<p>Jesus, publish this research elsewhere</p>
<p>With all due respect 21769, this statement sounds like a complete cop out:</p>
<p>“Our goal is to create “renaissance engineers” or students who excel in applied science, but also have a broad knowledge of other disciplines.”</p>
<p>I would think a school like Harvard would strive to be among the very best in anything it offered. After all, it’s Harvard.</p>
<p>To answer, IMO “scholarly productivity” of non-comprehensive research groups are not the optimum metric upon which most interested undergrads are likely to want to make such evaluation. Even sakky is not claiming a ranking that accords with these numbers. Many people interested in a particular field want their school to have a large breadth and depth of courses available in it, with comprehensive coverage of all relevant subareas of the field. As well as, if applicable (and in this field it is) strong on-campus recruiting for employers in that field for graduates with that specialization, programs to help with employment in the field (eg coop) to inform upper class course selection and find one’s path within the profession,numerous professors with varied interests to increase the chances that someone there will be interested in whatever subarea you wind up being interested in, etc. In addition to high quality research groups. Though, truth is, not all engineers are really interested in research.</p>
<p>When I’ve looked at similar rankings before, it turned out that if a university had a strong research group in a particular subarea or two of a field, but not coverage whatsoever of other subareas, they were not penalized; they were only given high marks reflecting what they had, notwithstanding the fact that they actually didn’t have very much. As long as what they had was good. It’s entirely possible that what they have is very good, so far as it goes, but common opinion is that it doesn’t go very far. With but 40 graduates a year, that seems like a reasonable conjecture.</p>
<p>And BTW, “general engineering” is not something that is recognized, or has any understood meaning, within the profession at all, at least what I’ve seen of it.</p>
<p>But maybe popular opinion is way off base. If you want to list the number of engineering courses offered at Yale last semester, from the registrar’s list of courses actually given, and the number of engineering professors on faculty at Yale, and then list the same numbers for MIT, then we can see how comparable the breadth and depth of the offerings are likely to be at these two schools. To make it easier, take one major field of engineering. Take Civil engineering.</p>
<p>
Well then, take it for whatever you think it’s worth. It’s just one metric. But Harvard is the most selective research university in the country. So why wouldn’t we expect many students they admit to be interested in research? </p>
<p>If what you are after is a comprehensive, pre-professional program offering a clear path to a credential to practice engineering, then by all means apply to Wisconsin or the University of Illinois. It appears the Harvard and Yale programs simply have different goals.</p>
<p>What outcome do we expect? Competent, licensed engineers employed in bridge building and circuit design projects? Or national leaders who can present the vision and establish the budgets for highways and weapons systems?</p>
<p>Many students who choose MIT are also quite interested in research, so I understand, and those individuals it would seem are offered a superior pallet of possible areas to resarch, since there are more professors in the field covering more areas more comprehensively. </p>
<p>In other words, it’s better for research, for these reasons.</p>
<p>Yet for those who choose practice this is not neglected there, and such students are offered a superior breadth and depth of coursework in the field to help optimize their path.</p>
<p>In other words it’s better for practice too.</p>
<p>It’s better for engineering, period. Both with respect to research or practice. But since upon entry a technically oriented individual may not certainly know if he/ she ultimately will want research or practice its good that neither path is neglected there.</p>
<p>FWIW, I’ve only known two Harvard trained engineering grads, and these two were not national leaders who could present their visions for much of anything. They were both tech support staff people at an investment bank. I got the impression from them that this is where Harvard stashed its soccer players, but that is possibly not a fair impression.</p>
<p>Moneydad, I really don’t know if your two acquaintances are representative alumni or not. The Wikipedia list of Harvard’s notable alumni in engineering is hardly longer than their list of notable criminals. Maybe this only reflects the difficulty of making a famous name for oneself in engineering. Or, maybe their engineering programs truly aren’t meeting their standards. ([List</a> of Harvard University people - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Harvard_University_people]List”>List of Harvard University people - Wikipedia))</p>
<p>Personally, I don’t think a comprehensive engineering program fits their model, and they’d be wrong to try to compete with MIT head on in this area. It would make more sense for the two schools to establish cooperative programs such as Brown has with RISD in architecture and other design fields (if they don’t have something like that already). </p>
