<p>Ok I thought about that good point for a while and here’s my response:</p>
<p>I think you gave the answer in that last “note”. For kids interested in engineering, they may not require a really expensive degree and may have been admitted at Stanford/MIT but turned them down for Georgia Tech, for instance. Looking at the schools that are not typically considered elite that still have a lot of scholars, shows there’s an engineering/tech slant to most of them. However, a National Merit scholar interested in majoring in something in the humanities/social sciences may realize that it would be profitable in the long run to forego the scholarship because a degree from the top schools in humanities may still get one a well paying job.</p>
<p>And onto part 2 of the response, look at the fact that although Princeton generally loses cross-admits to H and Y it still has it’s fair share (per capita) of National Merit Scholars. I personally think this is in part due to its strong engineering program and in other part due to its status with H and Y as extremely tippy-top, a status which S and M may not share in the whole nation. Which comes back to the point that rjk made that H and Y are riding on their prestige to maintain their status as pretty much the best universities in the nation. However, for some reason, when it comes to African Americans, Stanford and MIT hold their own against Harvard and Yale (per capita), leading me to think perhaps they are less swayed (for whatever reason) by Harvard and Yale’s names.</p>
<p>And for part 3, I can imagine that many of the H and Y kids choosing H and Y were not the engineers. </p>
<p>That being said, I do agree that the demand for engineering is relatively elastic among these scholars despite their interest in engineering.</p>
<p>“Probably no more than 1/3 of the students who started out in the first (weeder) engineering course with me actually ended up finishing the engineering major.”</p>
<p>I’m sorry for them, but FWIW the preponderance of engineering matriculants to Cornell complete the program, and most of those who find it is not their cup of tee finish up elsewhere in the university. Their 6 year graduate rate was about 93% IIRC. MITs 6-year graduation rate was about the same. These individuals managed to complete their studies at well regarded universities and did not have to highly compromise the breadth and depth of the offerings available to them in engineering to do so.</p>
<p>Carnegie Mellon’s 6 year graduation rate is 87%, though that’s overall.
Harvey Mudd and Cooper Union’s are at about 84%, and at those schools people have to switch out if they find they don’t like technical fields because the schools offer little else for them.</p>
<p>So my point is, there are high-quality private engineering institutions where there is indeed attrition from the program, but nowhere near the levels you indicated, and most of the students who leave are not at all forced into some undesirable situation, they just transfer to other programs, often at the same university.</p>
<p>There are some state universities that have the reputation of matriculating a lot of students who are just not up to the task, and I would guess these schools may have higher dropout rates. They probably also have high dropout rates from their other colleges that have nothing to do with engineering.
This may have more to do with how those particular colleges work than anything relating to engineering. </p>
<p>Yes there will be some inevitable attrition from engineering, which a would-be enrolleee should keep in mind. But the risk is not necessarily to the extent that you were suggesting, can be mitigated and dealt with in various ways, to various extents, at different schools, and my own experience was nothing like what you are describing at all.</p>
<p>I feel it is a combination of the weaker student bodies and the lack of resources to sustain the incoming freshman class of engineers. As most engineering students will tell you, if you don’t have a certain core competency in math, it may be near impossible to be academically successful in engineering. I won’t exactly define this competency rigorously, but I would imagine for most students it would be around a 600 or better on the SAT math section. Secondly, in order to have the wonderful senior design classes that engineers need to have in an ABET curriculum, the class sizes need to be small otherwise the resources will be too strained. Typically the schools with high attrition rates tend to be big public schools. Therefore the school has a vested interest in not allowing all the engineering students to graduate with a degree. At Stanford, MIT, Cornell, etc, this is not the case. Stanford has more than enough resources for its engineers so it does not need to worry about having too many engineering majors. At Cornell, and obviously MIT, I imagine it to be the same.</p>
<p>Actually, the reverse happens at MIT. Not only are the engineers not weeded out, their numbers actually grow over their course of study from around 56% of sophomores to 60% of seniors. </p>
