<p>just out:</p>
<p>Best</a> Engineering Schools - Graduate Schools - Education - US News and World Report</p>
<p>I see USC slipped down a bit. I wonder why?</p>
<p>Haha, maybe all their NAE members left?</p>
<p>I bet the folks down in Austin are grabbing their pitchforks and their torches… at least as far as aerospace goes…</p>
<p>by the way, when did USC move up so quickly in these rankings?</p>
<p>must be all that football money…</p>
<p>Last year, they soared up the rankings (if I remember right, they were at somewhere like 8) after being nowhere near that high before. It came out a few weeks afterwards that USC had fudged the number of NAE members they actually had. It wasn’t even something that would have reasonably been just a typo. They had 13 members, they claimed to have 30.</p>
<p>[University</a> of Southern California and the Engineering Rankings - Morse Code: Inside the College Rankings (usnews.com)](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2009/06/11/university-of-southern-california-and-the-engineering-rankings.html]University”>http://www.usnews.com/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2009/06/11/university-of-southern-california-and-the-engineering-rankings.html)</p>
<p>Who hoo! Stanford University (where I’ll be applying to) is still #2. Only #3 in aerospace though.</p>
<p>^^The shame of attending Stanford aerospace. I shudder at the thought! ;-)</p>
<p>I always sort of chuckle about graduate rankings though, since they don’t really matter that much. A good, well known advisor trumps a highly ranked school.</p>
<p>Wow, seven of the top 11 schools in my subfield are large publics. A few of them have been moving up recently.</p>
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<p>In academia, a well known researcher is a great benefit.</p>
<p>I don’t think industry appreciates the name recognition of advisors in academia as there is minimal interaction between industry and academia. When you were at Rolls Roye, I think you’d agree that few hiring managers knew very many academia researchers.</p>
<p>(Of course, I also don’t think that institution ranking has much influence in industry, either…I think past work experience is about all they really care about.)</p>
<p>In the whole company, no, there isn’t much name recognition, but if you look at the Rolls-Royce LibertyWorks or Boeing PhantomWorks or the Lockheed Skunkworks, there is a lot more name recognition in there because they are research-oriented divisions that work a lot more closely with academia.</p>
<p>Really, the most important thing is that you like working with your advisor and feel that you are benefiting from your time. In Bonehead’s case, I think we all can see that he really enjoys it and feels that his time is well spent in the research lab. That’s great.</p>
<p>It’s fun to brag about taking a class at the #2 rated school in aerospace (#1 according to them) but life’s not about a race to get ahead or about having the most prestigous names on the resume. It’s about enjoying what we do and making the most of the opportunities that we have. If you go to #78 on the USNWR ranking list but have a great research experience, you’ll probably better off than the guy that goes to #2 (#1 according to them) with a mediocre experience.</p>