<p>If you didn’t do well in high school you would not have gotten into U-M period . Please stop being so condescending. What do you take this school for? A trade school you can just come and go as you please? Those magnetic brand names are much stronger on the east and west coasts by the way. Not everyone in flyover country is interested. This discussion in hypotheticals is getting ridiculous. Certainly if you barely got into Michigan, you aren’t going to get into HYPSM . Let’s just agree to disagree before one of us says too much.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s too strong. These kids who got rejected by Harvard may have gotten into P, or Y, or M and then chose Stanford. Wouldn’t you agree that someone who is willing to choose Stanford over one, two, or all three of those schools is a lot more likely to choose Stanford over Harvard, than someone who’s intentions we know nothing about (aka cross-admits)? I think so. I’m not saying all Harvard rejects at Stanford would have rejected Harvard if given the option, but I think most, perhaps around the level of our yield rate which hovers around slightly over seventy percent, would have rejected Harvard for Stanford if given the chance.</p>
<p>Look, Morsmordre and Rjkofnovi, I actually sympathize with many of your points. Many of the points you have raised are notions that I wish were true, but I’m afraid aren’t true. To wit:</p>
<p>*I wish that engineering was a more desired major and career. </p>
<p>But the fact is, it isn’t, probably because engineering carries little professional prestige relative to other professional degrees such as medicine or law, and engineering doesn’t pay particularly highly over an entire career. It pays decently to start, but salaries don’t increase much with time. Engineering will support a reasonable middle-class, but hardly spectacular lifestyle. That is why many engineering students from MIT and, yes, Stanford don’t actually want to work as engineers, instead preferring careers in consulting or banking.</p>
<p>*I suspect that schools like UM, Berkeley, and especially Stanford should probably curry more prestige than they do relative to the Northeastern schools. </p>
<p>But the fact is, they don’t. Rjkofnovi, I don’t think you were far-off when you noted that the top private schools draw top students due to the sheer magnetism of their brand name which may sometimes blind people to the weaknesses of some of their programs. But, like it or not, that is how the system works. Schools are locuses of network effects, where the best students tend to draw more of the best students, which tend to drawn even more of the best students. </p>
<p>However, Morsmordre, if it makes you feel better, I believe that Stanford is a better school than Yale or Princeton (but not quite yet Harvard). </p>
<p>*Things may indeed change in the future.</p>
<p>In particular, it may well be true that Stanford or, less probably, Berkeley or Michigan, may dethrone Harvard sometime in the future, and engineering may well be the leverage point to do so. </p>
<p>But that’s not going to happen anytime soon, and we can’t assume that it will. Right now as it stands, whether we like it or not, Harvard continues to wield the best brand name in higher education.</p>
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<p>I said didn’t do that well in high school - but still well enough to get into UM. Please read my posts more carefully next time.</p>
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<p>Please stop being so condescending. You keep insulting Harvard engineering when in fact it is a better engineering program than the vast majority of the hundreds of engineering programs out there. If Harvard engineering is so terrible, then what does that make all those other programs? </p>
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<p>And that’s why I said this was a thought exercise. Obviously nobody is going to offer everybody at UM admission to HYPSM. What I am saying is we have to imagine what would happen if they did.</p>
<p>Oh there’s no doubt that Harvard wields the best brand name in higher education, I just think that its brand name may not be fully deserved in this day and time.</p>
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<p>Oh, I think it’s a very strong claim. </p>
<p>After all, keep in mind what we’re talking about. We’re not talking about students who didn’t even apply to Harvard at all. We’re talking about students who did apply to Harvard, but just didn’t get in. Given the fact that H beats S in terms of actual cross-admits, those are the closest proxies we have to what these other students would have done had they actually gotten into Harvard.</p>
<p>Where I would obviously agree with you is regarding those students who didn’t even apply to Harvard but applied to Stanford (and perhaps to YPM). Those students surely would not have chosen Harvard - that is why they didn’t apply. But if you did apply to Harvard, that means that you were seriously considering going.</p>
<p>Ok sakky, if you didn’t do all “that” well in high school you’re not getting into Michigan. </p>
<p>“Please stop being so condescending. You keep insulting Harvard engineering when in fact it is a better engineering program than the vast majority of the hundreds of engineering programs out there. If Harvard engineering is so terrible, then what does that make all those other programs?”</p>
<p>Harvard engineering is weak for a top 5 elite university that you are constantly reminding everyone here it is. If you can’t admit that at least, then you’re being completely unreasonable. By the way, there are many engineering programs superior to Harvard. What does that make Harvard? It works both ways.</p>
<p>Maybe I was being confusing I’m talking about kids who fulfill the following characteristics:</p>
<p>1.Got rejected from Harvard.