<p>Among 566 students declaring an engineering major as their primary major in the fall of their sophomore year in 2006, 569 were still enrolled as seniors at the beginning of 2008. (There are few undeclared majors added on.) Additionally, another 36 students majoring in other departments added an engineering major during their senior year. </p>
<p>If one breaks down the data among engineering departments the biggest gainer is the EECS department considered by many at MIT as among the most rigorous. EECS not only keeps all its initial majors but adds an astonishing 15% NEW majors senior year, mostly from math and physics. </p>
<p>While some switching of majors does occur, it is mainly from the sciences towards engineering as opposed to vice versa. The math department seems to be losing the most students, mostly to computer science. Chemistry and biology also have some students switch to chemical and biological engineering which are very popular majors.</p>
<p>In comparison, at Harvard according to the Crimson among 123 students declaring an interest in engineering less than 40 actually were still in engineering as seniors. </p>
<p>That actually doesn’t follow. You don’t have to declare your major until your junior year, so plenty of sophomores are “de-facto” engineering majors even though they haven’t formally declared as such.</p>
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<p>Let’s be clear about what I said: 1/3 of the students who entered the first weedout course of an engineering major actually completed a degree in that particular engineering major. Of those who left, some probably did complete different engineering majors, and many more switched out of engineering entirely, but still finished their degree, almost certainly via some liberal arts major.</p>
<p>But all of that simply highlights my central point, which is that many - perhaps most - students at the top schools who think they may be interested in engineering when they matriculate will not actually become engineers. Either they switch out of engineering because of the difficulty or because they find something more interesting, or even if they do complete the degree, will not actually take jobs as engineers.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how the Princeton example bolsters your case - if anything, it weakens your case. After all, your contention is that a stronger engineering program ought to attract the best students who are supposedly interested in engineering, yet, as you said, both Harvard and Yale beat Princeton in both the cross-admit battle and in the number of National Merit Scholars, and Princeton draws more National Merit Scholars than Stanford does, without even correcting for the relative sizes of the programs (and Stanford is larger than Princeton). </p>
<p>Hence, there is no clear evidence that a stronger engineering program attracts the best students in any measurable way. I wish it did, but the evidence does not seem to oblige.</p>
<p>And I’ve always agreed that that is what’s happening. What can I say? It is what it is. Such social phenomena are self-validating systems: as long as people think that Harvard and Yale are the best schools, the best students will want to go there, hence, validating their status as the best schools. As I told rjk, much, probably most of the actual educational experience will be derived from your fellow students, which means that you should head for where the best students will congregate, wherever that happens to be. Sure, I agree that if everybody somehow believed that Stanford or MIT were the best schools, then the best students would prefer to go there instead, hence validating their beliefs. </p>
<p>Let me give you an analogy. I’ve had many engineering pals of mine ask me how to find girlfriends, and my advice to them is always the same: take a community college dance class, an arts & craft class, a fashion design class, all the things that girls like to do. Do it even if you find dancing or fashion design boring. After all, whether we like it or not, that is where the girls are, and they’re not going to change. So if you want to meet them, you have to go to where they are. You have to respect the power of social trends.</p>
<p>Haha
I have family in finance/business. They all said that outside of Wharton/mich/berk et al, an Econ major would be more attractive than an undergrad “business” major</p>
<p>at a few slightly lower ranked schools such as BC, fordham, SUNY binghamton, and Villanova, their undergrad business schools contain for the most part the top students of the university and is the most competitive to get into. why would this be if undergrad business=fail</p>
<p>"After all, your contention is that a stronger engineering program ought to attract the best students who are supposedly interested in engineering, yet, as you said, both Harvard and Yale beat Princeton in both the cross-admit battle and in the number of National Merit Scholars, and Princeton draws more National Merit Scholars than Stanford does, without even correcting for the relative sizes of the programs (and Stanford is larger than Princeton). </p>
<p>Hence, there is no clear evidence that a stronger engineering program attracts the best students in any measurable way."</p>
