<p>“Alexandre, I will now put you on the spot. Do you believe that the UNDERGRADUATE education in engineering is better at Michigan than at Harvey Mudd?”</p>
<p>In terms of undergraduate education, they are roughly the same, but in very different ways…</p>
<p>“Better at Michigan than at Caltech?” </p>
<p>Caltech is better than Michigan for Engineering, but not by much.</p>
<p>“Do you believe that the UNDERGRADUATE education in engineering is better at Cal than at Harvey Mudd?”</p>
<p>Yes,Cal is a notch above Harvey Mudd in Engineering education.</p>
<p>“Better at Cal than at Caltech?”</p>
<p>No, Cal and Caltech are both among the top 4 Engineering programs in the nation.</p>
<p>Inasmuch as I did not participate in THAT part of the discussion, allow me to share that I agree with you. Claiming that Middlebury is two notches better than Cornell is just as silly as pretending that that Amherst and Williams are equal to Harvard and Princeton. When it comes to HYPS, it is extremely hard to find any school that could claim to be an equal. </p>
<p>However, the discussion rarely is about comparing the top 10 LACs to the top 10 research universities. What we see is people clinging to the notion that the top LAC cannot provide a better UG education that the research universities that are WELL BELOW the top 10 national universities, and especially the ones ranked in the top 20 to 50 USNews spots. And that is the part that is non-sensical in so many aspects!</p>
<p>IB, your argument does not consider an important factor; the percentage of undergraduate students at LACs who wish to pursue a PhD compared to the percentage of undergraduate students at research universities who wish to pursue a PhD. </p>
<p>It’s like comparing Penn to Caltech in who sends more students to Wall Street. At Penn, over a third (perhaps even more) of the student body has designs of working on Wall Street. At Caltech, it is fewer than 10%. By that reckoning, the percentage of students at LACs (and schools like Caltech) who wish to pursue advanced studies is significantly higher than the percentage of students at schools like UCLA or Penn.</p>
<p>“However, the discussion rarely is about comparing the top 10 LACs to the top 10 research universities. What we see is people clinging to the notion that the top LAC cannot provide a better UG education that the research universities that are WELL BELOW the top 10 national universities and ranked in the top 20 to 50 spots. And that is the part that is non-sensical in so many aspects!”</p>
<p>xiggi, as you know, I have never personally made such a claim. Although I am not a fan of the LAC model, I am mindful of its many benefits. When asked to compare LACs to research universities, although reluctant to do so because of their vastly different approaches to education, I will always acknowledge their righful place among the elites.</p>
<p>For sure, for sure! And this despite that more than 75% -if not 90%-- of its engineering student body would never be able to earn admission at Harvey Mudd (or Caltech for that matter)! </p>
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<p>Alexandre, that is why I conceded that LACs such as Harvey Mudd are a different breed. All I wanted for people to acknowledge that schools such as Harvey Mudd (and a few others such as Olin) can and do excel in their mission to educate the very best students in the field of engineering, and that the education they provide makes their students among the most competent and sought after in professional and higher education circles. </p>
<p>In itself, this does not and should not diminish any of the value of larger research universities who are graduating much larger number of students. </p>
<p>In the end, this is really a discussion about what it takes to provide a great education in a specific and specialized field. One size fits all is not necessarily the best answer.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t say one is better than the others in terms of plain undergrad education. I would put them all in the same group, although if one wishes to get more involved in research, I would strongly suggest that one would be better off attending either Cal or Caltech. But between the two, I would choose Cal as it has - for me - a better environment, having more students to interact with. I think I will grow more and mature more being exposed to an environment like Cal than to an environment like Caltech.</p>
<p>I don’t think everyone at HMC has applied at Cal Eng’g and gotten accepted. But if you can prove this to be true, I’d like to be proven wrong. Otherwise, this is a rubbish claim.</p>
<p>This is the problem with some people here - they often make assumptions and use that assumption to shield their crooked arguments.</p>
<p>Translation: 70% of Berkeley engineering students would be in the bottom 25% of Caltech or Mudd’s student body, if they were lucky enough to be admitted in the first place. </p>
<p>Between 50 and 75% of Berkeley engineering students would have their applications thrown in the reject pile by U Rochester, let alone Caltech or Mudd.</p>
<p>IBClass, that does not change the fact that when it comes to Engineering, Cal is superior to Harvey Mudd and virtually any university in the nation save Caltech, MIT and Stanford.</p>
<p>^ IBClass, I didn’t know Statfinders provided that level of granularity in the details…they actually have what colleges everyone applied to? Wow, that would be a first.</p>
<p>HMC and Caltech are about a tenth the size of Cal’s engineering programs. Using average SAT scores to compare programs of radically different size is flawed.</p>
<p>I’ll say it again…there is more to a great academic program than a small cohort of kids who aced a 3-hour multiple choice test.</p>
Then what metric would you suggest to compare the student bodies?*</p>
<p>Perhaps we could use the percentage of students in the top 10%, since that’s a metric in which the UCs perform well. Of course, one wonders how difficult it is to be in the top 10% when a UC can have 96% of its students in the top 10% but 75% of them had below a 3.75 and 50% below a 3.50.</p>
<p>*Correct answer: I’d rather compare NAS and NAE faculty members, because that’s where Berkeley wins.</p>
The average starting salary at Mudd in 2008 was $65,000 to $69,999. This compares reasonably well to Caltech (average $70,000) and quite well to Berkeley (average $59,672).</p>
<p>Going back a few years, the average starting salary at Mudd in 2003 was $53,900. That compares well with the average starting salary of MIT ($54,904) and quite favorably with that of Berkeley engineering graduates ($41-55,000).</p>
<p>1) Be in a small, tight-knit environment of some of the smartest college kids in the country.
2) Take a wide range of classes through the Claremont consortium.
3) Still get paid as much as Berkeley and MIT graduates.
4) Be extremely successful in getting into graduate school.</p>
<p>Cal’s engineering program has a cohort of students that can go toe-to-toe with Caltech and HMC students. But if you expanded HMC and Caltech to Cal’s size, I doubt they would maintain the high SAT averages.</p>
<p>Perhaps we can compare outcomes…which is more important than what they did before they even got to school.</p>
<p>A lot of HMC students go to graduate programs…which is understandable because that’s where their focus is…HMC students seem to have a love for research. But look at the industries they went into…mostly research oriented fields.</p>
One thing I can think of…you have to spend your time in the sleepy Inland Empire suburb of Claremont instead of a much more dynamic environment of Berkeley/SF Bay Area or Cambridge/Boston. </p>
<p>The 210 Freeway extension past Claremont was probably the best thing to happen to the Claremont consortium. Now recruiters can stop by when they need to take a bathroom break while heading to Vegas for the weekend. <em>j/k</em></p>
<p>IBclass06, where did you get your numbers?
Here’s the stats for Fall 2008, the latest data avail for College of Engineering.
2 things you need to take into account
Berkeley does not superscore.
These are enrolled stats, not admissions stats. Enrolled stats are generally lower than admissions stats. The CoE compare quite well with Harvey Mudd. To claim that 70% to 90% wouldn’t get in is a slap in the face to all engineering students, including myself who applied and was admitted in 2008. </p>
<em>j/k</em></p>