<p>I've recently been accepted in Stanford and Rice, and I have been trying to decide where I should attend for undergrad. Both are good fits for me, and both have good undergraduate teaching, so I'm having difficulty deciding where to attend. I will be majoring in Electrical Engineering and I want to go to grad school (probably in Biomedical Engineering), so I was wondering whether or not the prestige of the undergrad attended matters in grad schools admissions. Thank you!</p>
<p>It depends on the person reading your application, but in general it matters, but only a little. Rice is strong enough that it won’t preclude you from going anywhere.</p>
<p>Stanford of course. Rice is not no where close to Stanford’s prestige unless u have money issue.</p>
<p>I agree that Stanford is significantly more prestigious, but that wasn’t what the OP was asking.</p>
<p>The name of your undergraduate school matters far less than what you do while you’re an undergraduate. The important point, then, is to pick the school that will allow you to accomplish everything you think you might ever want to do as an undergraduate.</p>
<p>You won’t be able to do everything you might like to do. You probably even shouldn’t for your own health. What you’ll end up doing will be a random sampling of all the things you might have done, and hence going to a school with fewer opportunities for you could mean–if that random sampling isn’t very good–that you don’t get much done.</p>
<p>In your case, both Stanford and Rice have an incredible number of opportunities for undergraduates. I agree that Stanford is more prestigious than Rice, but I truly think it’s a very subtle issue as to whether there are more opportunities at Stanford for undergraduates–this is one of Rice’s main strengths. I think it will depend heavily on your specific field and how advanced you are in this field. (Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about electrical engineering to give you good recommendations on this.)</p>
<p>In short, the difference in prestige between Stanford and Rice is going to be nearly if not totally irrelevant in your graduate school applications. So pick the school that will help you make the rest of your applications–the parts that don’t consist of your school’s name–good.</p>
<p>I’m an electrical engineering senior at Rice so I can tell you about the program’s quality. I chose Rice over MIT for undergraduate. At first, I was afraid that it was the wrong decision (I did a coin flip to decide) since I thought that Rice may be less in terms of education rigor / quality. I was wrong, Rice is just as challenging and educational as any other top engineering school for undergraduate (top with regards to preparation and not prestige so Berkeley MIT CalTech CMU Cornell etc). It definitely carries less weight in industry if you go to Rice and look for a job outside of Texas, but, within Texas, Rice is the top respected school, even more so than Ivies. Also, for graduate school, all of the schools around the world will respect the Rice EE program.
Since you are looking at graduate school, Rice and Stanford will both have well-known electrical engineering faculty to provide good references, so the difference comes down to where you will get a better education and will get research more easily. I cannot speak for Stanford, but at Rice one simply asks a professor to do research is they will be accepted, in most cases. In terms of education preparation, Rice’s curriculum is just as hard, in some instances harder, than MIT’s. The reason I can say this is because, for a few of my courses, we used the MIT equivalent course’s material for a practice quiz and it was a joke compared to what was given for our actual exam.<br>
In short, go where you will get more financial aid / scholarship money and are happier because each one will carry equivalent weight for admission into graduate school and each has well-respected faculty for good reference letters.</p>
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<p>Highly doubt this. Texas Instrument hired most of their EE from UT Austin and Georgia Tech. Rice have great EE program but you passed on MIT for RICE? YOU MAD? and you decided this by a coin flip? </p>
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<p>wow you have the balls to say Rice EE program is better than MIT program. I know someone in MIT and he’s now working for the government. He studied literally 6~8 hours per day during the week for his EE program so don’t even compare Rice and MIT. </p>
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<p>I bet you took the full scholarship that are offered to several students who have great GPA and SAT score in high school. I know Vanderbilt and Rice give out lots of full tuition scholarship to attract more students to their school. Seriously, Stanford’s EE program will give you better outcome in education and job. Don’t listen to biased opinion from Rice who claims its EE program outranks MIT.</p>
<p>I got into Rice, Cornell, MIT and UT and got no financial aid / scholarships anywhere so no that wasn’t why I chose it.<br>
CSmajor, everyone at my engineering program studies all of the time–that is true at any top program. I can look up common statistics left and right, but here’s a good one: </p>
<p>[The</a> Chronicle: Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/stats/productivity/page.php?year=2007&primary=5&secondary=50&bycat=Go]The”>http://chronicle.com/stats/productivity/page.php?year=2007&primary=5&secondary=50&bycat=Go)</p>
<p>That is a reasonable metric for quality of faculty. </p>
<pre><code>Anyway, my quote talking about the MIT equivalent course was not talking about the whole program. If you read my sentence, it says: “in some instances.”
