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<p>unfortunately we CAN’T look at Columbia’s statistics, because they fail to provide statistics for 25% of their undergraduates, which happen to be the lowest scoring students at the undergraduate level.</p>
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<p>While biases will undoubtedly have an effect on any set of rankings, the biases will certainly not distort the rankings so horribly that they have no truth behind them. When one rankings website, like US News, says something, people might not believe it because they think its biased toward a specific university, but when multiple rankings website says the same thing, then the chances that every single of those website is biased toward the same university is extremely small. </p>
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<p>Hmm, that’s not what my interviewer told me. Columbia was my top choice when looking at colleges last year, but after actually reading through the research done in ChemE and reading some abstracts by ChemE professors there, I was not really all that interested anymore. And, when I had my Columbia interview, unfortunately the interviewer seemed to say that while Columbia as a whole is a great school, it was certainly not the best for engineering, which I thought was odd since he was supposed to be trying to convince me to go there if I got in. Anyway, that was my experience with Columbia. </p>
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<p>What?? What are you talking about? Are you trying to tell us that Harvard’s engineering has a better engineering reputation than Berkeley or Columbia? Also, can you please tell us the website where you found out that Columbia doesn’t lose that many students to Cal eng? </p>
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<p>Sure, they are different experiences, but the way you seem to be talking, it seems you are saying that rankings do not matter at all, which is certainly not the case. They do matter to some extent when trying to get a job in the future or for grad school or anything else. You cannot ignore the rankings that LadyGoGo had posted. Also, if you are not fond of US news (because I’m not either), you should try looking at
[Top</a> Universities for Engineering & Technology 2010-2011](<a href=“http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2010-2011/engineering-and-IT.html]Top”>http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2010-2011/engineering-and-IT.html). </p>
<p>Their methodology, in my opinion, makes more sense. Also, just some quick facts from Times ranking:
Columbia was rated to have a 73.8/100 for research, while Berkeley had a 99.3 (the highest). Also, for engineering, Berkeley is ranked #5 in the world, while Columbia is not in the top 50. </p>
<p>I’m not saying go way or the other, because I think both schools are excellent and have a very different atmosphere. But unless for some reason you fell in love with NYC and the Core curriculum at Columbia, it would make the most sense to go somewhere that on a whole, has a stronger engineering program and for you, is better financially, in my opinion.</p>
<p>wongtong: </p>
<p>a) statistics/surveys/rankings have truth behind them, but they are not in and of themselves true. they are part truths, half truths, and limited in scope, and therefore must not be treated as true. failure to do so is the reason that so many students attend schools that are bad for them.</p>
<p>b) just because you do not find columbia appealing or had a bad interaction all it says is that it is possible, but not universal. indeed something you find unappealing is something someone else might find very appealing.</p>
<p>c) columbia loses engineering admitted students mostly to hypsm, and not to top ranked state schools. this offers one possible answer: engineering specific reputation doesn’t seem to be the only or in some cases the primary identification for students. and i can’t tell you from the website, it is data i am privy to for being an awesome alum. if you came to columbia, i’d be happy to share it, but you went to cornell. either you trust it to be true, or you do not. i am very comfortable in the truth-claim i am making because i have seen the data with my own eyes. if you have seen or can prove data on your own, i welcome it.</p>
<p>d) rankings are heuristics that help us make decisions. but so are a whole number of things helpful. first the times (brit) rankings are interesting in their anglocentric bias (imperial being ranked above american schools is silly), but the also are highly disciplinarian and do not often support efforts done by schools like columbia that want to break disciplinary boundaries. if you are doing biogenomic research are you engineering, technology, or medical sciences? indeed classification problems are at the heart of ranking/survey/statistic issues and why they should be treated with skepticism.</p>
<p>e) rankings must be properly contextualized, and also calibrated to put into consideration a plethora of missing information. indeed no ranking can quantify experience, and it especially cannot predict experience. reasonable people could choose columbia for a multitude of reasons that would buck against the trend of rankings, but would be no less reasonable.</p>
<p>f) for us to properly weigh this issue even the OP is not an ideal candidate. the question to be asked would be if a student who is not from California is choosing between the two schools, would we consider the choice absurd if they went to columbia? of course not. so why is it absurd because the student is from cali. it is not.</p>
<p>further: it is not my goal to tell the OP to attend Cal. Indeed there are many people on this board and elsewhere that can do that. it is to present a simple argument for him and other readers about the silliness of relying on rankings to make absolute/universal declarations of what a student should do. further to indicate that columbia is still a reasonable choice if he/she really would like to attend. indeed it is a fantastic university that has taken me further than i could have ever imagined.</p>
<p>^ it’s not just the ranking. Berkeley is cheaper for the OP…</p>
<p>Berkeley also is not just strong in engineering…Berkeley offers tremendous breadth and depth across the entire academic spectrum that only 2-3 universities can rival.</p>
<p>There are also unknown costs - what if UC-B continues its cuts in education? what if Governor Brown can’t work out a deal? There are risks still with going to Berkeley even if to some individuals on this board it seems like it is a reasonable choice. Unknowns are always there.</p>
<p>And 2-3 universities that can rival are Harvard, Stanford and Columbia.</p>
<p>That’s not going to change the fact that Berkeley will be cheaper to attend than Columbia for this particular poster.</p>
<p>They aren’t talking about cuts in education…especially engineering. They’re talking about getting efficient with overhead and reducing bureaucracy…something long needed at Cal. Out of distress comes opportunity. Berkeley will be stronger because of it…but it’s not falling to some TTT.</p>
<p>Of course there’s unknowns. NYC could get hit with a dirty bomb…who the **** knows!?
