<p>Computer Engineer major. Place the colleges in order from best to worst to go to for an engineer.</p>
<p>Cornell, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Carnegie M, Harvey Mudd, Caltech, UIUC, Purdue.</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>Stanford
UC Berkeley
Carnegie Mellon
U Illinois U-C
Cornell
Caltech
Purdue
Harvey Mudd</p>
<p>They are all among the top 15 schools for computer engineering, except perhaps Harvey Mudd. But, Harvey Mudd offers the advantages of a smaller school.</p>
<p>What is UIUC???????</p>
<p>university of illinois at urbana champaign</p>
<p>I do not have a general opinion on the rankings, but with all due respect to collegehelp, I have to disagree with the evaluation of Harvey Mudd at the bottom. Our Engineering and Computer Science departments are renowned and highly successful in getting graduates into top grad schools and high paying jobs. Just because our name does not appear in the top universities rankings, because we are a small school not in that category, it does not mean our program is inferior to those universities.</p>
<p>How are the resources/equipment/labs and research opportunities at Harvey Mudd? How about the variety of course offerings? Grad school and job placement? Campus climate and culture? Are Mudders happy with their choice? (On the other hand: Is it possible for engineering students anywhere to be happy?) </p>
<p>I always have trouble figuring out Harvey Mudd. It is so different from other engineering schools. I am sure they provide a great education. HM attracts some excellent students.</p>
<p>I have to back up tiyusfaly and say that I think Harvey Mudd is far from the bottom of that list provided by the OP. Heck, I would say that if money is not an issue, then I would probably take Harvey Mudd over every one of the schools on that list except maybe for Stanford and Caltech, and even that's debatable. Remember that we're talking about undergraduate education here, not graduate education. Harvey Mudd is well known for providing an extremely strong undergraduate teaching experience which stands in strong contrast to the other schools that are mostly research-oriented and where you as an undergrad you can be made to feel like a 2nd class citizen. </p>
<p>Here are some tidbits about Harvey Mudd</p>
<p>"Average salary upon graduation in 2003 was $53,900". Note this compares extremely favorably with the engineering salaries earned by engineers coming out of, say, Berkeley in 2003. Also note that not every HMC student studies engineering. Many study the natural sciences or mathematics. A few will actually study humanities of social scienes. These fields pay less than engineering does. Yet the average salary of all those Harvey Mudd students is roughly equivalent to just the engineering salaries from Berkeley. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.hmc.edu/highlights/%5B/url%5D">http://www.hmc.edu/highlights/</a>
<a href="http://career.berkeley.edu/CarDest/2003Majors.stm%5B/url%5D">http://career.berkeley.edu/CarDest/2003Majors.stm</a></p>
<p>Furthermore, the average Harvey Mudd graduate in 2003 actually got paid substantially MORE (about 4k more) than the average bachelor's degree graduate from MIT in 2003. Granted, MIT does produce a lot of low-paid graduates like biology graduates (course 7), but still, the difference is palpable. Heck, even the MIT EECS students (course 6) only got paid about 60k in 2003. That's not that much diffferent from the 53k paid on average to HMC grads in 2003 to all majors.</p>
<p>As far as the resources, research opportunities, course offerings, and grad school placement, let me answer the question this way. Let me proffer these quotes.</p>
<p>""According to data from the National Research Council and the U.S. Department of Education, Harvey Mudd College has the highest percentage of graduates who go on to earn doctoral degrees in science and technology.</p>
<ul>
<li>A Ford Foundation study entitled "Undergraduate Origins of Women and Men 1970-1982-Graduates Who Received Doctorates Between 1970 and 1986" showed that nationwide, the leading colleges for production of students who went on to earn engineering Ph.D.s were 1) Caltech, 2) MIT, and 3) Harvey Mudd College. The leading colleges that produced Ph.D. recipients in mathematics and the natural sciences were 1) Caltech, 2) Harvey Mudd College, and 3) MIT."</li>
</ul>
<p>""More than 40 percent of Harvey Mudd alumni hold Ph.D.'s, the highest percentage in the country."</p>
<p>"Everyone has heard of M.I.T. and Cal Tech, but most laymen would be surprised to learn that Harvey Mudd College has a higher percentage of its graduates go on to receive doctorates than either of these renowned institutions. "</p>
<p>"Many students who are considering engineering as a career have not absolutely fixed on engineering but are interested in the general area of mathematics, the physical sciences, and technology. For such students, a ranking of those colleges, universities, and technical institutes with the highest percentage of their graduates going on to receive doctorates in math, the physical sciences, and engineering can be one of these useful lists:</p>
<p>INSTITUTION %
1. Harvey Mudd College 34.4
2. California Institute of Technology 33.7
3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology 17.3 "</p>
<p>Now this doesn't mean that Harvey Mudd is necessarily better than Caltech or MIT. But what it does mean is that whatever resources Harvey Mudd has are obviously pretty decent if such a high percentage of its graduates are able to get admitted to and complete doctoral programs.</p>
<p>My computer science teacher earned a master's degree from Stanford and can't stop raving about the engineering education you receive at Harvey Mudd. He says the senior project every engineering student must complete is looked on very favorably by recruiters and graduate schoos alike.</p>
<p>another great feature of harvey mudd is that the campus is entirely undergraduates and very small (roughly 800 students) even in comparison to caltech...stanford i would choose over HMC but i visited HMC and really liked it</p>
<p>I really doubt that Harvey Mudd graduates can match with Berkeley EECS graduates, but I'm convinced that HM is a great school.</p>
<p>With the influence from this topic, if I got in to every school, I'd want to go to:
Stanford
UC Berkeley
Caltech
Cornell
Harvey Mudd
Carnegie Mellon
U Illinois U-C
Purdue</p>
<p>I set Caltech and Cornell a bit higher because even though they might not be as good academically, I think they'll get you more recognition. (Caltech is known to be almost equal to MIT and Cornell is an Ivy)</p>
<p>
[quote]
I set Caltech and Cornell a bit higher because even though they might not be as good academically, I think they'll get you more recognition. (Caltech is known to be almost equal to MIT and Cornell is an Ivy)
