Where to transfer for aerospace engineering?

<p>GP Burdell, if you had to rank schools based on admissions criteria, I’m sure the Air Force Academy and Cal Poly SLO would be ranked ahead of Embry Riddle for aerospace engineering…I bet GP Burdell’s never heard of Embry Riddle because it is a pilot and aerospace/aeronautical engineering school</p>

<p>Yes, ERU is #1 on their list, while CMU is #10 on their list. But to compare across lists, we need some sort of metric. Is it a case where some schools on the non-doctoral list are better than some schools on the doctoral list (e.g. finding the best team in baseball when you have a list of NL teams and another list of AL teams) or are all the schools on the doctoral list better than all the schools on the non-doctoral list (e.g. finding the best baseball team when there’s a list of professional teams and a list of 10 year old t-ball teams)?</p>

<p>To get an idea, let’s look at the one place where they’re on equal footing: admissions. </p>

<h1>1 without doctorate: Embry Riddle</h1>

<p>Admissions rate: 78%
Average SAT: 1090/1600
Average GPA: 3.26 / 4.00
Top 10% of HS class: 20%</p>

<h1>10 with doctorate: Carnegie Mellon</h1>

<p>Admissions rate: 28%
Average SAT: 1400 / 1600
Average GPA: 3.58 / 4.00
Top 10% of HS class: 73%</p>

<p>In fact, if you’re a below average student (Class Rank: Top 50-60%, SAT: 1000/1600, etc) you’re probably getting into Embry Riddle, whereas you’ll be laughed out of CMU. Looking at the GPA/SAT breakdowns, somewhere around 3% of students at ERU are even competitive in admissions for CMU. </p>

<p>Granted, we can’t directly compare the programs, but what we can say is that the students at CMU are far superior to even the top 10% of the students at ERU. When you have such a huge disparity in talent at the in-take of a problem, and you put them through an obviously well respected program, you have to imagine a huge disparity at the effluent. Based on that, I don’t see how you can even suggest that they’re even in the same league, let alone that ERU is a better AE school than CMU.</p>

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<p>No, I lived in central Florida for a while, so I’m very familiar with the Daytona campus. And I agree that on admissions criteria alone isn’t how the rankings are made. But, it’s a crude way to compare across lists. There’s no other fair metric of comparison because of the difference between research-based schools and non-research based schools.</p>

<p>If you want an even more crude measure: who goes to ERU in Florida? Anyone who wants to pay for it. Where do the top engineering students go in Florida? UF, maybe UCF lately, or out of state. Who goes to ERU? People that want to be pilots, or the “average” students that couldn’t get into UF or UCF (which aren’t really that difficult to get into).</p>

<p>Thats a good point, but an aerospace engineer at erau isn’t gonna have a 3.26 gpa or 1090 SAT score, those numbers probably mostly come from pilots and stuff. Also, I would think the engineering program is going to weed out the average and below average students and you will be left with the more intelligent ones. I think the most important part would be the curriculum.</p>

<p>norris212 is absolutely right, Purdue (tied with Carnegie Mellon in US News engineering rankings) for example is one of the top engineering schools in the country but the admissions standards are laughable:</p>

<p>79% acceptance rage
SAT Critical Reading: 490-610
ST Math: 530-600
ACT: 23-28
GPA: 3.5
% in top 10% of class: 31</p>

<p>would you say that CMU is a much better engineering school than Purdue because of the acceptance rate?</p>

<p>And the quality of the school doesn’t matter, it’s the reputation of the major itself, I’m sure that if you were debating whether to go to Georgia Tech/Illinois or Harvard for engineering (and you’re 100% sure about engineering), the choice would most likely GT or Illinois.</p>

<p>GP Burdell, also remember that the OP has a 3.4 GPA from a community college, I’m not sure if he should be looking at a school like Carnegie Mellon anyways</p>

<p>Pierre…GPBurdell is correct in his statements in this thread. Embry Riddle was orginally a pilot training school and really isn’t that well known for traditional engineering. The major aerospace companies recognize that fact. I think much of the confusion stems from the term “aerospace” engineering crossing over to “aeronautical engineering”…which is really more pilot training with engineering courses added to provide a foundation of scientific understanding. ERU is a top-notch flight training school. But a top-10 aerospace engineering school? Not even close. U Florida is much better in the state for that subject.</p>

<p>well rogracer, you can take up issue with US News on this one, I’m not gonna defend US News (who would?) or your statements</p>

<p>all I’m stating is that US News thinks that Embry Riddle is a good aerospace/aeronautical/astronautical engineering school</p>

