<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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