<p>So I'm just wondering if UIUC undergrads are able to go to top notch engineering graduate schools like itself, MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, etc. The undergrad schools doesn't seem incredibly difficult to get into with a 65% acceptance rate so does undergrad really matter for getting into a top-notch engineering program?</p>
<p>The acceptance rate has nothing to do with the quality of the program.</p>
<p>What does a univ’s 65% acceptance rate has to do with an engineering student with top grades/GRE scores applying to top grad schools from a very good eng’g school? </p>
<p>It has nothing to do with the quality of the program. My first question is if getting into a good engineering graduate program is dependent on your undergrad school. I know for medical school your undergrad school doesn’t matter at all. Is this the same for engineering school? Second, if the answer is yes for my first question, does UIUC have a good reputation for sending kids to great engineering schools? I know its graduate school is top-notch but I have no idea about its undergraduate program. I expected an engineering program of that caliber to have a much lower acceptance rate than 65%. </p>
<p>yes, your u/g has little effect on your admission to grad school. so UIUC is a good place to get an engineering degree. Period.</p>
<p>Actually, Georgia Tech and UIUC are both considered very good engineering schools for undergraduate. They both have very high admission rate. </p>
<p>Alright. Thanks guys!</p>
<p>Agree with “DrGoogle”.
Your GPA, GRE, Research, Recommendation, EC’s and interview will play a huge role in your graduate application that the name of your undergraduate institution.
Best of luck to you.</p>
<p>I met a friend at Purdue who told me a story.
“At MIT and Caltech, it is admissions officers who decide who will be engineers and who will not be. In Purdue, it is engineers who decide who will be engineers and who will not be.”
Point is, generally when it comes to engineering colleges with high acceptance rates, they will weed you out early. </p>
<p>Specifically, Purdue admits frosh intended engineering majors into a first year engineering program. There is a possibly competitive admission process to enter the desired engineering major, depending on one’s GPA in the first year courses.</p>
<p><a href=“School of Engineering Education - School of Engineering Education - Purdue University”>School of Engineering Education - School of Engineering Education - Purdue University;
<a href=“School of Engineering Education - School of Engineering Education - Purdue University”>School of Engineering Education - School of Engineering Education - Purdue University;
<p>Large engineering schools especially publics do the weeding out games because of population control.
Private engineering schools do have accommodation for the targeted numbers they admit, and counsel them well to be successful, thus eliminating the stress and throat-cutting approach of large public engineering school systems.
So maybe, it is safe to say that with engineering or STEM in general, and other professional degrees, size does matter, the smaller the student to faculty ration, the better outcome it will be for prospective students.</p>
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<p>Graduation rates and retention-in-engineering-major rates are most strongly correlated to admissions selectivity, rather than public versus private or school size. MIT and Caltech are both elite-admissions schools, so high graduation rates are expected. Less selective schools do not have as high graduation rates:</p>
<p>Stevens Institute of Technology: 43% four year, 79% six year
Polytechnic Institute of New York University: 41% four year, 62% six year
Colorado School of Mines: 35% four year, 67% six year
Milwaukee School of Engineering: 36% four year, 56% six year
Kettering University: 10% four year, 58% six year</p>
<p>Also, be aware that some schools’ four year graduation rates are low because of emphasis on co-op jobs, which extend calendar time to graduation even though extra school time may not be needed.</p>
<p>Besides what others have said, I just wanted to point out that the quoted acceptance rate for UIUC (65%) is likely not accurate for its College of Engineering. I have seen numbers around that level for UIUC overall, but remember, the College of Engineering is harder to get into, and likely has a significantly lower acceptance rate (albeit still significantly higher than the top schools in the country, but there are lots of reasons for that). I could not find that number online, but did find pages showing median ACTs as 3-4 points higher for incoming Engineering students as compared to the campus overall.</p>
<p>Further, UIUC is rated very highly in Engineering, for both grad and undergrad, and it is very unlikely that they don’t know how to prepare undergrads for the top graduate programs. I don’t have specific data or anecdotes, but it’s likely you can that kind of info from UIUC itself. I do know (I work at UIUC) that it’s very possible for undergrads to get involved in research and take graduate-level courses. So if you’ve already shown that you can get started/do well at one top Engineering grad school, do you not think others will want you?</p>