<p>The issue is solely in regard to techically-oriented students who care about engineering, not students in general. There is no clear evidence because you have not limited the pool to the subset of such students who actually affirmatively wanted to be engineers.</p>
<p>Anecdotally, at Cornell I knew numerous students in the Arts & Sciences college who had also applied to Harvard or Yale. However, of the students I knew in the engineering college, I can think of only one who had applied to Harvard, while numerous had applied to MIT. If your contention was correct, I should have encountered even more people in the engineering school who had applied to Harvard and Yale than had applied to MIT. But that wasn’t the case. Because those people did not want a liberal arts curriculum and wanted a great engineering program. My experience was that a large chunk of these people actually wanted careers in engineering or related areas, and most of them actually pursued this track afterwards.</p>
<p>Again, this is not an issue that can be fully resolved by cross admit data, because since Harvard and Yale do not really have competitive programs in this area relatively fewer people with such explicit interests will apply to them in the first place.</p>
<p>“…as long as people think that Harvard and Yale are the best schools, the best students will want to go there.”</p>
<p>Right, and since nobody on earth thinks they are the best schools, for studying engineering, fewer people with this goal as a primary focus will apply to them.</p>
<p>And if engineering employers thought they were the best schools,for engineering, then there should be more recruiting for engineering jobs at Yale than there is at MIT. Somehow I doubt that’s the case.</p>
<p>Your points would be universally true if it was the case that no high-capability student actually wanted to pursue a technical career of some sort. Clearly that is your bias. A significant number of technically-oriented people don’t share your bias though. Lots do, but lots also don’t. I’ve known numerous people who feel otherwise. There are lots of people who prefer the technical/ scientific track, because that’s where their skill set, personality and interests lead them. Such people have priorities that may direct them to a school with a strong engineering program. Because that’s the environment that they feel will best enhance their future path, given who they are . Others with different priorities, interests and personalities may make different choices, true enough. But that’s hardly everybody.</p>
<p>Of course I hadn’t. Neither had Morsmordre. Nobody had - that’s the point. See below. </p>
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<p>Nobody is denying that there are some people who already know they want to study engineering and hence would not prefer Harvard or Yale over more highly ranked engineering schools. </p>
<p>The real questions are:</p>
<p>*How prevalent are these people in the population, either in the entire student pool, or within the pool of top students that would be serious contenders for admission to Harvard or Yale (or even Cornell) in the first place. </p>
<p>*Comparatively, how many students know they want to major in non-engineering subjects and would therefore very strongly prefer Harvard or Yale over Cornell, or perhaps never even apply to Cornell at all. </p>
<ul>
<li>The related question of when do people actually determine what they want to major in - before or after matriculation.</li>
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<p>And that again gets back to what I said before: your presumption is that most people already know that they want to be engineers before they choose which college to attend (or even to apply). How many high school seniors actually know that? Heck, how many high school seniors even know what engineering is? Very few high schools actually teach engineering. </p>
<p>It has been estimated that most college students seriously consider a set of 3-5 different majors before finally settling on one. With only a few exceptions, colleges provide you with ample opportunity to try on different majors. Heck, even MIT - a school predominantly consisting of engineers - doesn’t require that students declare a major until junior year. An MIT student who tries out engineering and finds that he doesn’t like it can switch out of the School of Engineering to one of the non-engineering majors without penalty. That makes MIT a far more attractive school than if the school simply locked in all of its engineering students. But why would that matter if those students supposedly knew they wanted to be engineers anyway? Avoiding lock-in is valueless if you’re sure that you never want to leave. </p>
<p>I think we can all agree that MIT would be a far less desirable school if it actually locked in its students into specific majors right from the very beginning. Many students would no longer choose to attend MIT, or even to apply to MIT in the first place, because they don’t want to be locked in. The option to try on different majors and switch to the one that you like has tremendous value. </p>
