Where does SLO engineering rank vs. national universities offering doctorate degrees

Colleges and Universities A-Z Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
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The Dale and Krueger study from about 10 years ago, which has been recently replicated, firmly refutes that notion. Anecdotally, the recent Ivy grads from my son’s HS are significantly under employed. In my field, healthcare, the Ivy grads in our neck of the woods, don’t make any more than the Podunk U grads (yours truly :D, Go Tigers!) and some make substantially less. The idea that an Ivy degree of any kind is a golden ticket has been blown up.

Now, as you said, for a few very specific jobs, the pedigree can mean the difference between success and being shut out completely. Those jobs would include investment banking, upper east coast law, and being on the Supreme Court. Otherwise, undergraduate degree only from Harvard in Folklore and Mythology…be prepared to say “would you like to biggie size that?” a lot. :wink:

Back to the OPs original question, the further a Poly grad strays from CA, the less likely it will be that a company will have interfaced with their grads. The same can be said for a Purdue, Illinois, GT even a MIT grad wanting to work in CA. Companies tend to stick with what they know. Most companies get most of their applicants from schools very close by. Just under 70% of UIUC grads work in Illinois or the states that touch Illinois. Apple employs more SJSU grads than from any other school. That’s not saying grads can’t be mobile or that we should intuit that SJSU is the best school. It’s to say recruiting is regional.

What type of engineering is your student interested in?

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@eyemgh, as always, you always provide excellent info! My son applied for SJSU Computer Engr as a safety school, but we’ll have to take a closer look now. :slight_smile:

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My son is a freshman at Caltech and loves it. House system allows you to interact with upper classmen, and there are bountiful research opportunities. There’s also something to be said for going to a school with smaller class size.

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There was an earlier question about which kids would turn down a UC for Cal Poly. Here is some mildly objective data, self-reported by kids who got admitted into both Cal Poly and a UC. https://www.parchment.com/c/college/tools/college-cross-admit-comparison.php?compare=Cal+Poly&with=University+of+California%2C+San+Diego

They would chose 90% vs. 10% UCLA and UCB, but otherwise it is roughly a 50/50 split for all other UC schools. Very often people chose schools based on perceived prestige vs. the practical aspect of finding a well paid job after graduation.

Here is an official, government provided comparison of salaries after graduation of Cal Poly vs. top 5 UC schools:
https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/compare/?s%5B%5D%3D110422&s%5B%5D%3D110653&s%5B%5D%3D110644&s%5B%5D%3D110635&s%5B%5D%3D110662&s%5B%5D%3D110680

CalPoly comes on top. Not necessarily a statistical relevant comparison, since likely Poly has more engineering graduates than the other schools, but it proves two earlier points made in this thread:

  1. The choice of major is likely the most important determinant of finding good employment post graduation
  2. Cal Poly is at least equal in terms of professional outcome when compared with top UCs

The interesting thing about prestige is that some people are willing to forego hundreds of thousands of dollars of lifetime income for the privilege of having a UCLA alumni vanity licence plate on their cars :slight_smile:

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One of the best engineers I’ve met went to Arkansas.

@eyemgh "The ASEE data has always seemed odd to me. I’m not sure where they pull it from as it never "

Typically, you’ll see the colleges touting admission/profile scores which will be higher… but that is not enrolled scores.

The data is a yearly survey submitted by the college. So if the ASEE data is wrong it’s the institution’s fault. I’d believe the ASEE data before anything on a college “fact” page… because it’s raw institutional data… not marketing.

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I have a feeling it’s because they include the engineering majors outside of the College of Engineering, but I reached out to IR to see if I can get clarification. We know from the acceptances and rejections that those numbers are low. If they reply, I’ll update.

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@vhsdad, Caltech is an upper tier school and growing up in the area, I don’t doubt it as an awesome school. If my DS had the stats, that would be his top choice as well.

I think we’re all talking past each other. I don’t doubt ASEE data at all, and I agree with Greymeer that reputation (and stat-wise), Cal/UCLA would rank higher for their engineering programs. Let’s not forget, Cal is what produced the great Wozniak. :slight_smile:

But I highly doubt Poly’s claim of 5297 CS applicants last year to be purely made up. The problem that Poly is running into now is that last year, too many students decided to enroll. In order to compensate, they will most likely lower their yield this year, making it even more competitive. Someone posted that their kid with an MCA of 4700 was rejected last year from ME. I bet it might even be higher this year. If that’s the case, we’re now talking 4.3/1500+ SAT range w/max rigor.

