Top Civil Engineering Schools/ROTC/Tech.

College Majors Engineering Majors
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<p>I just hope you folks don't get angry at my questions, but I have no one to turn to, and so I'm just going to ask.</p>

<p>1) So US News and World Report says University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is the best undergraduate civil engineering program, will my employers know this, or would they rather I come from an Ivy League School(disregarding consultant firms of course, of which I learned on this forum.)</p>

<p>2) I think ROTC is a good way to pay for college and make some money after it, however, I'm afraid that in 4 years of army life, I'll forget all that I learned in college. Is this possible? Should I get a masters degree right after ROTC to refresh my memory and have a solid base for a career, I don't know, it just really troubles me.</p>

<p>3) Seems to me that civil engineering technology is like civil engineering jr. Is this true, what exactly is the difference and would an employer rather hire a guy with a civil engineering degree or civil engineering technology?</p>

<p>If you answer these questions you'd only be helping a young man out.</p>

2

<p>engineering technology degrees are less focused on theory and more about testing out the designs that engineers make. engineering technology at my school is significantly easier than engineering, and is far more hands-on than engineering is.</p>

<p>UIUC is a very highly regraded program as an engineering school and otherwise. companies will most certainly recognize a degree (especially an engineering one) from uiuc, and will probably think of it more highly than an engineering degree from an ivy league (the only good quality eng. programs that are ivy league are cornell & possibly princeton). most of the ivies aren't even in the top 30 engineering schools. &lt;/p>

<p>other great engineering schools include umich, berkeley, wisconsin, purdue, etc...</p>

<p>i have several friends who are in ROTC and enrolled in engineering. i doubt you will 'forget everything' you learned as an UG. most likely i'm guessing the army/navy/AF will utilize your skills as an engineer for their own purposes, so you will probably get some great experience there.</p>

3

<p>Thank you, that really helps. Guess I'm gonna be aiming for UIUC.</p>

4

<p>UIUC is a great school for Civil...the others best schools being Georgia Tech, Berkeley, and UM. If you go to any of the high ranked schools you will be recognized for it, even more so then going to an Ivy, most of which are not ranked as high in engineering...</p>

5

<p>Yeah, but honestly, how many people are going to turn down, say, Harvard, to go to UIUC, even if they think they want to become civil engineers? If you do that, you better be pretty damn sure you want to be an engineer. Otherwise, you're going to feel pretty foolish in turning down Harvard for UIUC, only to find out that you longer want to be an engineer.</p>

6

<p>Then again, if you have <em>any</em> desire to go into engineering, you're not going to limit yourself to just UIUC and Harvard! Find a school that isn't an either/or. Harvard sucks for civil engineering. In fact, Harvard doesn't even have civil engineering. Find a more well-rounded school if you're not "pretty damn sure", like Rice or Duke or Northwestern. Then you can avoid the whole "feeling pretty foolish" thing.</p>

<p>Don't paint yourself into a corner.</p>

7

<p>One last question then, is civil engineering heavy on messed up mathematics? I mean, do you learn proofs and use imaginary numbers a lot, or is it more a matter of using the math you have and learning to apply it?</p>

8

<p>Nah... it's more a matter of learning differential equations, with real numbers, and understanding calculus pretty well... Linear algebra's also extraordinarily useful... stuff with matrices. You'll find that a lot of the math involved is just plain old geometry and polynomials, but you have some funky ODEs and calculus and nullspaces and eigenvalues and such every now and then, so you'll need to learn it. Not too messed-up, though. Really not a whole lot of numbers in the imaginary realm.</p>

9

<p>
[quote]
Then again, if you have <em>any</em> desire to go into engineering, you're not going to limit yourself to just UIUC and Harvard! Find a school that isn't an either/or. Harvard sucks for civil engineering. In fact, Harvard doesn't even have civil engineering. Find a more well-rounded school if you're not "pretty damn sure", like Rice or Duke or Northwestern. Then you can avoid the whole "feeling pretty foolish" thing.</p>