Now, why did I choose between Rice and MIT with a coin flip? I knew that Rice and MIT both have very strong engineering programs that could challenge me however much I wanted to be challenged. I visited both schools and liked both schools for various reasons but could not make a good decision on why I would be happier at one over the other. One cannot get the whole experience of a university from just a weekend visit and a brochure, so deciding is just as good as doing a coin flip.
Did I ever say Rice outranked Stanford or MIT. No, I did not ever say that. My WHOLE argument was that the difficulty and quality of education was comparable at any of the top engineering schools, so the only basis for a sound decision is where one gets more money and is happier at. How do I know Rice is well regarded? I have several friends my last year’s class that went to graduate school: Berkeley, Stanford and MIT were among the schools they went to.
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<p>Rice is a good school for engineering period. Regardless of the rankings, the quality between Rice and Stanford engineering students would really be negligible. I cannot say much for other ice departments though</p>
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<p>This shows the quality of the the publication for the EE faculty at Rice university but it ** does not represent overall quality of EE program ** . I know one professor who graduate from Rice University with PhD and now currently holding DSP chair professor at Georgia Tech : James McClellan </p>
<p>He published a book regarding DSP and it is used all over the top ranking engineer programs.</p>
<p>Although, I agree that Rice have great EE program, I wouldn’t say it is as prestigeous as Stanford or MIT.</p>
<p>Prestige is not a huge factor in graduate school admissions after a certain point. The OP’s question was will one provide a significant leg up in the graduate admissions process, and that is a no. Though MIT and Stanford are more prestigious names, their program difficulty is equal to any top 10 engineering school and, for graduate school acceptance, they are all looked at similarly. Industry jobs, however, do looked differently at Stanford and MIT over others like Rice.</p>
<p>Stanford gets my vote especially if you later decide to switch majors during undergrad.
Palo Alto>Houston.
Have you visited both campuses?</p>
<p>As others have already said undergraduate prestige doesn’t really matter too much when it comes to graduate school admissions, and the difference between Rice and Stanford will be pretty negligible in that area. Choose the place where you feel more comfortable.</p>
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<p>Uhhh… you must be abnormally obsessed with prestige even by CC standards if you think it somehow takes “balls” to say that a course offered at some school was more rigorous or more difficult than the corresponding course at MIT.</p>
<p>Yes, MIT is MIT–it has a prestigious name. That obviously doesn’t mean that every course offered at MIT is the most difficult course in that subject in the country.</p>
<p>The difference in prestige between MIT and Rice will be irrelevant for graduate school admissions. As always, once you’re at a top school all that matters is what you do as an undergraduate.</p>
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<p>What course is harder/easier is a subjective matter. Some people might feel certain course to be easier where as others might feel it’s harder than the others.</p>
<p>But statement like this: </p>
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<p>Most MIT students probably would hear this as an attack toward their MIT EE program. I would too if I heard my school’s name compared to other school with not even top 10 EE ranked program from nation. Well I am sure there are school which emphasize heavily on certain course than the others. While I was doing my CompE, I felt DSP core requirement course to be overbearing and didn’t see the reason for me to learn this in depth when I have no interest going into DSP field. Other students felt microelectronic and VLSI design to be much more worse than DPS course but like I said, difficulty of course is subjective matter and difficulty in some subject can vary from school to school. </p>
<p>The op is asking whether he/she can get into better graduate school going to Stanford or Rice. Sorry but it’s no doubt that Stanford is better ranked/program than Rice. I don’t know how well you can twist your word to give more favor toward Rice, but Stanford is located in silicon valley, the location of all major electronic corporation. He/she will have better opportunity for internship/top research experience and probably easier/better chance to get into graduate school within Stanford which is ranked 1st in graduate ranking for Electrical Engineer and 2nd in undergraduate program. For biomedical, he/she have to look for other graduate school like best would be JHU, UCSD, Gatech, Duke ETC. </p>
<p>I don’t think I am rankaholic. There are clear reasons as to why some colleges are in top 10 ranked school where as others don’t. You probably have no doubt that MIT, Caltech, Berkeley, and Stanford to be the top engineer schools in the nation and why oh why are they in top 5 ranking schools? where as some schools are just below that ranking? Although I can’t say all the rankings produced by USnews are correct or comparing ranking of school with difference in ranking of between 1~3 would be miniscule difference on rankings below 10, but I believe there are clear reasons as to why some schools are in top 10 ranking schools where as others don’t. Best reasons would be quality of education/research and outcome of their career. </p>
<p>You are right. It’s what you do in undergraduate that gets you into top engineer program. I am sure if the Rice university student graduated with top 5% of his class and have extensive research experience + great recommendation letter, he/she might have better chance than Stanford student graduated with top 25% with no research experience. Whether he/she is better prepared for graduate school or better admission to graduate school is up to his/her performance and endeavor during his undergraduate study. But there’s no doubt what school plays big role in it.</p>