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Cornell is an extremely good engineering school, I don't know what you're talking about, saying that you only put it there for it being an ivy.</p>
<p>Is its engineering program better than Harvey Mudd, Carnegie Mellon, and UIUC? Not really.</p>
<p>Academic strength shouldn't be the primary motivation in selecting a college. Weather, students, environment, and name recognition (if you plan to change fields or go to graduate school) are other factors I would consider. Education is what YOU make of it.</p>
<p>Flippy - VERY much so, and better. Cornell is one of the best engineering programs out there, and on the east coast, the employers most respect it and MIT.</p>
<p>Many students may love Harvey Mudd but it has the worst graduation rate in America relative to the quality of its students. Hence my question about whether Mudders are happy campers. I know that engineering schools generally have lower relative graduation rates but HM is extreme. </p>
<p>For undergraduate engineering education, I think Stanford and Cornell are tops, all things considered, such as "quality of life", campus climate and culture, well-roundedness of student body, maturity of students, resources, research opportunities, personal attention, prestige. Princeton would be up there too. The public Ivys and the Tech schools have great resources but I think they are better for masters and doctoral students. I fear that undergrads would get lost at the publics and tech schools.</p>
<p>"Quality of life" for engineering students is an oxymoron.</p>
<p>If students love HM and get a great education, I am glad for them. It's the right place for them. But, as an outsider taking a broad look, HM raises questions for me.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Many students may love Harvey Mudd but it has the worst graduation rate in America relative to the quality of its students. Hence my question about whether Mudders are happy campers. I know that engineering schools generally have lower relative graduation rates but HM is extreme.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I think you're greatly confusing the issue. The issue with Harvey Mudd is that it is extremely narrowly focused. You're talking about graduation rates as they pertain to ENGINEERING graduation rates. Other schools like Stanford and Cornell may have a better overall graduation rate, but that's including all the other non-engineering students who successfully graduate from non-engineering majors. Let's face it. There are plenty of majors in the humanities and the social sciences for which it is relatively trivial to graduate from, compared to engineering. It may not be easy to get top grades, but it is fairly trivial just to pass and graduate. Furthermore, all those non-engineering majors basically exist as safety nets for those engineering students who don't make it can usually just switch majors to something easy and graduate that way. </p>
<p>So when you look at the graduation rates of those other schools, that's not necessarily a testament to the friendliness of the culture of their engineering schools. For example, just because the school's Film Studies program boasts of a 100% graduation rate, that says nothing about how happy the engineering students are. The truth is, a lot of people in general who major in engineering will not actually complete an engineering degree. Consider the following quote:</p>
<p>"In 119 colleges and universities, about 25 percent of all entering first-time freshmen in 1992 declared their intention to major in a science and engineering (S&E) field. By their second year, 33 percent of these students had dropped out of an S&E program. After six years, 38 percent had completed an S&E degree. "</p>
<p>And like I said, if you go to Stanford and you major in science/engineering and you find out you don't like it and you'd rather major in something nontechnical, you just switch majors to something else. It's not so easy at Harvey Mudd, because there really are very few choices outside of science/engineering. Hence, those who don't like it will usually transfer out - often times to one of the other Claremont schools. The difference is that in the case of the former Stanford engineer who now majors in something non-technical, he stays at Stanford and still manages to graduate from Stanford. In the case of the HMC student, he transfers to an entirely different school, so he doesn't graduate from HMC (although he graduates from the other school).</p>
<p>Take Berkeley EECS as an example. You can simply compare how many students are admitted into EECS (both freshman and transfer) with the number of students that are granted EECS degrees every year, and you will see that something like 50% of all Berkeley incoming EECS students will not graduate with an EECS degree. Of those that don't make it, some will switch to some other major. Some will transfer to completely different school. And some will of course simply flunk out. However, at HMC, all of the students that don't make it in engineering will either transfer out (or flunk out). Hence, when you look at it that way, I would say that the HMC graduation rate is actually quite remarkably high. </p>
<p>So you might say that those other schools offer a better overall quality of life in the sense that they provide the ability to easily switch majors out of engineering while staying in the same school. But that is very different from saying that the ENGINEERING quality of life is better.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Flippy - VERY much so, and better. Cornell is one of the best engineering programs out there, and on the east coast, the employers most respect it and MIT.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Look, everybody agrees that Cornell is a top engineering program. That's not the question. The question is, is it better than HMC, CMU, or UIUC? I would personally say that it is a toss-up. However, I don't think anybody can say that Cornell is clearly better than those 3 other schools at engineering.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I really doubt that Harvey Mudd graduates can match with Berkeley EECS graduates, but I'm convinced that HM is a great school
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I know somebody has the stats for the Berkeley EECS incoming freshmen. It would be an easy thing to simply compare them to the stats of the HMC freshmen. I have the suspicion that the HMC stats will actually be comparable if not slightly better than the Berkeley EECS stats. But I'll reserve judgment until I see the stats.</p>
<p>Please show me the stats too sakky. I'm willing to change my mind about that.</p>
<p>I think that academics are pretty much as flippy ranks them, although there really isn't much difference between the top 4.</p>
<p>Of the list, as an undergraduate, I'd choose either Stanford or Cornell.</p>
<p>I'm at Cornell. I would have considered Stanford if it wasn't so far away.</p>