Undecided which school to go to for Engineering

^It’s possible because most IIT grads are engineers whereas at other schools, most are not. They were not comparing apple to apple, that is school of engineering A vs school of engineering B, when they made that claim, which I think is misleading.

@boneh3ad

You totally missed my point. The difference between UIUC and Northwestern is smaller (if any) than that between Northwestern and IIT. I am countering the notion that UIUC is far better than Northwestern in engineering.

I also listed starting salary, not just rankings. These are the only published quantitative data available. I can go on to argue Northwestern probably provides better research opportunities than anyone else and has the most well-established co-op program if I want to. Don’t make it sound like I blindly follow rankings.

@IWannaHelp
So if I can’t get into northwestern my best bet is IIT then?

Mint chocolate chip

No, you’ve totally missed the point. My point is that who’s to say which school is objectively better than another in a given field or subfield? There is no truly objective answer to that. You could certainly say “well UIUC has a slightly better overall engineering reputation than Northwestern”, and you would probably be justified in that, but that doesn’t necessarily make it better. “Better” is such a subjective concept in these sorts of situations that it really doesn’t do any good to argue about how much better a set of schools that are all very good are relative to one another. All of the OP’s school choices, plus UIUC, are going to serve him just fine, particularly if the goal is to stay in Chicagoland.

First, rankings are perhaps quasi-quantitative. There are a lot of factors that the ranking systems include in their ranking scheme that are really hand-wavy, and the whole process is not really great for the purposes of saying “School A is ranked 2 and school B is ranked 8, so school A is better.”

Second, salary is quantitative, but it is far from unbiased. It depends on so many things that are far more important than a school’s ranking. The most important of these things is geography. Given that we are talking about only engineers and only schools located within a few hours of each other that largely serve the same major metropolitan areas, I would be substantially more surprised if their starting salaries weren’t all very comparable.

I’d like to hear your reasoning on that, because it’s not true. Northwestern, UIUC, and UIC all share the same Carnegie classification and all have what is considered “highest research activity” (or what used to be called an R1 university). They will all provide plenty of research opportunities. IIT has “higher research activity”, so it is only a step behind that and will still offer plenty of opportunity.

Again, based on what? How do you define “most well-established”? I can’t speak to UIC and IIT, but I know at UIUC, they have ample co-op opportunities. I don’t honestly have any idea how you can say that Northwestern’s is somehow superior to all the others.

Fine. How about this: don’t blindly follow rankings and salary data, both of which are flawed metrics, and incorrect assessments of co-op and research strengths.

This is a situation where the OP really just needs to go tour all the schools and figure out where he fits in the best and will get a good value for his money. Since he clearly wants to stay in Chicagoland, it’s not like the national reputation of the school is going to be a huge factor here, and reputation matters less when you are looking on the local level.

@boneh3ad

When two other posters implied/claimed UIUC is far better, you were silent. But when I provided some kind of quantitative evidence to counter it to just put them equal (not one being better than another, which is essentially what you were trying to say), you lectured me on how my data were not perfect. That seems inconsistent.

I am aware salary data is not perfect. For example, the school with more electrical/computer engineering grads is gonna have higher average. But there’s nothing better than published data to refute those claims.

Co-op is not the same thing as internship and I am not saying one is better than another (it has its negative). If you look it up, you’ll see Northwestern has a very structured and extensive co-op program for those who want it. You can even earn a certificate in it and has as many as 6 quarters of it. It’s a 5-year program (one of the negatives).

As for research opportunities, I admit this is more subjective and involves a bit of guesswork and math - look up the research funding and faculty/student ratio. Basically, UIUC is a bit more than twice the size in terms of funding and faculty but the number of undergrads is more than five times bigger. That means there are less spots to go around for every student. IIT is way lower in research funding while having larger student to faculty ratio.

I applaud the effort to try and approach things more quantitatively, but the problem is that when anyone tries to split hairs when it comes to comparing things like engineering programs, there really isn’t an objective, quantitative way to do it. I only jumped on you because you were using flawed data to make what seemed like very definitive statements. Data makes claims look a lot stronger, but to people who aren’t as familiar with the data and its biases, it can bring a false sense of security. I didn’t want, first and foremost, the OP getting the idea that the data were ironclad proof of anything. Second, I had no way of knowing whether you understood the biases of the data or not because you didn’t make any kind of statement to that effect.

I am well aware of the difference between co-ops and internships. I am also aware that doing a co-op program often means doing your degree in 5 years. That is not unique to Northwestern. Perhaps you are just in the situation where your only experience is at Northwestern so this seems novel to you, but basically every major engineering program has a co-op option where students can split semesters (or quarters) at school and at a job and end up taking one extra year to graduate while earning credits, salary, and work experience for the co-op. For people who want most of that but don’t want to spend 5 years in school, there are internships.