<p>Don't paint yourself into a corner.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I still don't think that's fair competition. I think even most current Duke, Rice, or Northwestern students,even if they are civil engineering students, would gladly transfer to Harvard (and drop civil engineering) if given the chance. Or I'll put it to you this way. I don't think there are too many Harvard students who would rather be going to Northwestern. </p>

<p>Fair competition would be turning down Harvard for, say, Stanford or MIT. And the fact is, Harvard STILL wins the majority of the cross-admit battles with these schools, but it obviously isn't as lopsided a victory as it would be between Harvard vs. UIUC. I don't think there are too many Harvard students who would truly rather be going to UIUC.</p>

10

<p>
[quote]
Fair competition would be turning down Harvard for, say, Stanford or MIT. And the fact is, Harvard STILL wins the majority of the cross-admit battles with these schools

[/quote]

Harvard wins the cross-admit battle with every single university out there; this isn't in dispute. It's quite believable that someone majoring in math or science would be more likely to choose Harvard over Stanford/MIT, especially all those biology pre-meds. However, my guess would be that the majority of Engineering students would choose Stanford/MIT over Harvard. I know a lot of engineering undergrads at Stanford who also applied to MIT but didn't even bother applying to Harvard, and these numbers don't show up in cross-admit data. After all, engineering students who applied to both MIT and Harvard are more likely to choose Harvard than those who didn't even apply to Harvard.</p>

11

<p>Yet I think that in the real world, cause and effect are mostly reversed, in the sense that I believe that people who already know they want to study engineering while they're still in high school are strictly in the minority. After all, how would they know? Few high schoolers learn anything about engineering while they're in high school. Science, yes. But engineering? Not really. People may have an inkling that they may want to try engineering, but I believe that for the most part, that decision is made after they arrive at college. </p>

<p>For example, a guy applies to Harvard as his first choice but gets rejected, but gets into Stanford and figures that since he's now at Stanford, maybe he'll try out engineering because he hears that Stanford engineering is highly ranked. If he had gotten into Harvard, he would have gone there instead and he would then have never gone into engienering. </p>

<p>So I would agree that engineering students would choose Stanford/MIT over Harvard. The real question is, when do people become true engineering students, and not just people who are shopping around for possible majors of which engineering is but one possibility? I would argue that that tends to happens somewhere during undergrad more often than before undergrad. Even MIT, which is geek engineering heaven, is filled with incoming freshmen who haven't a clue what engineering is really all about, but figure that since they're at MIT, they might as well try engineering out.</p>

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<p>Hmm, maybe my perception is skewed because my high school had an Engineering club and a Robotics club, so everyone who was remotely interested in Engineering already knew what it was about going in college. Maybe they didn't know if they could handle the math and physics, even after taking AP Calculus BC and AP Physics C, but at least they had a good idea of what the studies and the career entailed.</p>

<p>Also, I would argue that a lot more people start out in Engineering than those who shop for a major and then decide on Engineering. When the curriculum requires a set schedule for all four years, and you need to have Calculus I, Calculus II, Physics I, and maybe an intro class in CS or circuits done by freshman year, you'd better decide very early, certainly by the middle of your sophomore year.</p>

13

<p>I'm not sure that someone would try engineering just because the school was highly ranked in it. Maybe if they already were interested in it, but I doubt a kid really into history would drop it for ChemE.</p>

<p>Someone who really wants to go into engineering may never even apply to Harvard. Out of my friends (not really a representative sample, but just for argument's sake), the ones who even remotely thought about engineering didn't even consider Hvd. After all, if engineering was a possibility, why should they limit themselves? Rather, they applied to MIT, Caltech, Stanford, UC's (B/UCLA/UCSD), UMich, UMich, Purdue, UMd etc - schools good at engineering as well as other subjects. However, a student really on the fence about engineering but with a strong passion for maths may do well in choosing Harvard.</p>

