<p>So many aspiring engineers apply to schools like Duke/Penn/Columbia?</p>
<p>Not to say those schools aren't good, but they aren't really the best engineering schools, which are often state schools, such as Gtech, UIUC, Michigan, etc. (well, apart from MIT, Caltech, and Stanford ;) )</p>
<p>Is there something at those schools that I'm missing?</p>
<p>^ Umm . . . what about UC Berkeley?</p>
<p>MIT, Caltech, and Stanford are outstanding for engineering. I’d put Cornell and CMU in that category, too. I think you’re right, though, about Duke, Penn and Columbia not being as strong in engineering as the top public engineering schools. I just think there’s a pervasive pro-Ivy, pro-private bias among some top students and the people advising them. They see more prestige attached to the most selective private schools, even if objectively the quality of the faculty, the quality of the facilities, and the overall strength, breadth, and depth of the engineering programs are superior in some of the top publics. And they’d be too embarrassed to admit to their non-engineering peers who end up at Ivies or other top privates that they ended up at a UIUC or Georgia Tech; the nameplate just doesn’t carry the same prestige value. IMO, they’re valuing prestige over education. Now the same sort of thing goes on in other fields as well, and sometimes it may be a reasonable trade-off; most people, including employers, don’t really care who’s got the best program in philosophy or political science, they just recognize the prestige value of the nameplate. But my sense is in the engineering world it’s different. You can probably do just fine with an engineering degree from Duke, Penn, or Columbia, but it’s mostly engineers who hire other engineers, and they’re not going to be fooled. They’re going to know where Duke, Penn, and Columbia stack up in the engineering pecking order, and for the most part they’re going to value an engineering degree from UC Berkeley, UIUC, or Michigan—or from Caltech, MIT, Stanford, Cornell, or CMU–over one from Duke, Penn, or Columbia.</p>
<p>Ah, sorry, my list wasn’t meant to be comprehensive.</p>
<p>I just find it odd that Engineering majors would bother applying to Harvard when Harvard offers only an Engineering Science major…</p>