Where to go - Georgia Tech, Case Western, RPI, Ohio Northern

College Majors Engineering Majors
21

<p>Rensselaer and Gatech are for all intents and purposes equal academically. Both schools have freshmen SAT scores in the 1340 - 1350 range and similar financial resources. Gatech has a 1.324 billion dollar endowment for 13000 undergrads and RPI has 800 million dollar endowment for 5400 undegrads.</p>

<p>I think Gatech would be better for someone who enjoys the big school feel (sports, great city of Atlanta). RPI would be better if you son likes the smaller school environment. </p>

<p>By the way the staff cuts at RPI shouldn’t be big concern. They are simply reacting to this economic crisis that is affecting many schools/companies. As you can see RPI is still getting
record #s of applications: </p>

<p>[RPI:</a> News & Events - At Rensselaer, Freshman Applications Surge Past 12,000 for First Time in History](<a href=“News | Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute”>News | Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)</p>

22

<p>It’s stupid to deduct acceptance stats=academic prestige. Besides the fact that I don’t see Rennselaer on any of the top engineering lists in us news.</p>

23

<p>From the GaTech 2008 - 2009 Common Data Set:</p>

<p>SAT 25 - 75 Percentile: Critical Reading 600 690
Math 650 730
Writing 590 680 </p>

<p>From the RPI 2008 - 2009 Common Data Set:</p>

<p>SAT 25 - 75 Percentile: Critical Reading 600 690
Math 650 730
Writing 580 680 </p>

<p>The point that I was making is that the two schools attract almost identically
talented students. It would be moronic to say one is superior to the other
in a blanket statement. </p>

<p>Who cares about US News? RPI is the first school in the US to award degrees in
engineering. US news rankings have no impact on the quality of their programs.</p>

<p>By the way, the correct spelling is Rensselaer.</p>

24

<p>Georgia Tech and Rensselaer are not equal academically.</p>

25

<p>Even though Im a RPI student I think GA-tech is a bit better prestige wise, academically and how rigorous they are, its equal IMO. I have two friends who go to GA tech and their work is pretty similar.</p>

<p>You’ll find more personal attention and career guidance at RPI than GA-tech though, RPI has far less undergrads to pay attention to than GA and they spend just as much money. I can tell you the Career Development Center here is awesome, they helped with my resume, career fair stuff etc and lead me to a internship for this summer of my freshman year.</p>

<p>As to how impressive each school would be on a resume I think it’d go to GA-tech, but in the last few years I’d say that RPI is really catching up.</p>

26

<p>My brother went to GTech. The advantage it has over the others is that it is the tech school in the south. Its graduates have a cache in Altanta and nearby. The other schools have more local competition. But this is if you stay in Atlanta after graduation. But almost everyone likes Atlanta.</p>

27

<p>Georgia Tech also has one of the nation’s best co-op/internship programs. Before attending, I didn’t consider that and while attending, I didn’t fully appreciate it. After graduating, attending other schools, and then interviewing new college graduates for a Fortune 100 company, I realized how lucky I was to go through that program. </p>

<p>As for RPI vs. Tech: as someone who has recruited from both schools, there’s a pretty obvious difference academically. That’s not a “knock” against RPI, but Tech is a Top 5 engineering program, so it’s expected.</p>

28

<p>As someone who has also recruited from both schools I can say that at my company (Texas Instruments) Rensselaer and GaTech do have similar levels of “prestige”. </p>

<p>Remember, RPI has a huge level of prestige because it was the primary source of civilian technical education in the Unites States during the Industrial Revolution as well as a great
engineering school today. </p>

<p>Even though I hate college rankings as they are seriously flawed, look at the overall rankings
for US news. These are better than the engineering rankings as they use student quality, faculty resources, class size, etc. </p>

<p>For 2009 RPI scores 59/100 with a ranking of 41 and GaTech scores 62/100 with a ranking
of of 35. I see two schools of similar quality. Harvard scored 100/100 and MIT scored 94/100 but I’m sure most would agree that they are equally good. </p>