<p>A lot of people on CC tend to be hung up on the prestige of the name, but I'd wager that a kid truly wanting to go into engineering would be happier at, say, Michigan than Harvard.</p>

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<p>


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<p>I assure you, those MIT frosh aren't deciding to try out engineering BECAUSE they got in to MIT (well, there may be a few exceptions). They applied to MIT because they liked science and math in school, and thought engineering sounded cool. At most, they perhaps were interested in a pure science degree, and then after getting in at MIT decided to try out engineering instead.
I'm at Caltech, and that's basically the situation most engineering frosh start out from, myself included. </p>

<p>And as far as the "no one at Harvard would choose to go to UIUC", you're probably right. But the reverse idea, that engineering students at other schools would choose to transfer to Harvard--not true. Some might, of course. But those who actually want to do engineering? Doubtful. Very doubtful.</p>

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<p>Sakky, I was top ten percent at an unranked top private school in the nation, Girl Scout Gold Awarded, National Merit Scholared, 1600 SAT'd, Founder's Day Awarded, competitive piano-playing, president of the engineering club, honor societied, bilingual, award-winning poetry-writing, ceramics-crafting, club-founding, world-traveling, fund-raising, community-serving Superlative Girl as a senior in high school. I could have gone anywhere.</p>

<p>I did <em>not</em> go to Harvard.... and I would <em>not</em> have given up engineering to do so.... and neither would any other real engineer. You're wrong on this one.</p>

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<p>Sakky,</p>

<p>Even if many people do turn down others to go for Harvard's prestige blindly, it doesn't mean that's the best way to choose college. So what is it that you are trying to accomplish here? Just describing what you think the reality is? Or are you trying to "advice" high schools students to pick Harvard no matter what just because it is Harvard??</p>

<p>
[quote]
I would argue that that tends to happens somewhere during undergrad more often than before undergrad.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>If what you say is true, then we'd see lots of transfers between engineering college and others. When I was at Northwestern, what I saw was most people who graduated with engineering degrees were admitted to the engineering school at the first place. There were very few people transferring from other schools. Not many dropped out either. </p>

<p>Also, many science/math oriented students do think about engineering when they apply to colleges even they may not know exactly what it entails. I am one of those people and several others on this thread are like that too. In other countries like UK, China...etc where students have to declare majors before entering universities, many students who are good at math pick engineering. In fact, admission to engineering fields tend to be pretty competitive as lots of people apply. The fact that they may not know much about it doesn't seem to deter them from being interested in it and applying.</p>

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<p>I'm afraid I have to disagree with all of you guys. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't doubt that there are some high schoolers who actually know that they want to become engineers before they enter college. However, what I have seen is that they are strictly in the minority. It is of course true that most high schoolers have a general feel that they are more "sciency" or more "artsy". But to be able to discern whether they want to become science or engineering majors before they even enter college? I would argue that most cannot. </p>

<p>Now obviously I'm not saying that somebody who is interested in art or history would try out engineering. Again, it would need to be somebody who likes science. However, I would argue that people who are science-oriented who land at a school like MIT can and often do try out engineering, for a variety of reasons. For example, they hear that engineering pays well, or is prestigious, or whatever. But that's a far cry from saying they already knew they wanted to be engineers before they ever stepped foot at MIT. </p>

<p>Heck, it's not just me saying it. Why don't you guys check out the other posts here on the "Engineering Majors" section of CC, or maybe even better, slide on over to the individual school sections of CC (like MIT) and you should be able to note the requisite "What should I major in?" or "What is engineering really all about" kind of posts from people who have gotten into MIT and Caltech, but still don't know what engineering is about. I would point to my brother, who went to Caltech not knowing what he wanted to major in and tried out a number of majors including EE before settling on a science. </p>