None of this is unique to Northwestern. If I throw out examples from my own undergraduate experience, I know lots of people who did the exact thing you describe while at UIUC. I have no doubt Northwestern has great co-op opportunities. Then again, I also have no doubt that most major engineering schools have great co-op opportunities. The major differences in co-op programs from one university to another are typically which companies take co-ops from that school and whether or not a co-op is required (it is in some places).

You also have to factor in how many people actually want to do research in the first place. Personally, I am 100% in support of undergraduate research. It played a pretty big role in my education and an even bigger role in my decision to attend graduate school. Still, not everyone actually wants undergradaute research, so while you claim (based on funding per faculty) that the two schools in question have the same supply, there is no guarantee that the demand is as dramatically different as the student count (it could be even more different as well, there’s really no way to know).

Furthermore, not all research is created equal in terms of funding, and not all projects have the same amount of research expenditure directed toward undergraduate workers. Professors write grant proposals and ask for a certain amount of money for the various things they are proposing, and some like to include undergraduates while others don’t. So, while the research expenditure per faculty may be different, the percentage of faculty who like to hire undergraduates may also be quite different. The vast majority of research money goes toward paying graduate students, paying overhead, paying faculty summer salary, and equipment purchases. Whatever is left over will then sometimes get earmarked for undergraduate research assistants.

Also, different sorts of research tend to bring in more money. For example, experimental studies and medical-type studies tend to draw a lot more funding than doing computations. Northwestern has a much stronger footprint in the medical world than do these other schools. Of course, those sorts of experiments also tend to incur greater overhead, particularly when using live animals or cultures in the work. So, it is entirely possible that Northwestern skews more heavily into research that brings in more money and incurs more overhead, which negates their advantage somewhat.

Speaking of overhead, different schools charge different overhead rates on research grants. What this means is that if a professor applies for a grant for a project, typically somewhere around 1/3 of that money goes to the university as overhead to pay for staff salaries and for other supporting things. Overhead rates can vary quite a bit, though, and therefore so can the amount of those grants that is actually available for use by faculty. I’ve seen them as high as 70+% and as low as 40%. As it turns out, the overhead rates at UIUC and Northwestern are nearly the same so that is a non-issue here, but it is something to keep in mind in the figure when you go to look at statistics like this.

All of this isn’t to say that Northwestern does or doesn’t have more research opportunities for certain. The point is to illustrate that there are a lot of factors that go into research expenditure and how much gets spend on undergraduates (and I’ve only recently learned about a lot of these as I’ve dug deeper into the world of academic grant writing). It is difficult to draw any real conclusions based on the simple data that is available. Now, is it fair to say that Northwestern probably has more undergraduate research opportunity than the others based on this? Yes, that’s probably fair. However, you can’t make definitive statements of fact based solely on research expenditure per faculty. I will also point out that, while I was doing my BS at UIUC, I had no problem getting research positions, nor did any of my friends who were interested. Most of them, however, weren’t really interested.

Sorry for the word wall. I really wasn’t sure about how to explain all of that with any greater brevity.

@boneh3ad
What do you think about actuarial Science?
Is it better than an engineer degree?

How do you define “better” in this case?

The entry level actuarial positions are saturated - my company had 8 internships open and we had 400 applicants.

@boneh3ad
In this case as a more valuable or has a more opportunities to get a job

The best resource you can use for that is the [Occupational Outlook Handbook from the Bureau of Labor Statistics](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/), and even it isn’t a crystal ball. No one can predict the future. When I started my undergraduate studies, everyone would have thought my job prospects were all good. After 4 years, I graduated into the worst recession in nearly a century. Choose the degree that interests you the most.

@steve0533 - actuarial science is a fine career if you enjoy it. The good thing about it is that you can get into the industry with any solid STEM degree. Study engineering and then decide where you want to go for your career. Your degree will give you a lot of options.

@IWannaHelp, I’ve been out of town and didn’t read all the back and forth, so apologies if this was stated.

USNWR engineering rankings involve ZERO objective data. Their methodology is simple…100% institutional reputation. They can be laughingly wrong. Harvard is a classic example. Most engineers wouldn’t mention them in the same breath as middle tier state schools. Yet, they are highly ranked.

They also don’t rank schools that offer PhD programs with schools that don’t. There are good programs in both.

UIUC, in engineering circles, which is all that matters, has and has had for many years, one of the most respected engineering programs in the nation.

@boneh3ad @xraymancs @eyemgh
What do you guys think about software engineer? Is that a good major to pursue? Also any recommendations for a university to go to?

I think if you find coding interesting, you’d like SE or CS. If you don’t you won’t. There’s no way any of us can know that about you.

What is the difference between SE and CS?

I’ve basically already said it doesn’t really matter what I think. It matter what you want to do for a career. I could love software engineering but that’s no guarantee you wouldn’t hate it. I think we have basically beat the “which university” question to death here in this thread so you will need a more specific question if you want a fruitful answer.

@steve0533, when you get into the minutiae, there are probably differences, but really it’s semantics. At most schools the curricula and job prospects are very similar.

In other words, look for a school that is a good fit and gives a lot of bang for the buck (in state costs or scholarships/financial aid).