<p>to reply to what boneh3ad said…okay…so maybe it doesn’t matter how selective your school is…or how hardcore it is…or how many PhDs they put out…then what is really left to rank schools in terms of how good they are??</p>
<p>now you say all that really matters is how competent you are at your job…and whether or not you can get along with your coworkers…well i honestly don’t see why rank at all then…i think all ABET certified engineering programs (from the engineering program at like Kansas State…all the way to the engineering program at Caltech) are pretty much the same…they cover the same material in the end that you need to know for your job…and in terms of how you get along with coworkers…well i think your inherent personality has the most to do with that…</p>
<p>Honestly, there isn’t that much point to it. You will generally see a pattern of more technically competent people per capita as the ranks go higher, but they are by no means perfect. Major companies recruit from two sources: top schools and schools that are known in their region to have good programs. You could easily have a Kansas State guy working alongside an MIT guy in many situations. In fact, I have colleagues from each in my current grad program.</p>
<p>i guess my only real “beef” with the ranking system is seeing my alma matter’s rankings drop a lot when i know how intense it is, and what type of students go there…and i really didn’t care much for the rankings either till i joined CC and some people who didn’t know any better referred to us as a second tier program just by looking at rankings, whereas people who actually know RPI pretty well know that we’re pretty top notch…</p>
<p>normal psychological reaction really…and i guess i don’t, and probably never will, understand why we get butchered in rankings…</p>
<p>I wonder if some of it has to do with the city you guys are in. I was deciding between CMU and RPI, thought both schools were great, but felt way more comfortable in Pittsburgh than Troy.</p>
<p>you know, I think every single engineering student at a top school can say that they went through hell…and I think even students at Georgia Tech</p>
<p>i could see location having something to do with it…Pittsburgh is a decent well known city…whereas Troy is rundown, sketchy, and even pretty dangerous for a tiny city nobody’s ever heard of…</p>
<p>and yeah i totally agree that engineering students at all the top schools went through hell…i never said anything about Georgia Tech being easy…i just always, in my head, figured Caltech was ridiculous compared to all other schools in the country (including even MIT)…</p>
<p>i always figured RPI, CMU, Cornell, Georgia Tech, and other schools of the like to have pretty comparable workloads…MIT perhaps a little more…and Caltech the most…but that’s just me saying this, an RPI alumnus who never experienced any other schools…</p>
<p>From my experiences here, I think Caltech students put similar amounts of time into their as my engineering friends and I did in undergrad. The main difference is I feel my time was spent a lot more effectively learning than bashing my head against the desk since the problems are overly difficult.</p>
<p>hmmm @ RacinReaver’s comment…that’s pretty interesting…i know one girl who went to Caltech but i never talked to her after she graduated from HS…i have a couple friends who graduated from MIT, and their workload looks pretty comparable to ours…only difference is they restrict use of formula sheets on exams more than we do…i know Caltech is all take-home exams…just freakishly difficult…</p>
<p>@ Ken285…sorry but it really bothers me when people mistake RPI for RIT…i’ve been putting up with that crap ever since i started school there as a freshman around six years ago now…lol</p>
<p>Oh I don’t doubt that it bothers you, but as you said, I’m sure lots of people make the same mistake. They’re both tech schools, they both have 3 word names that are commonly abbreviated, they both begin with R, they’re both in upstate New York. That may explain why it’s not more well known.</p>
<p>that is very true…every time i tell someone that i go (or went) to RPI…they’re always like “oh that’s…Rochester…???”…even University of Rochester is thrown into that mess…</p>
<p>i think RPI definitely has the upstate tech school element that brings its name down a little i think…both RIT and Clarkson usually associate themselves with us…</p>
<p>on another note…i feel like Case Western is also very under ranked…</p>
<p>Guys, I have a copy of the US News & World Report rankings in front of me. The introduction explains how they ranked the schools.</p>
<p>“US News ranks…based soly on a survey of engineering deans and senior faculty conducted during the spring of 2010. Surveys sent to the dean and a faculty member at each program asked them to rate programs… from 1 to 5.”