<p>Does it makes sense to have liberal-artsy B.A. programs in Engineering at all? Are existing programs like this successful? I don’t know, but I don’t see why they could not be. Several well-trodden paths do wind through the liberal arts to careers in architecture. The student follows a B.A. in a liberal arts field with a Masters of Architecture, leading to professional certification to practice. As far as I know, Cornell is the only Ivy that has a B.Arch. degree program leading directly to professional certification.</p>
<p>In engineering, aren’t there programs analogous to the M.Arch.? </p>
<p>My impression is that among famous architects, notable leaders in the field, career preparation may well lead through a fairly broad education in the liberal arts and sciences (examples: Philip Johnson, Christopher Alexander, Andr</p>
<p>I don’t care what they do, it’s just that I did not agree with the notion that there are no consequences at all to them for taking this approach. Others here had advanced the notion that this was, in their view, unacceptable for these institutions, I restated that this was their position when the discourse seemed to swerve from their point. </p>
<p>The schools themselves think about this no doubt, IIRC Yale, at some point over the years, considered getting rid of their engineering program altogether because they were unwilling to commit financially to bring it up to their standards. But of course, if you decide not to get rid of it, then yes you need to develop some line by which it all seems to make sense. And some people no doubt buy it. Technical people, on the whole, are “where’s the beef?” kind of people, I know not all of them buy it, I believe a good number of committed individuals would prefer more, and choose accordingly. Hence, in my opinion,there are some consequences. That’s all.</p>
<p>The one thing I do care about though is:</p>
<p>It’s M-O-N-Y- dad
Not $$$$.</p>
<p>And yes, one can go to a good grad program from a relatively weaker undergrad program with relatively few course offerings in the field, this is true in any field, generically. If this were not a possibility LACs would not exist. Some people, the ones who tend to choose universities, prefer to have a certain breadth and depth of offerings along the way though, to better inform their subsequent decisions.</p>
<p>monydad, excuse me please, I did not mean to get your handle wrong. </p>
<p>I’d hesitate to characterize the Harvard and Yale programs as “weaker”. They may or may not be. Without more information I’d prefer to characterize them as “different”. Are liberal arts colleges “weak” because they have fewer course offerings in most fields than Berkeley or Michigan do? Or because they don’t offer any programs at all in business and engineering let alone nursing, veterinary science, or agriculture? </p>
<p>If you want to mix liberal arts and engineering as an undergraduate, the hard constraint is that there is only so much time to do it all in 4 years. So even if H&Y added more engineering courses, it’s not a sure thing that students could take advantage of them without skipping the arts & science courses they now take. That, too, could have consequences for the learning environment. </p>
<p>Cornell is a good alternative for comprehensive coverage of the liberal arts and career training in engineering, architecture, ag, etc. Although, outside this thread, I don’t see too much demand for Harvard and Yale to be more like Cornell. Stanford is yet another model. It seems to offer real breadth, depth, and quality in conventional engineering disciplines, without offering too many other options outside the liberal arts and sciences (no journalism, theater, business, agriculture, nursing, etc.) As technology becomes more and more important in business and national decision-making, maybe we’ll see more national universities trying to copy the Stanford curriculum. So sure, one can make a case on these grounds that Stanford is a better model than Harvard and Yale for elite universities in the 21st century.</p>
<p>Certainly, if colleges and universities don’t adapt to change, there are consequences. There are consequences as well for just following the latest market trends and not having a well defined mission.</p>
<p>"Are liberal arts colleges “weak” because they have fewer course offerings in most fields than Berkeley or Michigan do? "</p>
<p>Yes, this is pretty much exactly the LACs major weak point. Otherwise everyone would choose them over all the leading research universities, of comparable prestige. Some people care about this aspect though, it is not completely irrelevant to virtually all of them, is the point I was making. Because, again, otherwise the undergraduate research Us would be empty.</p>
<p>Not everyone though, there are certainly competing facets of an institution as a whole that can supercede this factor. Which does not make lack of courses and programs of study in an area ever a virtue in and of itself, it just may be overcome by other issues, as a balancing matter. and in many cases it is. My point was, in some cases it isn’t.</p>
<p>
Is the converse true, then? Is it always a virtue to add more courses and programs of study? As a practical matter of course there is always a limit to funds and space. But supposing money and space were no object, would it be desirable for all liberal arts colleges to add graduate programs or pre-professional majors? Or for all Ivy League universities to emulate Cornell, Northwestern, or Stanford?</p>
<p>Historically, many modern universities did evolve from small liberal arts colleges. The remaining LACs, by and large (except for more recently-founded schools like Bennington or Hampshire), are the schools that chose not to expand. So why did some of them make that choice?</p>