To answer the question about 700 kids in the CS program, I’m willing to guess that’s partly due to high attrition rate–most of which normally occurs freshman year. For example, I ended up on academic probation my first year (GPA 1.9) and almost got kicked out myself. I finally ended up graduating with an overall GPA of 2.5. My GF at the time dropped out, but was able to change out into another major. My best buddy also dropped out of school altogether (partied too much), ended up transferring to UC Davis (school at the time had 100% acceptance rate). I’m not sure how it is now, but back when I went through the program, the attrition rate was about 25%. Lastly, the average # years used to be ~5 years to graduate, mostly due to 6-9 month CO-OP that most students take during their junior/senior year. Not sure how it is now.

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What gets missed in the whole ranking obsession discussion is how differently students are educated at Cal Poly (and a few others like WPI for example) versus the more traditional engineering programs. Every single class until students get to the most mathy graduate level classes like Continuum Mechanics, Viscous Flow, etc. have labs. Cal Poly has more than 80 distinct labs in the CENG alone. So, for example Vibrations and Rotary Mechanics are not just applied math lectures like they are at most schools. They have a lab component, labs only used by undergrads. Their Senior Project is a year long and very robust.

The question shouldn’t be where does Cal Poly rank, or any school for that matter, but rather, how will my child be educated as an undergrad and how prepared will they be to make a meaningful impact when they graduate. We assume that rank automatically correlates to a better experience, but that may not be true.

In my (not so humble) opinion, ranking is ruining higher education. Students and families have lost the ability to vet schools because they distill the process down to a single, highly flawed, metric. After all, we all want “the best,” but based on what? That is an important question to answer.

In the end, an engineering student will likely be fine no matter where they go. Using rankings though is a recipe for a student to regret their choice. It’s an example of one, and one only, but one of my son’s friends ended up choosing MIT, because, well it’s MIT. He ended up taking a leave half way through and is deciding what to do next, because the whole experience has left him disillusioned.

Use rankings as a valued metric at your own peril.

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“In my (not so humble) opinion, ranking is ruining higher education. Students and families have lost the ability to vet schools because they distill the process down to a single, highly flawed, metric. After all, we all want “the best,” but based on what? That is an important question to answer.”

“Eyemgh” has hit the nail on the head! Yes there are differences between colleges and universities. However, the rankings have created a monster and turned largely into a disservice to the student and to education in general. Rankings largely distort reality by oversimplifying measurements of academic quality.

Quality education for any individual turns on their individual experiences and needs. The best education is a tailor made fit. Matching rejection rates does not do a good job of matching students, but does reflect, to a large extent, public awareness of an institution. There is more than one way to build the educational process and the “best” opportunity for creating a match is to broaden the field beyond ranking.

Do you really believe that Georgia Tech is a better place to study ME or CS than Olin College, SLO, RPI, WPI, Stevens, Rose Hulman, Virginia Tech and a few dozen more colleges? Try to answer that question without going to the almighty “rankings” and you will learn a great deal about yourself. Define your own criteria and design your own rankings. It is more difficult than looking for someone’s version of rankings. YOU define the variable without the aid of a ranking number, but you will have to ask what YOU are looking for. Have a productive conversation with yourself as you build your own model.

Fifty years ago the Boston Globe published to picture of a young man who had been admitted to Harvard. It ran about a ten inch column with the student’s picture and the Harvard acceptance headline. The last line said that he had not selected Harvard, but another small university where, at the time, I was working. This gentleman just retied as Sr. VP of the second or third largest American corporation. He did it without Harvard. This same small university picked up a few column inches a few years later as their small pool of alumni had produced three CEO’s of nationally known corporations in the same year. Public awareness of this institution was virtually zero in 80% of the country. How come they made it? There are a large number of institutions with like stories. If you want to be impressed, look at Lehigh University’s list of all the corporations they have created, managed, or chaired, but they are rarely discussed in the same breath as the Ivies.

Do you really believe that a world class education begins and ends with the top10, 20, 50, or any other ranking?

Don’t just follow the crowd. Pursue your individual identity. Creative people do that.

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I can attest one should go where one can afford the tuition and not based solely on ranking. My DS turned down Georgia Tech, Purdue and Virginia Tech for a full tuition at Iowa State engineering. He had interned/co-oped with Microsoft, 3M and a few smaller boutique firms. His friend, one class above him, received a full-time job with Tesla. If one is motivated and smart, it does not matter where one goes… The grades and experiences will attract employers. Engineers want other engineers who know their stuff and not where they had studied.