<p>I could pull out a copy of Newsweek’s New Ivy League issue a few years back and find RPI in there with CMU, Rice, etc. while GaTech was not. Both schools will get well deserved accolades, but to say that RPI is anything but one of the finest engineering schools in the nation is simply not accurate. </p>

<p>Ptpatil is correct in that the academic programs are equal.</p>

29

<p>…whatever helps you sleep at night…</p>

30

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<p>OK, and the roman empire used to be very powerful too.</p>

<p>And what’s with this “use of faculty resources” that doesn’t have anything to do with an employer’s decision.</p>

31

<p>There’s no use in arguing. rico2 has made up his mind, despite all common sense. Just let him believe whatever he wants.</p>

32

<p>Sorry if the truth hurts G.P. Get over it…</p>

33

<p>You can believe whatever you want, but just keep in mind that that skewed sort of self-pride is really going to cause problems when you graduate and get into the real world. Just ask anyone in the Texas A&M Corps that left Texas.</p>

34

<p>I know very little about RPI, so I cannot contest to its level of academics or prestige, but I have to agree that potential employers may regard GaTech with a higher level of recognition than an institute such as RPI. It is the risk that students who choose to attend smaller schools with less national recognition must encounter. However, that is not to say that RPI graduates will not be able to find employment after graduation, because like someone mentioned, the school probably can invest more individual attention toward their graduates in the job finding process.</p>

<p>Also, engineering firms who truly attempt to recruit from a wide pool of talented applicants will surely include universities such as RPI in their list of schools to recruit from. It is just that name recognition is a general tendency of people to gravitate towards, but it is by no means the only method recruiters use to recruit first time graduates. I’m sure that many universities with little name recognition produce excellent engineers, it is just that people may not recognize them as much in a broader sense. Experts and specialists in the field may recognize those universities, however, they are usually not the ones who recruit first time graduates or work in HR.</p>

<p>Case in point, graduates from smaller universities, colleges, or institutes who do work for companies throughout the U.S., big or small, should try to contribute towards or be an integral part of the recruiting process in order to make sure the smaller schools are well represented.</p>

35

<p>The issue with smaller schools is that when a major corporation decides to recruit at a school, they pick a limited number to visit (after all, establishing a recruiting team, attending career fairs, events, and interviews is expensive). The argument is that you’re not going to find appreciably better candidates at any school over another. There’s really not that much difference between the top candidates at Texas A&M, Texas Tech, and UT-Austin, for example, so why go to all of them?</p>

<p>So what companies do is this: first they’ll recruit at colleges near their sites (for community PR, because travel is basically free, and because they know people at that school will probably want to work in that area). That’s why schools like the Houston, McNeese State, and Oklahoma State are disproportionately (for their rankings) recruited for manufacturing positions.</p>

<p>Second, firms choose some of the large, nationally recognized universities to round out their candidates (you don’t want your Houston plant to be all Texas A&M grads, for example). These are generally schools like UIUC, Georgia Tech, UT-Austin, VaTech, Wisconsin, Michigan, etc, which have well rounded programs in all areas of engineering. Notice, these aren’t the Top 10 programs - they’re the well rounded programs. Some companies will add in Stanford, UC Berkeley, MIT, etc., but many avoid these schools because of the very high rate of students going to grad school either immediately or in the first 5 years of employment.</p>

<p>So what does that mean if you go to a smaller university? Usually, if that’s the case, you’ll see employers from your state and you’ll see some companies that have executives from your school (Executives love to “ask” recruiting leads about their school, so recruiting at the CEO’s school is a good way to get a call from the CEO).</p>

<p>But I wouldn’t call RPI a small school. They have a decent number of students and are fairly well known. I bet they see a lot of recruiting from the Northeast. The problem there as that the Northeast isn’t the manufacturing hotbed that it once was. </p>

<p>The previous argument had to do with “prestige”, which is very different than career potential.</p>