<p>To take an extreme case, tiny St. John’s College (2nd oldest in America) assigns exactly the same content (~100 “Great Books”) to all students and faculty. Clearly this is a fatally weak curriculum if you want to study engineering! But apparently it is considered a strength there to have everyone study the same material, provided you accept the aims of education as SJC defines them.</p>
<p>Different strokes. etc. However, some other people on this thread don’t think these particular institutions should be limiting themselves to some subset of the pre-eminent minds in some field of endeavor they offer, that’s all. Me, I don’t care if they do or not, really.</p>
<p>BTW I’m done here, they can speak for themselves, if they care to.</p>
<p>tk21769,</p>
<p>In case you don’t know, Yale does offer ABET-accredited programs (BS) in ChemE, EE, nd ME.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.abet.org/AccredProgramSearch/AccreditationSearch.aspx[/url]”>http://www.abet.org/AccredProgramSearch/AccreditationSearch.aspx</a></p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Actually, I see that you’ve just cherry-picked your data. The 2006-2008 timeframe seems to be the only timeframe when a particular ‘class’ of engineering students actually grew over time. Even that ‘growth’ was mild: starting from 566 sophomores in 2006-2007, and ‘rising’ to merely 569 4th year seniors in 2008-2009 (not counting the 5th year seniors), and that rise could easily be explained by the launching of the new bioengineering program. Sophomores in 2006-2007 couldn’t declare bioengineering as that major wasn’t yet open for official declaration. Pick any other 3-year period, and the engineering numbers clearly drop.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t see that as being the relevant question at hand. If it were, then the same could be said about any school. After all, every school out there is relatively weak in something, if it even competes in a particular category at all. There is no such thing as a school that is strongest in every single possible dimension. Berkeley and Michigan have notably relatively weak undergraduate student bodies, relative to the top private schools. Stanford is located in a remarkably boring suburb, something that my brother and others have complained about vociferously. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I would think that every school would strive to be the very best in anything it has to offer. Yet, as I’ve said above, every school has something in which it is relatively weak. Like I said, if you really want to be an engineer, don’t go to Harvard or Yale. </p>
<p>The question that then poses is, how do you really know that you want to be an engineer. Put more succintly, what if you turn down Harvard or Yale for Michigan or Berkeley…and then find out later that you don’t really want to major in engineering?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Not really, it is just the latest period available. </p>
<p>Over the entire 2001-2008 period reported by the MIT Registrar there were:</p>
<p>4851 students declaring themselves as engineers beginning sophomore year.
Of these, 4530 or 93.3% were still enrolled in engineering as the primary degree.</p>
<p>In addition, 396 students JOINED engineering to get a second degree in the same cohorts for a total of 4,926 at the beginning of senior year. (5th year grads not counted). These are not included in the first list to avoid double counting. This is consistent with approximately 60% of the entire class graduating with an engineering degree as a first or second degree. </p>
<p>**This translates into a net influx of 75 students over the period or a 1.5% net increase.</p>
<p>Interestingly, EECS which represents between a third of to half of all engineers shows a markedly stronger increase.**</p>
<p>Of 2,273 declared EECS students sophomore year, 2,074 were still in the department as seniors. This is the identical 93% retention rate for all engineering. On the other hand, they were joined by an additional 312 students with EECS as a second degree for a net increase of 7.3%.</p>
<p>Close to 80% of the second degrees (which were full separate degrees until this year) were in EECS, which remains a very popular major. EECS actually strongly encourages students to join the department by offering a variety of options. They clearly have implemented a reverse weed-out policy which I believe is highly unique to MIT. For as long as records have been kept, EECS has always had more students at the end of any graduating class than at the beginning. Considering EECS is also one of the most intensive programs as well, it is actually an amazing feat. </p>
<p>Biological engineering is a very small department and very few students add it as a second degree because of the lack of overlap with other departments. Less than 1 per year do so. No engineering department outside of EECS adds more than 1 or 2 students per year. </p>
<p>In summary, at MIT since 2001, the non-EECS engineering departments show a net attrition of 3.3% between the beginning of sophomore and senior years while EECS shows a net gain of 7.3% for an overall net gain of 1.5% </p>
<p>Detailed statistics are here:
[Enrollment</a> & Degree Statistics: MIT Office of the Registrar](<a href=“http://mit.edu/registrar/stats/]Enrollment”>http://mit.edu/registrar/stats/)</p>
<p><a href=“sakky:”>quote</a> </p>
<p>Yale beat Princeton in the cross-admit battle
