Undergrad prestige when applying to grad school

[CSmajor5]

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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.

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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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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.

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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>