<p>I would also point out that even at the best schools, a large fraction of people who start out in engineering don't actually make it to receive their engineering degrees. You guys are engineers, so you should know what I'm talking about. Weeders aren't called weeders for nothing, you know. We've all seen what happens - those people who find out that they don't really like engineering that much or who don't want to work that hard are weeded out. It has been estimated that something like 40-50% of all prospective engineers do not end up with an engineering degree. This occurs even at the best schools. Plenty of people who try out EECS at MIT or Stanford or Berkeley won't actually make it to the end. Some of them switch to a different engineering, but others switch out of engineering completely. Furthermore, I and I think you guys too are probably of the opinion that anybody who really wants to make it through an engineering curricula badly enough can make it through. Maybe not with top grades, but you will probably still make it if you have the fire in the belly. It's just a matter of how much you really want it. Yet the fact is, a giant chunk of people don't really want it that badly. They're in engineering not because they really like it, but because they heard that it makes money, or because their parents told them it was a good major, or these kinds of reasons, but then they find out that it's a really hard major, especially the weeders, so they decide they'd rather major in something else. Come on, guys, you know it's true. Weeders are a gut check to see who really wants to be an engineer. And lots of people who try out engineering don't really want to be engineers. If that weren't true, why do so many of them get weeded out? </p>

<p>And then finally, you guys know as well as I do that plenty of graduating engineers don't take engineering jobs. What jobs do they take? Management consulting. Investment banking. Hedge funds. Private Equity. While the final results have yet to be published, I suspect that the biggest single employer of graduating MIT engineering seniors this year, if not the biggest, was not Microsoft or Google, but rather was McKinsey. Yes, that's right, the management consulting company McKinsey. Another big one was Citadel, the hedge fund. Another was Goldman Sachs. Nor is this peculiar only to MIT. Plenty of Stanford and Berkeley engineers end up going to consulting and finance too. Ask yourself, how dedicated could you really be to engineering if you end up in taking those kinds of jobs? </p>

<p>Furthermore, a lot of those seniors who did end up taking engineering jobs would rather have gotten a job in consulting or banking, but couldn't get an offer. Now obviously some of them really did consider an engineering job to be their first choice. But others are taking engineering jobs frankly because they couldn't get the consulting or banking offer that they really wanted. Take 2 randomly selected MIT graduating engineering seniors, one who is going to work for McKinsey, and the other who is going to work as an engineer, and ask them would either of them like to trade places. If so, it is more likely that the second guy would like to trade places with the first place, not vice versa. </p>

<p>Nor is this a particular phenomenom of the "senior crush". For example, some of you may be thinking that a lot of engineering students are perfectly happy as engineers until they start looking around for jobs and then "discover" other career paths like consulting or banking, and only then do they realize that they would rather do that than stay in engineers. To that, I would say, I don't think so. I think the discovery process happens well before that. I know plenty of MIT sophomores and juniors who are majoring in engineering who have ALREADY said that while they want to get an enginering degree, they don't want to work as engineers, instead preferring to work as consultants or bankers. Heck, a bunch of them, who just finished their sophomore year, are working summer investment banking internships right now. I asked them why they're majoring in engineering if they don't really want to be engineers and their answer was simple - engineering was a backup career in case things don't work out, and engineering is prestigious. Go to Stanford or Berkeley or any other engineering school and you will find the same thing - engineering students who already know that they'd rather be consultants or bankers, but want to have an engineering degree in their back pocket "just in case". </p>

<p>So let's sum that all up. You got plenty of incoming freshmen, even at the best schools like MIT and Stanford, who don't understand what engineering is all about and how it is different from science. You got the weedout process which serves to eliminate up to half of all prospective engineering students, most of whom get eliminated because engineering requires more work and more dedication than they're willing to give. And even of the ones that do manage to graduate, a significant fraction of engineering students from the top schools like MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, etc. end up taking the 'white shoes' jobs of consulting and banking rather than engineering jobs, and even of those who do end up taking engineering jobs, many of them will admit that they wish they could have taken the 'white shoes' jobs instead. You add all of that up, and it's hard to escape the conclusion that a lot of engineers even at the top engineering schools aren't really majoring in engineering because they truly love it, but instead are doing it simply for reasons of prestige or career security or something else. In other words, plenty of engineering students aren't "real engineers". In fact, I would say that the majority aren't. </p>

