<p>I was wondering how much the engineering rankings actually matter when choosing a school. Two questions about schools I am looking at:</p>
<li>Is there a huge difference between a school ranked #9 (Purdue) and a school ranked #14 (Virginia Tech) if there is any at all.</li>
<li>Is there a huge difference between a school ranked in the top 15 (Virginia Tech/Purdue) and a school ranked in the 50s (Clemson, Pittsburgh)?</li>
</ol>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>most of those rankings are based on name brand only.
for a better list, this site is great:</p>
<p>[FSP</a> Index Top Performing Individual Programs](<a href=“http://www.academicanalytics.com/TopSchools/TopPrograms.aspx]FSP”>http://www.academicanalytics.com/TopSchools/TopPrograms.aspx)</p>
<p>^^^That list is great for prospective graduate students, but some of the fields listed for some of the schools are not available as undergraduate programs.</p>
<p>OP, It seems to me that the important point for undergraduates is availability of courses every semester so you can graduate on time, accessibility of professors to undergraduates so you can get to know someone well enough to ask for a recommendation, connections to internships, research opportunities for undergraduates (preferably prior to senior year), and enough external research grants and general university funding to keep facilities modern and in good repair.</p>
<p>Additional factors which may or may not be important to individual students: 4-yr graduation rate, and opportunity to take classes outside of engineering–and quality of such courses.</p>
<p>Not as easy to determine as some rank plucked from a magazine–in which graduate program strength is all mixed up with undergraduate programs, but those are the sorts of things you should be asking about.</p>
<p>^^ Midmo: the USNWR rankings are for graduate programs as well.</p>
<p>usnews has a separate undergraduate ranking, despite what many hypothesize, that’s why they have two rankings.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Two notes of caution about the FSP index:</p>
<p>[ol]
[<em>] The FSP ranking does not apply to individual universities, but rather to individual graduate programs within a university. Hence, the same university may have two or more programs ranked under the same category.
[</em>] The FSP is based on scholarly productivity measures, basically number of publications
and citations per faculty and total (absolute) number of publications and citations per program (considering all faculty affiliated with that program). Generally speaking, scholarly productivity tends to be highly correlated with peer reputation, thus one should expect some degree of overlap between the FSP ranking and peer-assessment based rankings. The correlation with quality of undergraduate education is weaker though. Besides, FSP tells us little about undergraduate selectivity, except for the fact many bright undergraduate applicants tend to be attracted to schools that have a high reputation in terms of scholarly productivity.
[/ol]</p>
<p>hopetogetrice: </p>
<p>yes, I completely agree that the USNews rankings do not, in fact, reflect undergraduate opportunities extremely well. That is the “magazine” I was referring to. The peer review contribution is large, and in a field as heavily dependent on external peer-reviewed research grants and contracts as engineering, the “peers” doing the assessment cannot avoid being more familiar with programs with large contingents of graduate and post-graduate researchers. </p>
<p>kb10, the rankings are separate in theory, but less than that in reality, for the reasons I suggested above.</p>
<p>bruno123, I agree. That kind of assessment is a useful tool for graduate students and post-docs, whose focus is far narrower than undergraduates (I hope so, anyway).</p>
<p>I don’t think there is a big difference between Purdue and Virginia Tech but there is between top 15 and 50s. I think Purdue has the best rep among the 4 you named.</p>
<p>great thanks for the responses everyone, so when you say that there isn’t a big difference between purdue and virginia tech does that mean that purdue is a little bit better than virginia tech or that both schools are about the same level.</p>
<p>And right, I’m looking at civil/environmental engineering so I should probably look at which school has the better program.</p>
<p>Also, just wondering, if I choose to go to Clemson instead of Purdue or Virginia Tech for engineering (since I feel more comfortable at Clemson), what would I miss out and would it affect my job search as I near the end of college?</p>
<p>bump…</p>
<p>Midmo: An interesting exercise to assess the correlation between prestige and scholarly productivity would be to compare the FSP ranking with the USN&WR graduate rankings (which are solely prestige-based). </p>