Oh i edited to add my own professional experience. I am a retired engineer and had skipped and jumped many firms (6 total in 40 years). My school did not even come into play after my first job. All they are looking for is what i can contribute to their goals. Granted small engineering consulting boutique firms do like named schools to add to their “announcement.” However, I find small consulting firms limit my experience.

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@parentofsix, my son asked my uncle who has a PhD in engineering from Stanford to tell him more about the institution. He’d spent the first half of his career in academia and the second in industry. My son was eager to get his perspective. He said the graduate school was great, but really only consider it if you’ll go on to get a PhD and pursue research. Otherwise, he said, if you want to be prepared to actually be an engineer, pick a school known for preparing students to do that. You want a good teaching school like Iowa State. Sounds like your son made a wise choice.

Also, regarding this: "Granted small engineering consulting boutique firms do like named schools to add to their “announcement.” However, I find small consulting firms limit my experience. " My son applied to a smallish firm in San Diego. They have the “we’ve trained at the top universities around the country and the globe” page. On the top line, the hometown school UCSD along with Berkeley. Like 2, MIT and the school in question, Cal Poly. Caltech, Georgia Tech, Purdue, way down the list. I guess it’s a matter of perspective as to what schools folks find impressive, and ranking doesnt have much to do with it.

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Retiredfarmer, while many of the tech schools you mentioned are great institutions, one of the factors that prevented my son from applying to some of those schools is the skewed male/female ratio. As an example, Last I looked Rose Hulman was 80/20, men to women. Even at SLO within the engineering department, as of 2016, it was 70/30. In contrast, at MIT, Caltech and Mudd, it’s closer to 50/50. Just one more factor to think about when thinking about total undergraduate experience.

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@vhsdad, the difference at Cal Poly is that the CENG only accounts for 25% of the school. It would be tough at a school like Mines or Rose, where that ratio represents the whole institution. It doesn’t really feel that way at SLO though.

BTW, my son avoided Rose because of that and it’s in Terre Haute! :smiley:

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You guys are too funny. One smart guy I met (and our top flight school grad) went to MUW (Mississippi University for Women). Got his Nursing degree there, as well as meeting his wife. :slight_smile: Joking aside, it’s a great nursing school and has a small male population.

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@vhsdad, don’t shy away from WPI if you are looking for a “balanced” gender ratio. The university is undergoing a massive effort in recruiting female candidates. As a result, in the last 2 years, freshmen ratios have been 57/43 and 58/42 male to female. Check this info at:
https://public.tableau.com/profile/wpi.institutional.research#!/vizhome/IR_DataDashboard-EnrollmentLine/Enrollment

My son is a freshman there this year. He does not feel that there is much of a disparity among genders.

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@vhsdad and @mardong

The admit rate for women at WPI is better than 53%. For men the admit rate for the last class was about 38%. MIT has been criticized in past CC posting for their lopsided women to men admissions ratios. With MIT"s level of applications they can do this without making a dent in the university’s first year student profile. WPI has to work on it, but they have been closing the gap on 50/50 as awareness of their collaborative program has climbed. The class of '22 is 41.3% women.

In defense of this process, it seems that there is a gathering opinion (and some evidence) that the socializing skills of women make a positive contribution to the often touted collaborative approach to research and design as work is often accomplished in groups.

It is also clear from the “2019” admissions data presented by USNEWS et al that it is unintentionally misleading in universities with rapidly changing admissions data. It is best to go directly to the particular University website at these institutions as “mardong” has done. If you poke around there long enough you can find the latest data.

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@Greymeer They probably just want to minimize the class size to try to stabilize those numbers. I think last year they were surprised by how many accepted offers they received, so this year they may want to admit less people in that major because they have more than they would. I don’t know for sure, but that is how I see it.

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@catwoman101, that’s why it’s SO low in this year’s projections, but it’s been under 10% since 2016.

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I am not sure if WPI gives preference in acceptance for women, they might be. Just one data point, my younger daughter was admitted to CalPoly and WPI (among other schools) last year. WPI offered such generous merit aid to her that it would have been less expensive than attending University of Washington as an in state resident, definitely less expensive than CalPoly - we did not qualify for any need aid. It was clear males were not getting such packages, looking at the CC forum posts. So I think they might have tried to entice more females with more money, at least in part. She ended up at CalPoly though although WPI was very tempting.

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How is it that schools like MIT, Harvey Mudd and Caltech were viewed as not offering a typical college experience while WPI, RPI, Cal Poly were? On what dimensions did the two groups differ from each other?