<p>If you disagree, then ask yourself, why is it that so many MIT and Stanford engineering seniors want to work at McKinsey? Or Goldman Sachs? Or BCG? Or Morgan Stanley? If you're a "real engineer", why would you ever want to work for a company like that? It seems to me that they are not, nor were they ever truly "real engineers". You know and I know that these people would have been served just fine if they had gone to Harvard instead. I would direct the following question to aibarr especially. Aibarr, why do so many MIT engineers end up in consulting and banking?</p>

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<p>Perhaps this is because I went to a private high school, where most people had a fairly narrow focus of what they wanted to do in college, and am now at Caltech, which has perhaps the most focused student body in the country, but it seems to me that your idea that engineering students would rather go to Harvard is wrong. Some would, of course, given the numbers involved. But I'd say that most high school students have a pretty good idea, especially if they're considering engineering, that they want a science major vs. a liberal arts major. Using Stanford as an example, I don't think many completely undecided freshman at Standford think "Oh, Stanford has a good engineering program. I think I'll be an engineering major." </p>

<p>And to address your weeder comment: Yes, weeders exist to weed out the "non-true" engineers from the true engineers. Those weeded out may well prefer Harvard. But for those who stay in the engineering program at UIUC, Duke, MIT, Caltech, and so on, most wouldn't take a transfer to Harvard if you gave it to them.
Basically, this statement of yours just strikes me as wrong, as far as the engineering students are concerned:


</p>

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<p>If one is interested in engineering, in this case, civil engineering, we recommend schools that are known for that. I don't think it's your job to tell them, "Hey, you know what? Chances are you may not like being an engineer in the end; you are better off to go to Harvard". Whether one will continue to become an engineer in the future is his/her own choice and it's not your business to speculate that he/she won't and tell them to pick Harvard. So what, even if many MIT guys decide to get into finance field? It doesn't automatically make MIT a worse choice than Harvard, does it? By the way, Duke/Rice/Northwestern are fine schools. It's not like there's a huge gap between them and Harvard. I would not advice anyone who show even just a slight interest in BME to turn down Duke or anyone who are sorta interested in film to turn down Northwestern for Harvard. I know a guy whose turned down Harvard for Northwestern for its RTF program. Even if people decide BME or film...are not for them, I doubt they will "feel foolish" because schools like Duke would serve him/her just fine.</p>

20

<p>i would agree with the statement that there are a large portion of students that go into engineering not knowing what it is exactly, and that a large majority do not actually want to become engineers after they graduate. i am one such person, and the reason you list (it's a backup plan) is somewhat correct in my situation. a lot of my friends who are in engineering are pursuing an engineering degree for the many of the same reasons you list (and either want to go for an MBA, med degree, or law degree). a lot of them dont even believe they're the stereotypical 'engineering type' and believe that engineering is a good degree in order to COMPLIMENT another degree.</p>

<p>however i do not agree that many of them if given a choice would drop engineering altogether just in order to go to Harvard for reasons of pursuing another degree altogether.</p>

<p>plenty of high school seniors apply to schools and apply for a specific major because it is 'highly ranked in them'. when i applied to college, i took little notice as to locations, student environment, and surrounding locations (as long as it wasn't in TOO bad of an area.) these things mattered very little to me, and i felt that i could adapt to different people, different locales, and that it wouldn't be such a bad thing. I looked at my strengths (which i believe i have several) and my interests (of course most people have several) and thought about the career paths i could take and applied to schools that were good at them. of course i have some interests that are stronger than others, but (and many of my peers feel like this) that i would feel the same to major in something like say finance, than in something like engineering. hence i applied to 5 different schools under 3 different majors.</p>

<p>of course now i'm an engineering (and i dont mind the hard work) and am doing pretty well in it, and i definitely would not transfer out of it just to attend a more prestigious institution or even change major, but if i had gone into finance or biology, i would likely have the same mindset.</p>