2.Applied to other top schools and may have gotten into those.
3.Chose Stanford over every other school they got admitted to.</p>
<p>That group is certainly a more Stanford loyal group than the group of cross admits between H and S that may not have ever very seriously considered Stanford. By definition, all the kids who chose S seriously considered Stanford.</p>
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<p>Look, lots of accolades aren’t really deserved. </p>
<p>For example, I don’t think that Paris Hilton is particularly beautiful, nor can she act, nor can she sing, nor does she have any other discernable talents whatsoever. But what can I say? Somehow she’s become a millionaire movie star and celebrity famous throughout the world, and I’m not. She’s clearly doing something right.</p>
<p>^^^Something we can agree on! She is famous ONLY because of her last name. Hilton. Starts with an H like a school we’ve been discussing here. The first time I heard Paris Hilton I was thinking of a hotel in France. I bet I’m not the only one who did that too. ;-)</p>
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<p>I said that you were doing well enough to (barely) get into UM. </p>
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<p>When have I ever argued otherwise? </p>
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<p>It makes Harvard the best-branded school in the world. Unfair? Perhaps. But that’s how it is.</p>
<p>Like I said, whether we like it or not, engineering is simply seen as not being particularly important, either in terms of an educational offering or, frankly, in terms of a career. The best students don’t really want to work as engineers. Sad but true.</p>
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<p>I don’t see any reason to believe that this particular group would be any more loyal to Stanford than those H-S cross-admits. Why would somebody who (perhaps) turned down Yale or Princeton necessarily also turn down Harvard? And that’s assuming that they did get into Yale or Princeton - what if they were rejected from them too? I don’t see how that provides any information about what the person would have done had he gotten into Harvard. </p>
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<p>But, whether we like it or not, she’s a millionaire and we’re not. So whatever she’s got is clearly working and whatever we have is clearly not working. It’s hard to argue with the empirical evidence.</p>
<p>B/c undergraduate business schools are a recent phenomenon. Believe or not, once upon a time undergraduate education was for the sake of learning.
Wharton was founded in 1881. Other UG business schools are not so recent with many dating from the early part of the 20th century. It is interesting, however, that as some universities sought to raise their status, they got rid of UG business since it was more prestigious (among other reasons) to just have a grad business school. Northwestern is a good example of this. More recently, a lot of Wharton wannabes with named UG business schools have gained in status.</p>
<p>Engineering has been around for a long time bdl108…
Not as a formal scholastic discipline within the US (or its colonial predecessors).
Cornell is different from the other Ivies in this respect. It was founded later (after the Civil War, not in colonial times). </p>
<p>Historically, there was an interest in developing engineering at Harvard. Harvard started the Lawrence Scientific School in 1847.
As early as 1869, it attempted to merge MIT with Lawrence, and attempted several more times until ultimately a state court ruled against it in the early part of the 20th century. The Lawrence Scientific School had an uneasy and ambivalent relationship with the rest of Harvard and eventually it was merged into the Faculty of Arts & Sciences. Looking at some of the inventions that emerged from the Lawrence Scientific School, one could make a case that it was the Stanford of its day.
It is interesting that Jefferson proposed a chair in engineering as part of his plan for UVA, though clearly the idea didnt catch on until the land grant universities were established.