<p>I really don’t take issue with USNews rankings per se…the problem stems from “aerospace/aeronautical/astronautical” being so broad in context as to be effectively meaningless when it includes things like pilot training and computational fluid dynamics. ERU gets a boost because of its aeronautical/pilot training programs. But when aerospace companies hire that is not what they are looking for. For the traditional Aero/Astro subject areas, ERU would not be even close to a top-10 program like you orginally stated.</p>

<p>So let’s look at ERU’s BS graduates in Spring 2008 (before the major economic issues)…</p>

<p>They placed in the following Grad schools:</p>

<p>Embry Riddle
EPF (France)
Purdue
University of Alabama
UIUC
Tennessee
USTI</p>

<p>So the only notable placements were Purdue and UIUC, and those were MS placements. Not impressive at all, especially for a “top” school.</p>

<p>Then you can look at employment statistics (Spring 2008). 40% of their engineering students from last year were unemployed at graduation. Compare that to 10% at Georgia Tech. Their students also had a starting salary of $45,000, which is $10,000 (or 22% lower) than Georgia Tech, which is in a geographically similar area. </p>

<p>These are not statistics of a “top” school.</p>

<p>I would think that since the ranking is in “Aerospace Engineering”, they would be ranking the overall engineering courses in that curriculum, not the flight program.</p>

<p>USN ranks it as </p>

<p>“Best Colleges Specialty Rankings: Undergraduate engineering specialties: Aerospace / Aeronautical / Astronautical”</p>

<p>The Aeronautical program at Embry Riddle is the Flight program</p>

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<p>“Aeronautical Science” NOT engineering…</p>

<p>Yea but Aeronautical Science is different than their aeronautical engineering. Aeronautical Science is the flight program and aeronautical engineering doesn’t have anything to do with being a pilot, it’s an engineering program. Where did you find that 40% unemployment number though that doesn’t sound to good.</p>

<p>Or was that for Aeronautical “Science” majors. Because that would make sense, since the pilot market isn’t too stable.</p>

<p>From ERAU’s Aerospace Engineering website: [ERAU</a> Bachelor of Science in Aeronautics](<a href=“http://www.erau.edu/db/degrees/b-aeroengineering.html]ERAU”>http://www.erau.edu/db/degrees/b-aeroengineering.html)</p>

<p>"Our aerospace engineering program was already well known throughout the industry before it was ranked by U.S. News & World Report as the #1 aerospace engineering program at a non-Ph.D.-granting university. Not only is our aerospace engineering program among the best, it is also the largest in the nation. "</p>

<p>"You won’t have trouble finding a job after graduation. Among our aerospace engineering students who graduated in Fall 2000, 91.4 percent had a job and 5.7 percent were continuing their education. </p>

<p>Graduates are regularly offered jobs at Allied-Signal, Boeing, General Motors, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, Motorola, NASA, and Toyota."</p>

<p>Thanks pierre0919. You’re helping out a lot… You know your stuff haha. And thanks G.P.Burdell for the debate. I’m learning more each post ha.</p>

<p>I don’t know if you remember 2000, but everyone had a job back then. The market was unrealistic, and it’s a little telling that they use nearly 10 year old statistics on their website. Here’s the latest, showing 60% employment last year (which, before the crash, was an “average” year):</p>

<p>[Career</a> Services Statistics Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University](<a href=“http://www.erau.edu/career/statistics/index.html]Career”>http://www.erau.edu/career/statistics/index.html)</p>

<p>As for the major, US News does some strange things in their classification. If Aerospace Engineering majors take Aeronautical Science courses, the programs could be intertwined in the rankings.</p>

<p>Edit: the Daytona report is 2007- 2008 graduates, which was an even better year for employment.</p>

<p>GP Burdell, at Clemson there is a similar salary survey, however very few students respond to this survey.
<a href=“http://career.clemson.edu/pdf_docs/salary/Aug05-May06_ba_salaries.pdf[/url]”>http://career.clemson.edu/pdf_docs/salary/Aug05-May06_ba_salaries.pdf&lt;/a&gt;
363 students out of a graduating class of 3,000. I highly doubt that only 10% of the students are employed…</p>

<p>In this case Embry Riddle had a 60% participation in the survey. THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT 60% OF PEOPLE ARE EMPLOYED…geez you are just finding ways to knock down Embry Riddle</p>

<p>It says in the report that “The effective placement rate was based only on those RESPONDENTS who were eligible to be placed upon graduation.”
and then they took the number of respondents and divided it by the total number of graduates to get the placement rate.</p>

<p>actually you are right GP Burdell, the placement rate for Aerospace Engineering respondents to the survey is around 70%. Do you know what the placement rate at other top aerospace engineering schools are? It might help the OP to know how this compares to other schools.</p>