Umass Amherst (Commonwealth College), Northeastern, Tufts, Villanova, Lehigh

College Search & Selection
1

<p>I was accepted to the above colleges. My expected major is chemical engineering. Money isn't a huge huge issue but i don't want to spend extraneous money if i don't need to. Umass will be 18K per year, Northeastern 35K and the rest about 50K, although I will probably receive some financial aid starting in 2012 when my sister goes to college as well.</p>

<p>First, which has the best reputation for chemical engineering?</p>

<p>I was thinking probably Tufts, but I'm kind of a athletic normal kid who parties sometimes and while I can be intellectual, I am also looking for your average well-rounded college experience. Can tufts provide this? </p>

<p>Other questions, Are Tufts/Villanova/Lehigh worth it over Umass and Northeastern?</p>

<p>If so, how do Tufts/Villanova's/Lehigh reputations compare in terms of entrance into PHD programs for chemE?</p>

<p>thanks</p>

2

<p>Forget the first 2. Seriously. The last 3 are more expensive but are better options.</p>

3

<p>I don’t know that I would bother paying the big bucks for Villanova or Lehigh. You can get a great education from Umass. Tufts, maybe. Northeastern also has the coop program, might be a good thing.</p>

4

<p>I’d say lehigh</p>

5

<p>Overall prestige/reputation of the schools I would rank like this:</p>

<ol>
<li> Tufts</li>
<li> Lehigh</li>
<li> Villanova</li>
</ol>

<p>gap</p>

<ol>
<li>Northeastern</li>
<li>UMass - Amherst</li>
</ol>

<p>But I tried to research the engineering rankings and here is what I found. Lehigh, Tufts, UMass - Amherst and Northeastern all have doctorate programs and are ranked (at least in 2008) like this:</p>

<p>No. 38 - Lehigh (peer assessment score = 3.3)
No. 51 (tied) -Tufts and Umass-Amherst (peer assessment scores of 3.0)
No. 61 - Northeastern (peer assessment of 2.9)</p>

<p>Villanova is ranked 10th of those schools not offering a doctorate and has the highest peer assessment score of the 5 at 3.6. I am not sure how the peer assessment translates across school with doctorates and those without but it appears that they are comparable (i.e. Harvey Mudd is a 4.4 (no doctorate) and Michigan is a 4.4 (doctorate); Lehigh a 3.3 and Lafayette a 3.3 (no doctorate); Drexel a 3.0 and tied with Tufts and both with doctorates;etc. These appear to be consistent in relation to one another).</p>

<p>So the rank for engineering according to US News’ reporting of peer assessment scores in 2008:</p>

<p>Villanova (3.6)
Lehigh (3.3)
Tufts and UMass-Amherst (tie) (3.0)
Northeastern (2.9)</p>

<p>Based on that, I don’t know that Tufts would be worth the extra expense. What you do have to take into consideration, though, is the name recognition and prestige of each overall. Tufts obviously is more prestigeous than UMass-Amherst and may open more doors upon graduation. </p>

<p>Here is the link of what I found: <a href=“http://www.cefns.nau.edu/Academic/CS/misc_docs/UG_engineering_ranking_08.pdf[/url]”>http://www.cefns.nau.edu/Academic/CS/misc_docs/UG_engineering_ranking_08.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

6

<p>hmm, based on that info Villanova seems to be the highest rated engineering school?</p>

<p>Does anyone have experience graduating engineering from any of these schools and the doors each opened?</p>

<p>Also, based on the social stuff, could any tufts students weigh in on that? My intuition tells me that there are enough kids that i’ll find people that have the same interests as me, but it seems safer to go to Villanova or Umass where i know people will have similar interests to me.</p>

7

<p>From what I’ve learned Tufts is the best (by far) on that list. All of the last three are great schools, but if you’re looking for a well-rounded experience with intellectual kids, it seems Tufts would be perfect. From their info session they also seemed to have a great science department with a LOT of opportunities to do research (if that’s important to you). However, money can play a huge role, and if you can’t afford it, don’t push it. Hope this helped!</p>

8

<p>Mikeyy, where did you “learn” that? Is there a source for Tufts being the “best by far.” I am interested because there is a lot of self-promotion in college selection. Lehigh is better known for engineering than Tufts and both Lehigh and Villanova are rannked higher. Did someone affiliated with Tufts tell you or was their a neutral service like US News or the Princeton Review that provided you with this info? Thanks</p>