From 1870 until about 1908, Harvard even had a school of agriculture (the Bussey Institution). Yale started the Sheffield Scientific School is 1847. For a time after 1863, it also had a land grant agricultural course, but in 1893, it was transferred to Storrs (Uconn). </p>
<p>The University of Chicago was built virtually from scratch even later (in the 1890’s), so it could have chosen a similar path [as Cornell], but didn’t.</p>
<p>Yes, but other universities from the same period did choose that path, e.g., Stanford. I think it has more to do with the fact that Ezra Cornell and Leland Stanford as businessmen in one of main technological fields of their day (railroads) had the practical bent that favored engineering education. Chicago was founded more on the model of the German research universities. </p>
<p>I dont think the status of engineering at Ivys like Harvard has much to do with the fact that the school has colonial roots. Its history shows that it did have more than just a passing dalliance with applied fields. In a larger view, the period when a university was founded does not have so much to do with the particular schools and programs it emphasizes. Rather, it depends on what its dominant founding vision is, as well as how it perceives the competition in its niche (whether there is a need, whether it duplicating existing programs at other schools, what it can do best/where its strengths lie, etc). For example, Northwestern considered starting a vet school (probably in the 1970s), but decided against this, as it would be competing with Illinois. Many times in their histories, American universities have struggled to define their identities and dominant vision, and this continues to this day. Sometimes, a university changes its identity or dominant vision. Northwestern is a good example. For many years, it had one foot in the Big 10 state university circle and another in the elite private circle. After it finally made up its mind, it shed UG business and education schools, a home economics dept, and a geography dept. (Other universities have traveled this route, too. Look at how physical education depts. have morphed into kinesiology depts. at many state universities as these universities rose in the ranks. While these state unis still may be mandated to train the states future teachers, many have chosen to emphasize the research basis of the discipline rather than train mere PE teachers.) Often, whether a particular school or department exists at a given university depends more on a particular professor or donor who established or promoted it. Sometimes, the program persists if it is in line with its dominant vision or identity, but sometimes, it doesnt if it is not. </p>
<p>As for the length of time that engineering has existed as a formal discipline, it goes without saying that it doesnt come close to traditional liberal arts disciplines like classics, English, and philosophy. Nonetheless, the separate engineering fields existed as formal disciplines for as long as many other liberal arts disciplines. For example, the oldest sociology department only dates from 1903 when it was established at Chicago. Michigan, which is well known for its psychology department, did not even separate it from its philosophy department until about 1931. Many Slavic language or South Asian language departments at top universities only date to WW II or shortly thereafter (although courses may have taught earlier). It is often the top universities that pioneer in a new discipline, but not always. In any case, being the first often seems to enshrine the status as the best. (Prior to about the early 1880s, its difficult to date the founding of departments since universities were just starting to develop departmental structure. Prior to that time, thy often had the traditional classical curriculum with few electives—though perhaps divided into Classical, Modern/English, and Scientific streams. Offering some courses or establishing a chair or professorship in a particular subject is not necessarily the same thing as establishing a department or school. Even from the early 1880s to about 1900, its murky since the transition to a departmental structure was still incomplete at some universities.)</p>
<p>For engineering, the dates of founding US departments predate or fall into a comparable timeframe to the founding dates of many liberal arts departments. In Britain and Europe, many engineering disciplines were established even earlier. The dates/locations of founding US engineering departments are as follows:
Civil 1830s (RPI); Mechanical 1845/1865? (US Naval Academy); Mineral 1867 (Michigan, Columbia); Metallurgical Engineering before 1871? (?); Naval Architecture/Marine 1881 (Michigan); Electrical 1886 (Missouri); Chemical 1888 (MIT); Ceramic 1894 (Ohio State); Industrial 1909 UT-El Paso; Petroleum 1910/15 (Pitt), 1915 (UCB); Aeronautical 1916; (Michigan); Materials Science 1948 or early 1950s (Northwestern); Nuclear 1950 (NC State), 1950 (1950-courses-MIT, 1958-department status); Biomedical 1962 Johns Hopkins (department status 1970); Computer Science 1962 (Purdue).</p>
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<p>They’d be more likely because some of those H-S admits would have chosen Y or P over S. None of the S admits who turned down Y or P did that.</p>
<p>“I think the reason engineering (or business, or architecture, or journalism) is not taught at most liberal arts colleges has …. has more to do with the history and purposes of liberal arts education.”</p>
<p>I agree with this. Historically, there has been a split between the liberal arts and the “artes mechanicae.” In continental European universities, engineering usually is not one of the constituent faculties. The core faculties are Arts or Philosophy, Law, Medicine, and Theology. You don’t need engineering to have a university as that term is understood historically. In continental Europe, engineering exists primarily in Institutes of Technology. Traditionally, these were viewed as having a lower status in the system of higher education (even when technical skills are held in high esteem as they are in the Germanic countries). In large part, this is a class bias. Technical fields were perceived as beneath a gentleman, and he shouldn’t dirty his hands with a mere “trade”. This class bias seems to be more prevalent in Britain (though not necessarily in Scotland, which has a more practical bent and a long history of invention). In continental Europe, even though some countries hold technical skills in high esteem, the perception is that it is a “narrow” training. (How many times have you heard some Nazi or Soviet leader described as “uneducated”, “narrow-minded”, or “short-sighted” because he only had a technical education as though that explains their brutalities? On the other hand, you could argue that the Ivy-educated BAs and MBAs who brought our economy to its knees were the “narrow-minded” and “short-sighted” ones, despite their liberal arts educations that supposedly broadened their perspectives. Unfortunately, intellectual and education should not be confused with ethics. Using the standard of real world results, as engineers must do, one could argue that Harvard Business should be among the lowest ranked business schools based on those criteria. But I digress…that’s another thread…) </p>
<p>“I agree Morsmordre. Once again how can any top school offer engineering and NOT be stellar in it? “
“So once again my question is, “How can the highest elite universities in this land have ANY colleges/schools/programs that are not top notch in the disciplines they offer?”</p>
<p>The courses are stellar. It’s the purpose and level of specialization that is different in engineering at Harvard and similar programs. The emphasis of these programs is engineering science. With that emphasis, I would venture to say the quality is as good as a traditional engineering program if you are referring to a major in engineering physics or engineering mechanics. Surely, many traditional engineering schools offer more general programs of that sort for students who choose not to specialize as much or who want a background for certain types of applied research. Stanford has an applied physics dept., albeit that’s a graduate program. It is said that five years after an engineer graduates more than half of what he learned in school will be obsolete, and he’ll have a new grad nipping at his heels ready to overtake him. If that is the case, what is wrong with a program that focuses on fundamental engineering sciences and design principles? Maybe I’m wrong, but that sort of less-specialized engineering education would seem to provide a basis for continuing to learn during a technical career, provide a basis for a research career, and for entering professions where technical understanding is an asset (e.g., business, patent law, public policy, medicine).</p>
<p>My guess is that Harvard and some similar schools deliberately chose not to develop full-blown engineering schools with the level of specialization found at Stanford, for example. The reason for this is that they want to focus on engineering sciences in the context of a liberal arts education, and a more well-developed and specialized engineering program would skew the balance among disciplines in their undergraduate college.</p>
<p>“So, I’m assuming this is Stanford’s equivalent of “undergrad business” do other Ivys have things programs designed for dealing with risks, finances, etc?”