<p>MIT engineering for example does well both in the scholarly productivity ranking and in the prestige-based ranking, but its prestige appears to be somewhat “overrated” compared to faculty scholarly output, i.e. MIT programs consistently rank # 1 in peer-assessment at USN&WR, even though, according to FSP, they are not #1 in academic productivity. </p>
<p>On the other hand, GA Tech for example does very well in the specialty peer-assessment rankings (USN&WR), even though comparatively fewer of its graduate engineering programs are listed under the top 10 most productive programs in the corresponding specialties/areas according to the FSP index. </p>
<p>I suspect that, if we were to compute proper correlation coefficients, we would find a positive correlation between research excellency (as measured by FSP) and peer prestige (as measured by US News), but I can’t tell a priori how high that correlation would be. </p>
<p>Curiously, from a quick look at the two rankings, it seems that electrical engineering is one of the areas where the FSP and USN&WR lists differ the most (less so than e.g. in mechanical, civil or aerospace engineering). I wonder why that is the case.</p>
<p>Just for those who are curious, the top 10 graduate programs in EE according to US News are (based on peer assessment only):</p>
<p>Rank/School Average assessment
score (5.0=highest)
<p>The top ten ** most scholarly productive ** programs in the same area according to the FSP index are however: </p>
<p>Electrical Engineering</p>
<p>[ol]
[<em>] Rice U. (Electrical & Computer Engineering)
[</em>] Cornell U. (Electrical and Computer Engineering)
[<em>] U. Illinois - UC (Electrical and Computer Engineering)
[</em>] Carnegie Mellon U. (Electrical and Computer Engineering)
[<em>] MIT (Electrical Engineering)
[</em>] UC - Berkeley (Electrical Engineering)
[<em>] Duke U. (Electrical and Computer Engineering)
[</em>] Johns Hopkins U. (Electrical and Computer Engineering)
[<em>] UC - San Diego (Electrical and Computer Engineering)
[</em>] Purdue U. (Electrical Engineering)
[/ol]</p>
<p>Ranking based on scholar productivity can change a lot from one year to the next. The same professor can publish four papers in one year and then none in the next. It’d be better if there are some sort of long-term averages.</p>
<p>After all, peer assessment is about reputation and brand which are long-term oriented; a more valid comparsion would be peer assessment vs, say, 10-yr FSP average.</p>
<p>1 Princeton U. (Electrical Engineering)
2 Cal Tech (Electrical Engineering)
3 Cornell U. (Electrical and Computer Engineering)
4 Rice U. (Electrical & Computer Engineering)
5 Stanford U. (Electrical Engineering)
6 Carnegie Mellon U. (Robotics)
7 UC - Santa Barbara (Computer Engineering)
8 Carnegie Mellon U. (Electrical and Computer Engineering)
9 U. Illinois - UC (Electrical and Computer Engineering)
10 Yale U. (Electrical Engineering) </p>
<p>This should be the real rank for EE, I don’t know why this is categorized on the FSP index as Computer Engineering rank and in the EE rank they didn’t include the top 2 Princeton and Caltech in it, anyways, I checked the detailed data, and both Computer engineering and Electrical Engineering use the exact same data. It’s probably because they feel bad leaving MIT out of the top 10 rank…jk, anyways, you can check it out yourself</p>
<p>[Chronicle</a> Facts & Figures: Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/stats/productivity/page.php?year=2007&primary=5&secondary=49&bycat=Go]Chronicle”>http://chronicle.com/stats/productivity/page.php?year=2007&primary=5&secondary=49&bycat=Go)</p>
<p>Now you have Caltech, Princeton and Stanford in the picture and this seem to be more similar to the US news EE rank, </p>
<p>Regarding the US news, the engineering rank is biased in which it favors bigger school(total expenditure and total PHD awarded weight more than 21%) and the individual department rank is I think also a little biased since i suspect that “academic peers” will think bigger department with 20 good professors to be better than an equally good department with only 5 people in it.</p>
<p>Anyways, there are tons of amazing universities in US and I really think individuals should visit the universities because all of them has very distinctive style and character that might fit one person but not another.</p>
<p>Scholarly productivity ranks are not an indicator of academic excellence. It does not factor in the importancde of those publications. The Peer Scores within one specific field is a much better indicator. </p>
<p>And liuchuanfeng, I am sorry, but any ranking of EE departments without MIT or Berkeley lacks credibility. And Yale and Rice over Michigan and Georgia Tech? That list leaves much to be desired.</p>
<p>Contrary to what Alexandre says, the FSP does take into account the “importance of those publications” since it includes metrics such as total number of paper citations per faculty. Of course, publications that are “not important” do not get many citations. Number of citations is the basis of impact factor indices and all other universally recognized measures of scholarly excellency.</p>