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Published cross-admit data (or even statements of those who have seen the data) are rare for those battles, and may not exist. How do you know that Yale beat Princeton at all?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I believe I posted that information. Look it up in the beginning of this thread. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Wrong. Please do your analysis more carefully next time. </p>
<p>Consider the 205-strong sophomore EECS cohort (in all 3 EECS programs) from 2004-2005. By the 2006-2007 academic year, only 186 remained in the 4th year of the program. </p>
<p>Want another cohort? Take the EECS sophomores in 2003-2004, look at them again as 4th year students in 2005-2006. The numbers drop from 229 to 206.</p>
<p>Want another? From 2002-2003 to 2004-2005, the numbers drop from 282 to 257.</p>
<p>Want another? From 2001-2002 to 2003-2004, numbers drop from 342 to 330.</p>
<p>I’m not going to do the rest, but I think my point is clear, that there are indeed many (probably most) years for which the EECS program has lost, not gained, students measured from year 2, which is when students can declare majors, to year 4.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>A net gain, you say? Is that right?</p>
<p>I see here that in the 2005-2006 academic year, there were 649 sophomores who had declared engineering (all disciplines). By the 2007-2008 academic year, only 602 remained in the 4th year of engineering.</p>
<p>Here’s the rest of the table:</p>
<p>Year of soph. class # Soph # 4th year seniors*
2004-2005 579 524
2003-2004 551 516
2002-2003 578 533
2001-2002 584 564</p>
<p>*Measured after a 2 year gap</p>
<p>Hence the only cohort in which the sophomores seemed to gain in number was the most recent cohort, which did indeed apparently grow from 566 sophomores in 2006-2007 to 569 4th year seniors in 2008-2009, a change most likely attributable to the launch of the bioE program, with 47 declared BioE 4th year seniors in 2008-2009. </p>
<p>Note, I could check back onto even earlier years, but you were the one that mentioned the 2001-2008 time frame, so that is what I used.</p>
<p>Again, please do your analyses more carefully next time. I am frankly getting tired of having to correct simple mistakes. This is becoming embarrassing for both of us.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I believe I posted that information. Look it up in the beginning of this thread.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You posted no such information. You provided a link to:
…a blog operated by high-school students;
…that used an unsourced sample of sixty (60) students;
…described said sample as “biased toward MIT”;
…threw in some wildly inventive calculations;
…and concluded that Yale beats Harvard 56 to 44 percent in cross-admit battles (or worse, NYTimes/Revealed-Preferences head-to-head yield that the bloggers confused with cross admit).</p>
<p>You wrote in this thread that “Harvard wins [cross-admit battles] against Stanford (and every other regular university for that matter)”, so I assume you agree that your blog source is total nonsense. Indeed, the 3-to-1 advantage Harvard currently enjoys over Yale has been published in various places and cited in CC. Contemporary Yale against Princeton results have not been made public to any extent, as far as I know. </p>
<p>So the question stands: how do you know that Yale beats Princeton in enrolling their mutual admits?</p>
<p>Sakky:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Maybe if you read my entire post, it would be a little less embarrassing for both of us.</p>
<ol>
<li>I indicated that 93.3% of entering sophomores declaring themselves as engineers were still in engineering as seniors for a 6.7% attrition rate for the entire period between 2000 and 2008. ** There is no disagreement on that point.**<br></li>
</ol>
<p>That 6.7% attrition rate is not indicative of students dropping out of engineering for other majors. The School of Science has a slightly higher attrition rate of 8.1% over the same period and MIT as whole has an attrition rate of 7.0%.. So, actually engineering does better than any of the other schools at retaining students and better than MIT as whole. </p>
<ol>
<li>I also indicated the original engineering students were joined by ** an additional 396 students from non-engineering departments who added engineering as a second major in their junior or senior years.** These students are not counted on the first series of tables which only accounts for students with engineering as their first major. (By necessity to avoid double counting). You can find the detail of these double majors on the next series of statistics on the link I provided. Nealy all of them come from the school of Science and most from the math and physics departments. </li>
</ol>
<p>So, in fact if you review the entire data, you would find that **MIT does actually have more engineers as seniors than sophomores<a href=“4,926%20as%20seniors%20versus%204,851%20as%20starting%20sophomores”>/b</a> for a net gain of 1.5% as I stated. It is also true that EECS adds 7.5% students on average over that period (as much as 15% in recent years). </p>
<p>It is probably the only school where there are more engineers at graduation than started with engineering as primary majors. Most of the influx is in the EECS department which swells substantially between sophomore and senior years. </p>
<p>So while it may be true in general that substantial amounts of students switch out of engineering at most schools for less challenging majors (65% at Harvard according to the Crimson) such is NOT the case at MIT, despite your assertions. At MIT, students switch IN to engineering. Checking the facts before making broad general statements does help!</p>