Actually, Princeton and Yale offer quite a few finance courses in their economics depts. </p>
<p>“People like hmom5 may want to take couple engineering courses before calling engineering a “trade”.”</p>
<p>I agree that engineering can be a creative, applied science, but we’re not talking about Zen and the Art of Engineering. We’re talking about a historical class bias in how engineering is perceived. While many engineers and business people are narrow in their focus and training, this is also true of many so-called liberal arts grads. Just because someone took a variety of courses in the humanities or social sciences, it doesn’t guarantee that they developed writing, analytic skills or a broad perspective. Many scientists and engineers are more literate in the humanities than many liberal arts grads are in the sciences.</p>
<p>SamLee will appreciate this quote:
William Elliot, President of Elliot Institute (later to become WUSTL) declared in 1854:
“Harvard University is, at this time, gaining more credit and accomplishing greater good, by the Lawrence Scientific School than by any other agency. We need just such a school, here. Its effect would be to elevate mechanical, agricultural, and mercantile pursuits, into learned professions. It would annihilate that absurd distinction by which three pursuits, of Law, Medicine, and Theology, are called professions, and everything else, labor or trade …”</p>
<p>“It’s the same pass that Berkeley gets for not having a medical school. I know a lot of people who think that Berkeley has a medical school, or at least they did until I showed them otherwise.”</p>
<p>“As a case in point, I don’t think Berkeley is a particularly desirable school for aspiring premeds, not only because it lacks a medical school (and hence research and clinical opportunities), but also because the premed advising is lacking and the vicious grading culture is anathema to the compilation of a compelling med-school application. But a lot of people think that Berkeley is a strong premed school, due to the power of the brand name, when they may well be better served at UCLA or another UC.”</p>
<p>Before there were any other UC campuses besides UCB and UCSF, UCSF was established as the medical school for the entire University of California. It is not unusual for a university to situate its medical school and affiliated hospitals in a larger population center. Illinois, Indiana, and Cornell do it. Are they bad choices for premeds on the basis that their med schools are not physically on their main campuses? Surely, there is a good deal of collaborative research between UCB and UCSF faculty and researchers. Moreover, don’t you think that there are medically-relevant research projects going on at UCB, which would provide opportunities for UG premed research? </p>
<p>I agree with you about the advising and vicious grading culture. Those aspects of UCB have nothing to do with not having a med school on the same campus, however.</p>
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<p>Huh? Sources, please?</p>
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<p>Uh, not likely many of them. Dean of Admissions readily admits that S loses most cross-admits to Yale, too. It’s closer with P.</p>
<p>Zapfino, maybe you are familiar with Shop Class as Soulcraft, by Matthew Crawford. This recently-published book explores the kind of thinking that goes on in mechanical work and other skilled trades. The author has a Ph.D. in Political Philosophy from UChicago. He quit his job managing a think tank in DC to start up a motorcycle repair shop in Richmond. He concludes he is doing more thinking in his new job than people were doing in the think tank.</p>
<p>All this talk about Engineering B.A. programs at Harvard and Yale has ignored similar issues in the field of architecture. The best B.Arch. schools apparently include Virginia Tech, the University of Cincinnati, Kansas State, and Pratt Institute. As far as I know, no liberal arts colleges offer a B.Arch. and relatively few elite private universities do (Cornell is a major exception). However, Yale offers a B.A. in architecture; several top LACs offer a B.A. in “architectural studies” (or “pre-architecture”). For a professional credential one would have to enroll in an M.Arch. program following the B.A.</p>
<p>These programs, like the Engineering B.A. programs, reflect principled choices by educators committed to the liberal arts. I’m sure that the best B.Arch. (professional degree) programs on the other hand do take a problem-solving approach and do teach students to think “liberally”, not just crank out CAD diagrams. However, they reflect a different curriculum philosophy.</p>
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How is this not directly connected to the time period a school is founded? Both the vision and context are deeply set by the “when”. How is the founding vision not inextricably linked to when a university is founded, the niche that exists at that time, and the interests of those who start the university (who do so for immediate needs)?</p>
<p>tk21769, I paged through Crawford’s book in the bookstore yesterday, but didn’t have a chance to check it out more throughly. There have been several books about the creative side of engineering. I agree that similar issues exist in architecture. </p>
<p>Even though a school like Princeton seems to offer its UG engineering and architecture programs in a context of a liberal arts college, I think it’s still difficult to balance breath and specialization. I think most engineering programs must struggle with this, though. </p>
<p>Also, even though Princeton tends to be one of the more liberal artsy Ivys, it’s interesting to see the number of finance courses that sneaked into the economics dept., and even the number of journalism seminars offered (albeit in the context of writing and liberal arts) in their Program in Humanistic Studies. On the other hand, there are state universities like Indiana (though with no engineering school) that offer very flexible cross-program options to take courses in the Kelly School of Business, yet they also developed a Liberal Arts & Management program in the College of A&S.</p>
<p>BTW, I appreciate the historical perspective that you bring to some of your posts on this forum. It’s sorely needed.</p>