<p>^ I didn’t like lehigh or lafeyette either, and I didn’t apply. </p>
<p>I kinda think as far as engineering is concerned most are considered about equal. I mean, from what I’ve always got was that prestige only matters in starting salary but after 5 or so years into the work, it’s your experience not school. UT or Cornell, they were both the same to me. </p>
<p>Just go for the school you’re going to be happiest at, the environment you’ll like best, but that also has a good career center and internships. Take the list off of ABETs site and slowly start crossing places off (it’s literally what I did).</p>
<p>Then, you know, visit and try getting an idea of the environment. Here’s what bugs me that I see: this guy Joe I know wants to be an engineer, something in aerospace. But his goal is MIT, now he’s got good stats, good SAT scores, an interview, likes physics, studies, IB candidate, community service, hispanic, all that glorious jazz. He’s also a bit cocky saying to me that carnegie is his “back up school”. Oh, and he procrastinates and forgets to apply to carnegie and is late to apply to harvey mudd. But he does apply to MIT, amherst, and A&M. Amherst and A&M are schools our counselor made us all apply to. He doesn’t get into MIT, chooses between Amherst and A&M and picks AMHERST! Are you kidding me? They don’t even have an engineering department, it’s a fancy named liberal arts college, but he’s going there because of the prestige. Ridiculous. Also, the kicker is that this lazy genius at our school M got into all kinds of fancy named schools like Rice and Stanford but he’s going to A&M to teach his strict and perfectionist mom that it doesn’t matter what school you go to, he’s also gonna be an engineer, but he does really like A&M. </p>
<p>I think, just go somewhere you’ll be happy. Engineering is a hard degree and it’ll be harder if you’re going somewhere you don’t really like just for prestige.</p>