<p>Peer assessment on the other hand may be a good indicator if it is properly done. USN&WR’s peer survey in particular is rather poor, as it is limited to deans of colleges of engineering or deans of graduate studies. In many (though by no means all) cases, deans are senior faculty who are no longer very active in research and have mostly administrative jobs. </p>
<p>As for MIT, it is actually ranked # 5 in scholarly productivity for EE, so it ranks pretty well. UC Berkeley on the other hand ranks # 6. The fact that both do not show up in the Computer Engineering ranking may be because their academic output must have been probably counted under the CS category instead, see rankings below.</p>
<p>Top 10 programs in Computer Science (FSP Index)</p>
<p>Rice U. (Computer Science)
Stanford U. (Computer Science)
UC - Berkeley (Computer Science)
Carnegie Mellon U. (Computer Science)
Princeton U. (Computer Science)
Carnegie Mellon U. (Machine Learning & Statistics)
U. Pennsylvania (Computer and Information Science)
MIT (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science)
Cal Tech (Computer Science)
UC - Los Angeles (Computer Science)</p>
<p>Top 10 programs in Electrical Engineering (FSP Index)</p>
<p>Rice U. (Electrical & Computer Engineering)
Cornell U. (Electrical and Computer Engineering)
U. Illinois - UC (Electrical and Computer Engineering)
Carnegie Mellon U. (Electrical and Computer Engineering)
MIT (Electrical Engineering)
UC - Berkeley (Electrical Engineering)
Duke U. (Electrical and Computer Engineering)
Johns Hopkins U. (Electrical and Computer Engineering)
UC - San Diego (Electrical and Computer Engineering)
Purdue U. (Electrical Engineering)</p>
<p>bruno, there are citations, and there are CITATIONS. It does not take much to write a paper worthy of citation. But the papers writen by faculty at schools like GT and Michigan are, on average, far lengthier and more impactful than papers written by faculty at say Duke or Rice. The average project run by faculty at GT and Michigan run in the millions of dollars and often take years to complete. That is not the case with research projects at Duke or Rice. As a result, faculty at major research programs will probably not publish as many papers as frequently. </p>
<p>Every single professor on Earth will laugh at you if you suggest that somehow, MIT were ranked other than #1 in EE and Cal out of the top 3. And where is Stanford? Not even ranked among the top 10 in EE? And GT and Michigan are unquestioned top 10 programs as well. So, let us sum this up. MIT and Cal ranked #5 and #6 respectively… Stanford, GT and Michigan not even ranked in the top 10? I am sorry, but that ranking makes no sense. Those 5 programs, along with Caltech and UIUC are considered the top EE programs in the World. </p>
<p>"Peer assessment on the other hand may be a good indicator if it is properly done. USN&WR’s peer survey in particular is rather poor, as it is limited to deans of colleges of engineering or deans of graduate studies. "</p>
<p>That is not entirely correct. Only Deans of Engineering programs and senior faculty are asked to contribute to the peer assessment score for undergraduate Engineering and Business programs. Those men and women know exactly what their peer institutions are up to.</p>
<p>Hi all,</p>
<p>Can anybody tell me the comparative rank of Uni. of South Carolina and UT Arlington in Electrical Engineering (PhD program)? I need this info very much. If it is from US News rank, it would be better, if anybody having any other credible ranking list pls don’t hesitate to tell that.</p>
<p>I need this info urgently.</p>
<p>I would give the edge to UT Arlington based on larger size. They are similar in selectivity. This is based on the overall engineering program PhD, not electrical specifically. They are not ranked specificall in electrical in US News.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Alexandre,</p>
<p>Are you in academia ? Do you follow the technical literature closely ? Are you a member of an editorial board or a frequent reviewer for any major journal ? I am just wondering how you can back up your claim that GT’s or UMich’s publications currently have “greater impact” than Duke’s or Rice’s. </p>
<p>Anyway, the FSP index doesn’t tell you which graduate program is the best in any given area. It tells you though which program is the ** most productive ** based, as I said, on universally recognized, objective measures of academic excellence such as publications per faculty and citations per faculty. </p>
<p>I guess that, if you wanted to criticize the validity of the FSP index, you should start by investigating the reliability of its database. If data on publications/citations are unreliable or placed under a category it ought not to be in, then there may genuine distortions in the rankings. Otherwise, I think it is a much better indicator of quality than USN&WR’s prestige poll.</p>