research Campus (a shuttle connects the campuses). At ~350 acres, the main campus admittedly does not have the space for large scale research facilities. The Pickle Campus houses one of the world’s largest structural engineering labs and (currently) the world’s fastest academic supercomputer dedicated to >open scientific research< (Ranger is #9 on the most recent top 500 list). Texas (the state) is certainly privileged to be endowed with universities (both Texas and A&M) with such facilities.</p>
<p>Again, I didn’t mean to detract anything from A&M or the quality of its graduates. I agree graduates from both schools are probably interchangeable in terms of skills.</p>