9

<p>Lehigh is the winner here. Known for its beautiful 1,600 acre campus, it is the better school in Chemical Engineering and although ranked below Tufts in the major research university category of USNWR, the difference is minor (#35 v. #28). Socially it is known among the more well rounded schools with a great Greek system and having made the list at #14 of Playboy’s top 20 party schools in the U.S. a few years back. The motto of the students is “Work hard, Play hard”.</p>

<p>Then there is the size factor. Although the number of undergraduates is about the same, Tufts has a considerable amount more graduate students leading one to believe that less attention is paid by the faculty to its undergraduate students:</p>

<p>Total Students
Lehigh - 6,994
Tufts - 10,030</p>

<p>Total Undergraduates
Lehigh - 4,876
Tufts - 5,044</p>

<p>Student/Teacher Ratio
Lehigh - 9:1
Tufts - 14:1</p>

10

<p>Anecdotal info: my roommate graduated from Northeastern as a ChemE major. He went the job route working for Hewlett-Packard. They paid him his full salary while they sent him full time to Stanford University where he had a full-ride. The point is not to say this is typical, because it was not. The point is that talented people are everywhere and sometimes the only difference is what they have in their wallets at the end of the day. </p>

<p>I don’t want to get into a long rant on peer assessment because it gets old. I’ll simply state that my opinion is that school officials have a hard enough time knowing what’s going on their own schools to have an informed opinion as to what is going on at other schools. So, it’s nonsense I reject out-of-hand. </p>

<p>If UMASS is really 17K cheaper than Northeastern, I’d seriously consider going there. I’d call them up and find what their ChemE grads are going this year (job/grad school). Because the important thing is not whether an undergraduate program offers a doctorate in your major - the important thing is what other grad programs their kids get into for their master’s degree.</p>

11

<p>SJUHawk – It was the guidance counselor at my school, along with most of the college books I have looked at.</p>

<p>Also JohnAdams, where are you getting the 14:1 ratio for Tufts? Both the Princeton Review college book and Tufts’ own publication list it as 7:1…</p>

12

<p>^^^</p>

<p>I firmly agree with ctyankee’s summation of the differences between the schools. If you have the talent and work ethic (as well as little bit of luck), you will do well no matter which undergraduate institution you attend. A top achiever with high grades and high test scores at any of the OP’s listed schools will likely be accepted into a superior graduate school. On the other hand, a slacker or mediocre undergraduate student with undistinguished grades and/or test scores at any of these schools will face rough, rough sledding. In this regard, USNews’ published peer assessment rankings of schools is specious and contrived and does not at all necessarily reflect the sentiments of knowledgeable employers and graduate school admission officers. Its amazing (and amusing) to me how so many contributors to this forum buy into the USNews PA measurements as the most important factor in evaluating a school: in my (informed) opinion, this particular ranking is a joke.</p>

<p>Concerning the comments of JohnAdams12, he may believe that Lehigh has a better Chemical Engineering program than Tufts but others that I have spoken with would politely disagree. Myself, I don’t know enough about this particular program to be sure either way. However, I do know that the 25-75% SAT profile of Tufts Class of2012 engineering students is 660-740 Verbal, 660-740 Critical Reasoning, and (most importantly for engineers) 720-780 Math. Compare these stats with the engineering students at Brown University. By contrast, while I could not find the similar percentages for undergraduates in Lehigh’s P.C. Rossin Engineering School (try as I might), I note that the 25-75% stats for all Lehigh Class of 2013 students are 610-710 Verbal and 650-740 Math. Figuring the Lehigh engineering students probably have slightly higher middle 50% Math scores (and slightly lower middle 50% Verbal scores) than the Lehigh liberal arts students, it still seems to me that the Tufts student body is (arguably) more academically talented. This may be an important consideration for prospective attendees.</p>

<p>By the way: contrary to your assumption, Tufts is renowned for the amount of attention that its professors pay to its undergraduate students. This is one of the most attractive and noted features of the university among its ostensible “peer group” schools. And the actual ratio between professors and undergraduates at Tufts is 7:1, not 14:1. Where did you ever get that 14:1 statistic?.. you are completely off base.</p>

13

<p>“just the facts”, let me see if I can understand this:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>You don’t know anything about Chemical Engineering programs</p></li>
<li><p>You only look at the MATH SAT scores.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>yet</p>

<p>you conclude that the USNWR rankings, which look at many factors, are not realistic and that Tufts is a much better school to attend than Lehigh in Chemical Engineering even though you only cite the Math SAT scores for your reasoning.</p>

