<p>i can't really say it's a 'toss up' between a bunch of these schools.</p>
<p>yeah, harvey mudd has a great engineering program ... but, that's it. Schools like Cornell and Stanford have the benefits being schools with more than just engineering programs. An engineer at Cornell can take a load of electives in music or english or a foreign language. These schools also have ultra-prestigious names that can carry a person far ... HM isn't a household name. </p>
<p>Even if every school on an engineering list was totally equal as far as academics go, there'd still be "better" schools for some people. It'd be tough to argue that one engineering program is far better than another, but it'd be easy to distinguish schools into categories such as social scene, prestige, academic depth, student body, location, alumni connections, etc. All of these must be taken into account and then one should pick a school based on what is best for them.</p>