<p>Could you rank these in terms of both undergrad academic experience and engineering programs?</p>
<p>CalTech
MIT
Stanford
Harvey Mudd
Olin
Berkeley
UCLA</p>
<p>IMO</p>
<ol>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Cal Tech</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Harvey Mudd</li>
<li>Berkeley</li>
<li>Olin</li>
<li>UCLA</li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Harvey Mudd</li>
<li>Caltech</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Olin</li>
<li>Berkeley</li>
<li>UCLA</li>
</ol>
<p>atomic, it is nice that you support your school up there. However, your ranking is clearly inaccurate.</p>
<p>Stanford/MIT
Cal Tech
Harvey Mudd/Olin
Berk (not really undergrad focused)
UCLA</p>
<p>Cornell should definately be up there. (yes, I know it wasn't on the list, but it is number 4 in the country).</p>
<p>NUGrad, MIT is no more undergrad focused than Cal. Neither are Caltech or Stanford. There are roughly 7.5 Engineering PhD candidates per faculty member at Stanford and close to 6 PhD Engineering candidates per faculty member at Caltech. There is no way that those professors, who must raise research funding money, publish relevant articles and journals, manage over three quarters of a million dollars worth of research and act as academic advisors to 6-7 PhD students at any point in time, can give undergrads any attention. </p>
<p>Which is why Harvey Mudd and Olin don't belong on the same list as the other 4. HMC and Olin have very limited curriculae and academic offerings, but their faculties are more focused on undergrads and instruction. Cal, Caltech, MIT and Stanford offer incredible curriculae and course sellection and access the the most modern facilities and cutting edge research, but undergrads must really push themselves very hard to benefit from those offerings because the programs at those universities will not slow down for them.</p>
<p>
[quote]
atomic, it is nice that you support your school up there. However, your ranking is clearly inaccurate.</p>
<p>Stanford/MIT
Cal Tech
Harvey Mudd/Olin
Berk (not really undergrad focused)
UCLA
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Think again. You say Berkeley is "not really undergrad focused," but that is also true for MIT, Caltech, Stanford, and UCLA as well. The OP asks for a ranking that considers BOTH engineering programs AND academic experience. The 4 research universities have an advantage in engineering programs, but HMC has the advantage in academic experience in my opinion.</p>
<p>I think it's justifiable to say that MIT, Stanford, and Caltech are more undergrad-focused than Berkeley, just because of the numbers of students at Berkeley.</p>
<p>Although... at MIT, I never felt like an "undergrad focus" was necessary -- I enjoyed being treated like a grad student, which I felt that all of my professors did. There aren't too many distinctions between undergrads and grad students at MIT, since undergrads and grad students take many of the same classes and work in the same labs. My fiance (who will graduate in June) actually had a few grad students working under him in lab for a time.</p>
<p>EDIT: And by my calculations, the PhD student:faculty ratio at MIT is only 3.6:1 (faculty</a> numbers, student</a> numbers). Are MIT's grad programs that much smaller than Stanford's and Berkeley's?</p>
<ol>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Stanford
Harvey Mudd</li>
<li>Caltech</li>
<li>Olin</li>
<li>Cal</li>
<li>UCLA</li>
</ol>
<p>at least we can all agree UCLA is last, right?</p>
<p>1) Stanford
2) Berkeley/MIT
3) Caltech
4) all the rest</p>
<p>For undergrad:</p>
<ol>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Stanford </li>
<li>Mudd/Olin</li>
<li>CalTech</li>
<li>Berkeley </li>
<li>UCLA</li>
</ol>
<p>You folks know that these rankings are derived without criteria, right? For example, where would you go to school if you wanted to study explosives or petroleum engineering? Do any of these schools even have a program in explosives? </p>
<p>This is not the fault of the responders. If the OP doesn't ask a better-defined question, the result is always going to be this sort of "Says you!" thread.</p>
<p>" For example, where would you go to school if you wanted to study explosives or petroleum engineering? Do any of these schools even have a program in explosives? "</p>
<p>Lol. Then you come to me and study pyrology and plume phenomenology with me. :)</p>
<p>Just because a school may not offer something that specific doesn't mean that there is not accessible faculty at the school who have PhDs and experience in those fields. Many people like to learn about many different things...</p>
<p>And not to mention...engineers are not technicians. Technicians deal with the nitty-gritty of explosives. Engineers tell them how much force will be needed where. High explosives classes are offered to professional technicians and are typically several days long and must be renewed every few years. If you are interested in the study of shaped charges, you are going to need a lot more background than "a program in explosives". An aerospace or general engineering currcilum would fill this void quite well due to the extensive gasodynamics involved.</p>
<p>Guys for UNDERGRAD Harvey Mudd and Olin should be totally up there!</p>
<p>they are......</p>
<p>I meant in the rankings compiled by people...they should be placed higher. I mean they are the only purely Undergrad Engineering colleges up there.</p>
<p>I think Cornell offers the best combination of undergraduate engineering education and undergraduate overall experience. Stanford would be second because it has such a preponderance of graduate students.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I think Cornell offers the best combination of undergraduate engineering education and undergraduate overall experience. Stanford would be second because it has such a preponderance of graduate students.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>IMO Cornell is lacking in its academic experience. I've heard that freshman classes there are huge. MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Olin, and Mudd all offer a better academic experience than Cornell. The engineering program there is good, but Cornell is huge and I don't think the students receive as much personal attention as at the other schools.</p>
<p>At Harvey Mudd, 64% of the classes have fewer than 20 students. At Cornell, 61% of the classes have fewer than 20 students. Cornell and Harvey Mudd have nearly the same class sizes. The individual colleges at Cornell are like LACs. There are a few large lecture classes for freshman like the famous Intro to Psych but they are incredibly entertaining. That's why they have become such a tradition.</p>
<p>Collegehelp, Accounting lectures at Cornell have over 300 people! I hear AEM classes are HUUUUGE.</p>