“37% of those surveyed returned ratings of the group below…”</p>
<p>So the rankings were kinda subjective but still creditable because they surveyed deans. So the rankings aren’t going to be perfect. Maybe a Georgia Tech professor was VERY PROUD of his program and put all 5’s.
I’m surprised that Purdue is #8. It’s higher than Princeton, JHU, and RPI.</p>
<p>Maybe I am biased since I grew up in the Midwest but it was pretty much drilled in our heads that if you wanna study engineering in the midwest…you goto Purdue. This was even back when I was in junior high school (now called middle school for you youngsters).</p>
<p>to boneh3ad…now what is your basis for saying Purdue is considered better than Princeton, JHU, and RPI for engineering??..princeton, JHU, and RPI put out many more PhDs in science and engineering (according to list i brought up which Purdue does not even make)…and all three are far tougher to get into than Purdue (purdue would be a safety for people applying to the other three schools)…i can’t say much for average starting salary, but RPI made the list of top schools for starting salary…but that’s not really saying much bc RPI is primarily a tech school and engineers make a lot of money coming out of college compared to other majors…and quite frankly i’m too lazy to dig into each school’s website and see what the kids coming out of there make…</p>
<p>and to globaltraveler…what about Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology??..that’s another excellent engineering school in the midwest…</p>
<p>RHIT was mentioned also but not as much as Purdue or even Illinois when I was in school. Now let me say this…when colleges would come to my high-school for their “dog & pony show”, most of the schools were large-enrollment or more well-known schools, so it was very possible that I was “caught up” in the Big-10 or Ivy’s frame of mind with schools.</p>
<p>Now I live right by the John Hopkins University satellite branch that caters specifically to working graduate students…and I work with a lot of them also since JHU has agreements with many of the defense contractors and NSA for part-time MS programs. While the undergrad programs may be selective (although U-Maryland is catching them if you listen to the rumors), the grad programs will still admit students without a GRE. I am not knocking that because that is how “I” got into grad school myself, but I know that Cornell nor Columbia won’t allow that.</p>
<p>wearymachine, none of those factors are anything that causes a program to be good. A lot of good programs have those characteristics, but those characteristics aren’t what make the program good.</p>
<p>Purdue is an absolute engineering powerhouse. It is less selective because it is a state school, which means it can and has to admit more students. That doesn’t change the fact that Pursue produces an absolutely huge amount of world-class research and is well respected in all corners of the country as an engineerig school by employers and grad schools alike.</p>
<p>Princeton, JHU an RPI are all good schools. Purdue, by most conventional measures, is just a better one.</p>
<p>Starting salary doesn’t matter for how good a program is because it is so dependent on geography. RPI has a very high average salary because it feeds a lot higher percentage of people into the northeastern states than a Midwest school like Purdue or UIUC does. The Northeast is much more expensive to live in than most other places, especially the Midwest.</p>
<p>The important thing here is that at any of those 4 schools you will get an excellent education and have plenty of job opportunities.</p>
<p>i just said that i won’t even look at starting salary…RPI’s would obv be higher than princeton, jhu and purdue just due to the fact that RPI is a tech school…</p>
<p>what about the number of PhDs??..i think schools that end up producing the most PhDs tends to have the stronger students in engineering, as a very basic correlation…i mean it only makes sense…sure there are some amazingly top notch engineering students that just preferred the industry more…but i think that, in general, schools that put out more PhDs tend to be the academic powerhouses…</p>
<p>boneh3ad…maybe we’ll always disagree on this matter…but i just feel like the way you look at these undergrad engineering rankings should be more used to judge the graduate rankings…you talk about world class research facilities…i know some undergrads do research…but isn’t it usually grad students that get more involved with that??</p>
<p>i mean coming out of high school i never knew what purdue was (aside from the company of a similar name that sells chicken)…now i’m from the northeast, and for the top math and science kids in our area…people usually apply to MIT…if they don’t get in…usually Cornell, CMU, and RPI are the next schools in line (RPI for the person who wants the pure tech environment)…</p>
<p>now i’m two years out of school and i’m looking into grad schools…and i’ll totally agree with you that purdue would be much better than RPI or hopkins (not sure about princeton) as a graduate engineering program…</p>