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There it is. So you agree that the money has something to do with it.
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<p>Well certainly. If the compensation is high enough, many (not all) people will drop their passion and go for the job that will get them financially well off quickest.</p>
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I am not arguing that most Duke engineering students go into engineering as a profession. On the other hand, I don't think that means their commitment to an undergraduate engineering education is thin - it just means that they know how many doors an engineering undergraduate education can open and they posses the talents required of a rigorous engineering program.</p>
<p>Beyond that, your statements of:
"You know that a lot of engineering students don't really care about engineering. You know that they're not really enthused about the subject. You know that a lot of them don't really want to be there. You know that they're there just for the relative job security. Come on, you know it's true."
are completely off target. There are too many students that spend too much of their precious time doing things at the school that are not related to classes. There are too many students that are working on independent study project, or working as teaching assistants, or working as laboratory students to allow your unfounded statement to stand.</p>
<p>I have no idea where you are getting your information about Duke or its School of Engineering but I would certainly appreciate your leaving us out of the equation unless you have something more informed to go from.
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<p>Well, look. I'm not saying this to single out Duke. I can tell you that at MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, and a number of other even-higher-ranked engineering programs than Duke's, I see exactly what I have described. Sure, at MIT, there are plenty of ostensibly highly dedicated engineering students too. They join the engineering clubs. They work as TA's. They work in lab research. They do plenty of UROP's. </p>
<p>But the facts don't lie. When it comes to where these MIT eng students choose to work after graduation, you see a lot of consulting and banking. </p>
<p>But hey, don't take my word for it. Read the MIT graduation survey yourself.</p>
<p>For example, under course 6 (EECS), which is by far the largest engineering department, what do I see here but employers like Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, Accenture, Ernst and Young, Citadel, AT Kearney, Mercer Oliver Wyman, etc. Why is that? You tell me.</p>
<p>Look, just go and ask your graduating engineering seniors whether any of them are interviewing with consulting and banking. You are going to find that, if they're being honest, a good chunk of them are. That doesn't mean that they are going to get an offer, but at least they're interested enough to interview. This should not be surprising. It happens at every top school. </p>
<p>Hence, if all these engineers are running off to consulting/banking, then that means that they were never really all that dedicated to engineering in the first place. Like I said, MIT engineers are arguably the collectively best engineers in the country. You would think that if any engineers in the country are that highly dedicated to engineering, it would be the engineers at MIT. Yet look at how many of them take non-engineering jobs after graduation. If many engineers at even MIT are looking to take non-engineering jobs, imagine how it must be at the lower-ranked schools. </p>
<p>So surely Duke CEE has a lot of people who would rather be doing something else because every engineering program has people who would rather be doing something else. And that's the point - the commitment to engineering even at the top programs is not that strong.</p>
<p>Sakky, all the cross-yield battle proves is that people who <em>applied</em> to both Harvard and Rice and ended up chosing Harvard, wanted to go to Harvard! There are plenty of people at Rice who ended up at Rice but rejected Harvard's offer of admission. Works one way, but not the other... Rice's yield rate is pretty darned high, especially for the early decision folks. If I hadn't gotten into Rice, I'd have applied to Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, MIT, Cal Tech, Northwestern, Duke, Tufts... But I got into Rice and it was my first choice. Consequently, I didn't have to apply to any other programs, and so I didn't affect Harvard or Princeton or Cornell's yield rates whatsoever. Can't base preference towards a particular school based upon comparison of yield rates.</p>
<p>That's why I consider ED to be an 'artificial' way to increase your yield. Why? Let's talk about the Rice ED policy. If you get into Rice ED, you either have to accept the offer or you have to completely withdraw your Rice application (hence, can't apply RD), and that withdrawal has to happen BEFORE any RD decisions from other schools are determined. In other words, you are not allowed to weigh and compare a Rice ED offer vs. a bunch of RD offers from other schools. Hence, ED is basically nothing more than a simple trade interaction. After all, think of it this way. Why would anybody want to surrender the right to compare offers, and receive nothing back for it? You must be getting something in return for surrendering that right. That something is generally understood to be a higher chance of admission. While the school may not actually come out and SAY that this is what's going on, come on, I think we can all agree that it's highly implied Again, why would rational people willingly surrender the right to compare offers? That's why I think it's really a trade exchange - like commerce. You surrender your right, and we will give you a higher chance to get admitted. You give me this, I give you that. It's like commerce.</p>
<p>I would further argue that a lot of people apply to ED programs not because it's their "real" first choice, but because it's their "realistic" first choice. Like I said, plenty of people would love to go to Harvard or Yale or Stanford, etc. but don't ever apply because they know they have no chance of ever getting in. I would love to play for the Boston Red Sox, but I know I suck at baseball so I am not going to waste my time embarrassing myself in a tryout because I know I'd never make it onto the team. The point is, ED decisions are often times not really indicative of a "true" first choice.</p>
<p>I remember talking to a guy who was applying to law school. I asked him where he really wanted to go. He said Yale or Harvard. But he also said that he wasn't going to apply to them. Why? Simple. His grades aren't that good, his LSAT score isn't that good, so he knows he has no chance. He was going to apply to some law schools that he actually felt he had a reasonable shot at getting into. But would he take an offer from Harvard or Yale Law if it was magically handed to him? Darn right he would. Hence, there's a big difference between a person's "real" first choice and his "realistic" first choice. The best that this guy realistically thought he'd have a shot at is UCBerkeley Boalt Law or UCLA Law, and he said that even those schools were going to be big reaches for him. As it turned out, he didn't get into either of them. </p>
<p>Look, I am happy that Rice worked out so well for you. I also never said that there weren't people who would turn down Harvard for Rice, because I know that there are such people. But the point is that most people do not get to go to their true first choice. And that includes a lot of students at Rice. Most people have to go to the best school that they will get into, which is rarely their true first choice.</p>
<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>
<p>I would've done that if I had been super rich.</p>