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<p>They may think they don’t want liberal arts. They may think they want engineering. But what if you change your mind as you gather more information? Like I said before, I think no more than 1/3 of the students in my first engineering weeder actually eventually finished the degree in that particular engineering major. Of those that did not, many (probably most) found out from that class that they simply didn’t like that major. They thought they would like it, but after actually trying one of the classes, they found out that they enjoyed it far less than they thought they would. While some switched to some other engineering major, most of the others actually switched to one of the liberal arts. (And, yes, some flunked out completely)</p>
<p>So that again begs the question - what if you turn down Harvard or Yale, or don’t even apply to them, in favor of Cornell because you think you want to be an engineer…only to find out later that you don’t really like engineering and/or aren’t good at it? Monydad, surely you know many people at Cornell who tried engineering and then found that they didn’t like it or were bad at it. {Heck, I know some, and I didn’t even go to Cornell.} Those students would then probably have been better off at Harvard and Yale (had they gotten in). It is precisely that uncertainty of the future that compels people to prefer the risk-averse choice of the schools with the strongest name-brand. </p>
<p>Furthermore, the choice of college major is largely - in fact, arguably mostly - socially driven as opposed to inherently driven. I recall during the tech boom how boatloads of students suddenly piled into computer science and MIS majors, including plenty of people who never once cared about software or information technology before. Heck, I knew quite a few former humanities students who switched into tech majors in their junior year simply because they heard that dotcoms were doling out insanely high pay packets and high positions to fresh tech grads right out of school. Worked too - they graduated and garnered high level and high-paying jobs; one was even hired to be VP of a dotcom immediately after graduating . {Granted, it all died a few years later, but they don’t care, as they were making out like bandits in the interim.} </p>
<p>In recent times, one of the most popular programs within the MIT graduate student community was the (now defunct) Financial Technology Option (FTO) certificate program, which effectively served as a graduate ‘minor’ for MIT grad students, mostly PhD students, who wanted to learn financial engineering on the side, and perhaps then land a job at an Ibank or hedge fund. Remember, this is for grad students, who should clearly know more than undergrads would about what they really want to do with their lives. Nevertheless, the FTO program attracted hordes of PhD students all across MIT who were considering finance as a potential career. Many such students, upon finishing the FTO certificate, immediately dropped out of their grad programs without finishing their degrees in order to take jobs in the finance sector. Heck, I heard some students candidly admitting that they came to MIT for grad school with the express intent of earning the FTO cert and would then likely drop out. That never used to happen before. FTO was not highly popular in the early 2000’s. Only when the financial markets were roaring in the middle of the decade did interest in the FTO program ‘coincidentally’ skyrocket. </p>
<p>The upshot is that, contrary to the notion that people inherently know what they want to study, people change their minds about what they want to study all the time in response to social stimuli. Some particular field becomes hot, and that sparks interest in that field. The launch of the TV show LA Law has been widely credited with spurring tremendous interest among young people to attend law school, as a law career now seemed cool and sexy. Plenty of people go to college, and then figure out what they want to major in. </p>
<p>I remember a guy who dithered around for a few years before finally declaring a major in Mass Communications. I once asked him why, and I’ll always remember his candid answer: “I found out there’s a hell of a lot of hot girls in that major.” What can I say? It worked - the girl he met in that major, who is now his wife, is drop dead gorgeous. His choice of major was purely socially constructed. If lots of hot girls were in Petroleum Engineering, he might have chosen that. </p>
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<p>Nobody has ever once claimed in this entire thread that Harvard and Yale are the best engineering schools. </p>
<p>The questions have always revolved around how does one know that engineering is going to be your primary focus, and when exactly do people develop that focus. The fact that most schools allow students to shop around and switch majors means that many students don’t know what they want to do.</p>
