UIUC vs Others (engineering)

<p>Well, i got into materials science/engineering in UIUC, but i will also be applying to other school such as CMU and JHU. I already applied to UMich and am waiting for the decision. </p>

<p>Assuming I get into all of those schools, I am still not sure which one i should go to... </p>

<p>Can CC people help me? pros and cons and all those?</p>

<p>I have a certain attraction towards UIUC, and a weird uneasy feeling about CMU... I just heard the environment is not too fun...</p>

<p>It depends on what you want to go into. CMU is great for Computer Science, but their engineering is not up to par with other schools.</p>

<p>My wife graduated from UIUC in Ceramics Engineering (the next yr the name was chged to Materials). If you're a Ill. resident you can do no better for your $ than at Urbana-Champaign. All engineering programs are "not too fun," so don't expect a cake-walk anywhere.</p>

<p>so like... how does the environment / campus / people compare - contrast?</p>

<p>sorry, I for some reason missed that you were looking at materials science and engineering.</p>

<p>I'll start off that you should pick your college by where you will be the happiest, but from the ones you stated your order based upon rankings for their education is:
1. University of Michigan
2. University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign
3. Carnegie Mellon University
4. John Hopkins University</p>

<p>They are never very far from each other in rankings thoughs, so you have room to go with the place you think you would be happiest.</p>

<p>As far as the other factors in your third post, thats a bit harder to interpret because they are all based upon your preferances. For instance, U of M and UIUC are all state schools so they will have a lot of students.</p>

<p>i took MSE 101 and if that's what material science is all about then i would personally change my major, not that its a bad field and is a very promising career in the future, but its so boring....that being said you better make sure Material Science is what you really want (as in you better have a pretty good knack for it) to major in because quite a few engineers change their majors either into another engineering field or something completely different.
i would go with U of I though, it's engineering program All Around is top notch with a great value (sorta) and great networking.</p>

<p>US News 2008 undergrad ranking for Materials raised Stanford (from 5th to 1st) and dropped Illinois (1st to 5th). Anyone know the reason for this major switch? I've applied to both schools and a few others but since reading on Stanford's Materials website that "there are approximately 10 undergraduates", I'm concerned about the small size.</p>

<p>"took MSE 101 and if that's what material science is all about then i would personally change my major, not that its a bad field and is a very promising career in the future, but its so boring....that being said you better make sure Material Science is what you really want (as in you better have a pretty good knack for it) to major in because quite a few engineers change their majors either into another engineering field or something completely different.
i would go with U of I though, it's engineering program All Around is top notch with a great value (sorta) and great networking."</p>

<p>tennisfan, would you please elaborate a bit on the material science thing... I was also not too sure about the major, but Ive been looking, and im not really that attracted to any of the other majors....
im actually not sure about engineering because i dont want to study extremely indepth stuff, like the molecular structure or stuff like that, do lab work, and those stuff...</p>

<p>well i only took MSE 101 which was the most basic class in the major "Materials in Todays World" and we basically talked about bonds and stuff. A lot of chemistry. If you don't want to do extremely in depth stuff you probably wouldn't want to do this then.</p>