<p>oh…ok</p>

14

<p>*Correction, the student/teacher ratio as reported by Tufts, which oddly enough uses a USNWR reference dated September 2009 is 7:1, not the figure previously reported above, which came from the U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences.</p>

<p>Tufts does not provide a “Common Data Set” as most colleges, so it is not clear how the 7:1 ratio was calculated, because the Common Data Set requires for professional school faculty to be eliminated in the use of the ratio. It is not clear that Tufts is doing this when calculating the 7:1 ratio.</p>

15

<p>Total Endowment
Lehigh - $0.886 billion
Tufts - $1.103 billion</p>

<p>Total Endowment per Student
Lehigh - $127,000
Tufts - $110,000</p>

16

<p>**How happy are the alumni with their school?</p>

<p>Alumni Giving Rates**
Lehigh = 33%
Tufts = 23%</p>

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<p>Best Undergraduate Engineering Programs (USNWR)</p>

<p>Lehigh - #40
Tufts - #57</p>

18

<p>^^^
JohnAdams12, not one of your hasty retorts in any way diminishes my contentions that: 1) the name of the school is less important than the performance at the same; 2) many informed people that I have spoken with believe that Tufts’ chemical engineering education is better than Lehigh’s chemical engineering education, although I express no opinion on the same (as I stated previously); and 3) Tufts’ students generally have higher SAT scores than Lehigh students and are - arguably - academically more qualified as a result.</p>

<p>You have misstated my position regarding the USNews rankings: I stated only (and specifically) that the Peer Assessment ¶ ranking is a joke. Although to the extent that the peer assessment measurements are included as a percentage of the final rankings, the entire USNews ranking process is certainly tainted.</p>

<p>Tufts’ professor-student ratio is 7:1, rounded off. I believe, although I cannot now find the source, that the actual number is approximately 7.2:1.</p>

<p>The Tufts annual alumni giving rate percentage of 23% that you cited seems suspiciously low, but since I do not have access to the actual data, I will accept your assertion. However, I don’t believe that this measurement bears a strong or even significant correlation to the question of whether Tufts’ alumni are happy with their school. And even if it did, what does that have to do with the quality of the education furnished? Is Lehigh a better school than Carnegie Mellon, CalTech, University of Chicago, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, UC Berkley, and Georgetown (all of which are more highly ranked in USNews) because Lehigh’s alumni contribute at a higher annual rate?</p>

<p>As far as the endowment amount per student figures that you quoted… do you seriously think that the $17,000 difference makes any appreciable difference with respect to the quality of the school and education provided? What if you calculate your numbers per student with Tufts’ actualized full-time graduate and undergraduate student enrollment of 9,837 (instead of your figure of 10,030)… does that change your conclusion in any way? How about if you simply compare Tufts’ undergraduate student population of 5,111 full-time and 53 part-time versus your Lehigh undergraduate total of 4,876 in calculating endowment funds per student… that changes the picture a little, doesn’t it? Unless, of course, you believe (as I do) that endowment amount per student - without a detailed break-down as to whether and how those endowment funds are utilized - makes relatively little difference among highly selective institutions. </p>

<p>Just so it is clear… I believe that Lehigh is an excellent university. I expect that my son (who wants to be an engineer) will be applying to Lehigh, among other schools, next year. I simply can’t let inaccurate statements and/or spurious conclusions about Tufts’ overall quality go unchallenged.</p>

<p>Feel free to respond. And based upon your posting history, I’m sure you will.</p>

19

<p>This thread is old but I wanted to provide some information for future readers who have the same decision to make.</p>

<p>I am a graduate of Tufts with and electrical engineering degree and a masters from MIT. I’ve hired engineers for many years. All the schools here are on par with one another as far as engineering goes except for Villanova, which I would not consider at all.</p>

<p>They will all give you a very good education if you apply yourself. So the decision should be about money and location. My daughter and I visited Lehigh and neither of us liked the area or the campus because it was on the side of a hill. Tufts is in a nice area. Northeastern is in the city, some like that others don’t. UMass Amherst is in a rural area with a nice town (Amherst).</p>

<p>If it were me and I was paying the cost I would go to UMass because they have a very good Chem E program. The cost would be far less than the others especially for in state students. I also think the area is great. I would save the money and apply it to graduate school.</p>

<p>As far as engineering goes there are three schools in the country that stand above all others,… MIT, Stanford and Georgia Tech. The next 50 I would put in the same category.</p>

20

<p>Hoontasan, why would you not even consider Villanova?</p>