You have to go with knowns. Those are 1. Berkeley is cheaper. 2. Berkeley is better known for its engineering programs.</p>
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<li>Columbia is the better undergraduate experience</li>
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<p>That is highly subjective.</p>
<p>unless you have a strong reason to go Columbia, I would take UCB because of the money. A strong reason could be:</p>
<p>1) being dead set on finance / trading and want to make pots of money in the future (not that UCB excludes you from this, but Columbia places better)</p>
<p>2) Hate UCB and wouldn’t do well / want to transfer / wouldn’t be happy as an undergrad there</p>
<p>Failing that, UCB is a far cheaper so end this thread here.</p>
<p>I see I am a little bit late to this post. I am currently a PhD student in the chemical engineering department at UC Berkeley. Based on what I and other grad students have observed about the quality of the undergraduate program, I decided to start taking action to warn prospective undergraduate students not to heed the so-called US News “rankings” of undergraduate chemical engineering programs at elite schools. I also attended a “top ten” undergraduate program, but a slot or two lower than Berkeley according to US News. I can’t remember what the order was when I started my PhD (it shuffles around). </p>
<p>Anyway, based on the US News ranking, and since I too had attended a large, public research institution as an undergraduate, I automatically assumed that the UCB program would be more difficult. I assumed even more math and computer knowledge would be required and applied in the courses. I assumed the workload would be invariably higher, the classes would be smaller, and the students would demonstrate a better understanding of the material on exams. In all, I was expecting to be wowed because I had always taken USNews rankings seriously. What I found as a GSI was stunningly the opposite. In chemical engineering MAJOR courses, there were still up to 100 students in a class. My major courses never exceeded 50, and were almost always around 30. The classes of 100 also only get 2 GSI’s here. So since there isn’t enough man power to assign and correct an adequate load of homework and a reasonable frequency of midterms (which I consider three per semester) with only 2 GSI’s, the homework and exam load are drastically reduced- both in difficulty and quantity. There was only one mid term exam in the class I taught, and a staggering 2 homework problems were assigned per week. There was also a lab component to the class, which met for only 1.5 hours a week and no formal reports were required. </p>
<p>For purposes of comparison, the equivalent course at my undergraduate institution involved an average of 6-8 problems a week (I still have all my homeworks), three midterm exams, 6-8 hours of lab per week, formal reports on those labs (which average 10-15 pages each double spaced- I still have those too), and an end-of-semester project (which was 30 pages long in my case), in addition to the final exam.</p>
<p>So in summary, the difficulty and quantity of the work assigned to the UCB undergrads didn’t even hold a candle to what I had. Thankfully though, I learned a great deal from the class, and since my tuition was a lot cheaper, I also got a lot more bang for my buck.
I am finally beginning to see why the grad students at places like MIT, Berkeley, and so-on, are dominated by graduates of Big-Ten engineering programs and UT Austin. The programs are tough- you won’t have much free time. But you’ll learn a lot more, you’ll have a higher chance of getting into a top graduate program, and you’ll probably get more job offers too (I had offers from Shell, Dow, Exxon, United Technologies, and Merck. Some of those places don’t even recruit from elite schools).</p>
<p>In summary, if you are looking for a solid program from which you will learn a lot and land plenty of job offers and graduate school acceptance letters, AVOID chemical engineering programs at UCB, and elite schools in general (from what I have heard from the grad students in my department who attended them). You are getting cheated out of what the hard work you are capable of should be earning for you.</p>
<p>At first I was going to rage over you resurrecting a 2 month old thread, then I moderately appreciated the post, now I just have two comments:</p>
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<p>1)This all depends on what you want to do with your degree. The fact of the matter is that most of the chem.e. grads from Columbia, Harvard, Yale,etc. won’t continue chem.e. in any way. They’ll go to med/law/b-schools or go into consulting/i-banking. An eng. degree with the liberal arts background of “elite” schools (minus MIT) will put you a leg up for these career paths compared to an eng degree from, say, Michigan.</p>
<p>2) Since chem.e.'s from “elite” schools tend to drop chem.e. after undergrad, it’s plain to see why the graduate level is dominated by Big Ten-style eng. programs. Also, let’s be honest here, graduate work in chemical engineering ALL OVER THE COUNTRY is dominated by Chinese nationals…</p>