<p>I don't know.</p>
<p>Yes, I am also interested in the job prospects and salaries for OR. Is graduate school a must to get a good job or are there possibilities after undergraduate?</p>
<p>bump......</p>
<p>I'm suprised no one has mentioned Northwestern's Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences program yet. It's a top 4 program and if you look at the curriculum, you will notice that students have the option of taking more financial-related courses for their technical electives. Also, the IEMS majors can easily double major in Economics in 4 years, creating a more versatile degree.</p>
<p>UC Berkeley offers an undergrad degree in OR, more specifically, Industrial Engineering and Operations Research.</p>
<p>For career opportunities, job prospects and salaries, you might want to check this out. This gives a view of the job/salary prospects (including place of employment and job title) of Cornell's grads in OR (and other engineering disciplines) </p>
<p>Cornell names it "Operations Research and Industrial Engineering" whereas UC Berkeley names it "Industrial Engineering and Operations Research." Interesting.</p>
<p>Well, you should all realize that operations research, while over 60 years old, is still not among the Accreditation Board of Engineering Technology's list of majors that can be accredited. IE is, but I believe--after looking at several IE curricula--that industrial engineering and operations research are different majors. That may be a reason why Cornell and Berekely use both names in their department letterhead.</p>
<p>As for a particular major being "rated fourth" or other such nonsense, this is a case of 'overfitting the curve to the data'. It's a problem we study in graduate school. Colleges can be broadly ranked, but majors have too much individual variation to be effectively ranked. Some schools, for example, offer a different set of courses every year. How would you rank those? Past performance is no guide to future results.</p>
<p>so am I right in saying that any quantitative undergrad degree will prepare you well for operations research later on? is there any undergrad degree though which is "better", out of, say, comp sci/math/EE/Chem E (as these are the ones I am interested in)?</p>
<p>anyone?...</p>
<p>Computer Science, as they use a lot of math and develop algorithms.</p>
<p>is operations research or industrial engineering at cornell, northwestern, princeton, lehigh, michigan and other top schools accredited by ABET?</p>
<p>and does anyone know if financial engineering accredited at prineton and columbia?</p>
<p>I may be wrong, but in my mind the kind of things that are more likely to be accredited by an engineering group, and subsequently lead to a PE, are the kind of activities that lead to "traditional" engineering activities- ie somebody building something. A bridge, a control system, a chemical plant, etc.</p>
<p>These majors, while totally legitimate endeavors in their own right, are really more like applied math/computer science than conventional engineering activities. For example, the result of their efforts might lead to a new inventory procurement schedule, not the construction of a new chemical plant.So it would not surprise me if they were not accredited by the regular engineering committees. But I don't really know.</p>
<p>Financial engineering has appications totally to finance, and has nothing whatsoever to do with conventional engineering. Other than the word "engineering". There is some common math and some common problem-solving mindsets, but the field of application is not what engineering accreditation bodies would likely have in mind, I would imagine.</p>
<p>I suppose if the programs require students to fulfill the right set of distribution requirements, in the right categories, such a program might be accreditable. But not sure what the point would be, since someone who chooses to major in financial engineering would not be likely to be hired to help design a chemical plant, [or substitute whatever "real" engineering activities you may prefer].</p>
<p>OR is not on the ABET list of majors that it 'accredits'. Neither is financial engineering.</p>
<p>So, no, if ABET does not accredit operations research anywhere, then it does not accredit it in the lesser included set of Cornell, Northwestern, Princeton, Lehigh, Michigan, or "other top schools".</p>
<p>It seems this post has been inactive but I am trying anyways. I am thinking of a graduate degree in OR. I am wondering what computer programming languages would be helpful to learn. Thanks.</p>
<p>Doubt you’re still around here manzilm, but I thought I’d try to answer your question anyway for anyone else wondering.</p>
<p>It seems like the most common programming language that graduate schools want is C++. It seems to be the standard for an OOP. After C++ it’s probably worthwhile to look into learning some statistical software like SAS or R, and other languages such as Python.</p>
<p>For the record, I am still on step one, learning C++ (though I’ve dabbled in, and really like Python. I have a pretty decent handle on it, but it seems like there’s always ways to make your code better. I’m also trying to use the Scythe Statistical Library to do some stat computation in C++. The nice thing about C++ is that it is so popular that there are many libraries created for it, which can extend the functionality of the language.</p>
<p>Best OR programs (in no particular order): MIT, Columbia, Cornell, Georgia Tech, Cal-Berkeley, Stanford, Northwestern.</p>
<p>I would check out the service academies, particularly the U.S. Air Force Academy. OR was first heavily used for military applications during WWII, so it makes sense that they could have a strong program. The percentage of undergrad students their OR program sends to graduate school is remarkably high, and I’m pretty sure they have some sort of special relationship with MIT because every year it seems like a handful of their grads are going there for a Masters or Phd. As an aside, free education + leadership/ military experience is always a plus!</p>
<p>if your interests are in discrete OR, i.e combinatorial optimization, I think the two best programs, just by sheer breadth and depth, are CMU and Ga tech ACO, but they are very competitive (i.e, I heard that CMU hasn’t accepted a CS student into their ACO in years).</p>
<p>[ACO</a> Program Home Page](<a href=“http://aco.math.cmu.edu/]ACO”>http://aco.math.cmu.edu/)
[Ph.D</a>. Program in Algorithms, Combinatorics, and Optimization](<a href=“http://www.aco.gatech.edu/]Ph.D”>http://www.aco.gatech.edu/)</p>
<p>Waterloo also has an excellent program
[Combinatorics</a> & Optimization](<a href=“Home | Combinatorics and Optimization | University of Waterloo”>Home | Combinatorics and Optimization | University of Waterloo)</p>
<p>And then the usual names that are good in math, CS, and ie: MIT, Pton, etc</p>