<p>While technically true, over 98% of MIT students declare a major in the fall of their sophomore year. Interestingly, very few if any of the 57% that declare an engineering major sophomore year drop out of engineering or even switch between engineering departments during their junior or senior years. It is probably the only university where the percentage of engineers actually RISES before graduation to reach around 60% from the initial 56% of declared engineering majors. It is a sort of reverse weed-out policy by engineering departments which gladly accept students as late as senior year. EECS, arguably one of the most rigorous majors at MIT, loses virtually zero students as drop-outs but adds an astounding 15% of students senior year alone, mostly from students getting a second engineering degree on top of their primary (mostly math or science) degree. Most of these students are math and physics majors who see the benefit of adding an engineering degree (often computer science) on top of their current major. Biology majors getting a biological engineering degree or chem majors adding a chemical engineering degree are also popular choices. </p>
<p>This is only possible at MIT because of the common science core that all students have to take, whether in engineering, the natural and life sciences or even the social sciences. It would be very hard to implement in schools where each department has very different curricula and little overlap. </p>
<p>MIT has made double majoring even easier this past year, by reducing the the total number of units required and only requiring that you meet the prerequisites for each major. In the past, students had to get two full separate degrees, which was more burdensome. </p>
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<p>That is probably true, even though a very small minority of students actually switch majors before graduation. Simply knowing that the option is there may make the student more confident in taking the plunge. MIT’s problem has never been keeping those initially interested in engineering from dropping out. The main benefit has been to offer to some students unsure about an engineering degree an easy option to add it late in their college studies.</p>
<p>Should Harvard and Yale feel satisfied being second-fiddle, or less, for this subset of students which though they may be far from the majority, are also IMO far from nobody ??</p>
<p>One would suppose that Harvard and Yale would not be satisfied with playing second fiddle, for academic reasons, in the hearts of any group of qualified applicants, for a program of study that they represent that they cover.</p>
<p>That was the real question posed in this thread, IMO.</p>
<p>Not whether they can field an outstanding class without this group of people, because many people are that completely undecided, or whether even more people with different priorities, most of whom care not about engineering one whit, would prefer Harvard and Yale.</p>
<p>The contention is that there are, actually, individuals who are turned off from these schools due to the deficits in their engineering program and is that just ok with Harvard and yale??</p>
<p>The other posters seemed to feel that,to be what their image suggests, it would not be ok with them, and they would want these programs to be just as strong as their other programs. That’s where this whole thing started, as I read it.</p>
<p>It’s not really an issue that needs to be unique to engineering, it’s just that this is where the deficit seems to be. If they were humongously bad at Philosophy, comparatively speaking, there would be some individuals who actually wanted to study Philosophy a lot who might choose other top schools instead. while most students wouldn’t care. Most students probably don’t even want to study Philosophy.</p>
<p>But it so happens the deficit is in engineering.</p>
<p>Harvard and Yale, for undergraduate students, are liberal arts colleges. So, it is completely consistent with their educational mission that they do not offer business majors, communications majors, or B.S.M.E. and B.Arch. degree programs. This has little to do with the popularity of these programs, nor with the employment prospects of their graduates.</p>
<p>Asking why liberal arts colleges don’t offer these programs is a little like asking why Yo-yo Ma does not perform rap music. It’s just not their thing. A Classics major, on the other hand, is their thing, so they continue to offer it despite miniscule market demand for that major.</p>
<p>And they do offer an engineering major. Just not professional degree programs such as the B.S.M.E… From Harvard’s mission statement:
[quote]
Our goal is to create “renaissance engineers” or students who excel in applied science, but also have a broad knowledge of other disciplines.<a href=“%5Burl%5Dhttp://www.seas.harvard.edu/academic/undergradstudy/index.html%5B/url%5D”>/quote</a></p>
<p>I’m not convinced there is a “deficit” in these programs. That seems to be an unexamined assumption that some posters are making. According to the FSP Index of scholarly productivity, Yale is #3 in Mechanical Engineering, #9 in Biomedical, #10 in Computer Engineering, and #5 in General Engineering. #1 in General Engineering? That would be Harvard.</p>