<p>I see it more and more, but I wonder; why do people consistently think Georgia Tech. is such a great school? I'm not trying to put it down or anything, just waondering why people think of it so highly? Any out there able to clarify this for me?</p>
<p>It has very good engineering programs hence Institute of Technology</p>
<p>while on topic</p>
<p>what makes Duke and Vanderbilt good schools?</p>
<p>I'm not trying to take anything away from them... but I am looking into applying but dont really see the WOW in academics at least?</p>
<p>They are good schools. And they are much more respected in the South than they are along the eastern seaboard. They're just as good as any liberal arts college in the northeast with comparable student bodies AND beautiful campuses.</p>
<p>braaap...you should start your own thread with that question, rather than take away from this one.</p>
<p>But... The thing that makes Duke a good school is the same thing that makes Dartmouth, Penn, Brown, and Columbia good schools since they are almost identical in terms of academics/student strength/prestige. Its just that Duke is warmer and has a strong social scene with prominent sports such as basketball. So thats the WOW. Same reason people choose Stanford over Yale. </p>
<p>Vanderbilt is OK too, but I don't categorize it with any top 10 schools.</p>
<p>GT is a well-known school because of its great engineering program.</p>
<p>I'm going to echo what everyone else has said - strong engineering.</p>
<p>Schools in the South, by and large, don't get much respect from academics and this is reflected in their Peer Assessment scores which go a long way to determining a school's USNWR rank and, in turn, its national reputation. This ranking influence is particularly so when a student does not know a lot about the school, eg, Georgia Tech. </p>
<p>Of the major Southern universities, only Duke has been able to break the Southern stereotype and is now accepted by many as the truest peer to Stanford. So, now when high school students in other parts of the country put Duke on their application list along with HYPS and other schools with great historical prestige, it appears as a natural fit.</p>
<p>Other schools in the South have not yet reached this level of acceptance nationally and certainly not among academics and their PA scoring. The schools with the historical prestige and the large graduate research centers dominate the top of the Peer Assessment ranks and the only Southern schools beyond Duke that truly get much respect from academics are U Virginia and U North Carolina. GREAT schools with excellent students like Rice, Vanderbilt, Emory, Wake Forest, William & Mary, Davidson and Georgia Tech are all IMO very underrated on the national scene. </p>
<p>As a student looking for a great undergraduate experience, I have frequently suggested that a student look for the following:</p>
<ol>
<li> Great students to have as classmates, to learn from and to enjoy good times with</li>
<li> Small to relatively small classes led by instructors with a minimal use of TAs</li>
<li> Excellent faculty that are accessible and interested in undergraduate teaching</li>
<li> Sufficiently large institutional resources to fund and support the needs of both students and faculty in the undergraduate colleges</li>
</ol>
<p>On these measures, the aforementioned schools compare very well with virtually any school in the country and several of these offer a full undergraduate experience (academic, social, athletic) that is superior to many (most) of their higher ranked competitors with greater cachet among academics. </p>
<p>For Georgia Tech specifically, its academic reputation is extremely good among those in engineering fields and 56% of its declared majors were in Engineering. There are many very strong students at Georgia Tech, eg, nearly 3.5% of their last class were National Merit Scholars which would rank it 21st nationally. Average SAT scores for the latest class were 1315 (same as U Michigan and NYU and slightly behind RPI, U Rochester, BC and Tulane, among others). However, the school, with 66% of its students from Georgia and a 69% acceptance rate and only 31% women, does not appear selective or balanced to many potential applicants and this hurts its reputation. </p>
<p>Socially, I suggest you look at the College P r owl er book as there are a lot of useful insights therein. The school is very strong athletically and excellent school spirit and a terrific rivalry with U Georgia. This is a great differentiating factor when compared to many schools in other parts of the country. </p>
<p>From a postgraduate standpoint, I think you would be very happy with a degree from Georgia Tech. The name is very strong in the South and students would have no problem competing effectively for jobs or graduate school placement. Among engineers, the name has great power and this would extend well beyond the South. For non-engineers, however, the name does not travel as well.</p>
<p>GT has an extremely high revealed preference ranking, for whatever reason.... i also cannot put my finger on it:
<a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=601105%5B/url%5D">http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=601105</a></p>
<ol>
<li>Northwestern</li>
<li>Georgia Tech</li>
<li>UC - Berkeley</li>
</ol>
<p>now status and a public school as well as a specialty (all girls, religion) both clearly add places to a school in this ranking, though i don't know if "tech" is considered a specialty</p>
<p>according to this ranking, GTech is the third most preferred tech school in the country, and the ranking looks like this</p>
<ol>
<li>Caltech</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Georgia Tech</li>
</ol>
<p>granted, there are other places to study engineering besides tech schools, but what to make of this data?</p>
<p>Actually, the Revealed Preference makes sense to me, particularly in light of Georgia Tech's high acceptance rate. The applicant pool is likely very self-selecting and, given the school's prominence in engineering, an acceptance to GT is a big deal. </p>
<p>According to a little analysis I did a few months ago, GT has 9 engineering programs ranked in the top 10 with an average ranking of 5.33. The top five were:</p>
<ol>
<li> MIT-10 programs, average rank of 2.90</li>
<li> Stanford-11 programs, average rank of 4.73</li>
<li> UC Berkeley-11 programs, average rank of 5.09</li>
<li> Georgia Tech-9 programs, average rank of 5.33</li>
<li> U Illinois-12 programs, average rank of 5.58</li>
</ol>
<p>According to US News, GT is ranked 6th overall in engineering, But it has always been underrated, GT and MIT are the only schools to be top-ranked in all engineering. GT is a very good value school, tuition is about $6000-7000 for instate and about $16000-17000 for out of state. GT has an advantage being in the heart of a big commercial city like Atlanta. So finding jobs , internships , research work is much easier while being in Atlanta. Also, GT has a decent sports scene with NCAA I teams. The weather at Atlanta is sunny for most year round.</p>
<p>Is it true that GTech is terrible for Undergrads? I hear that a lot here...</p>
<p>Georgia Tech is indeed a great engineering school, but two things puzzle me. It seems to have the greatest mismatch between the last NRC rankings and current USNWR engineering dept. rankings of all the strong engineering schools. From what I recall, although GTech was strong in engineering, it wasn't nearly as highly ranked in engineering as it is in the current USNWR rankings. We're talking outside of the top 10 with NRC, to top 5 with USNWR. In fact, quite a few universities had stronger programs per the NRC. Both surveys heavily relied on peer reputation and generally agree in this regard. So... was improvement really this dramatic, or was it underranked in the original NRC rankings? </p>
<p>The second point I don't understand is why, as a tech school, are the natural/physical sciences not really that strong relative to other universities? They're not bad by any means, but not really stellar either (i.e., top 20-30 vs top 5-10). Both the NRC rankings and the USNWR rankings show this, so there isn't the same disconnect as with engineering.</p>
<p>There's no doubt GTech is academically strong and has a strong student body. I just haven't understood the reasons for this.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Is it true that GTech is terrible for Undergrads? I hear that a lot here...
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Heh Georgia Tech is definitely not known for the undergraduate experience.</p>
<p>Rather, it is known for being ridiculously hard and depressing. Many individuals are forced to graduate in 5 or 6 years with subpar GPAs -- assuming they are not expelled.</p>
<p>Many students from Georgia lose their Hope Scholarships, which covers public school tuition if you maintained a B average in HS, because they cannot maintain a 3.0 at GaTech.</p>
<p>Not to mention the male/female ratio blows</p>
<p>I do not mean to be depressing, but I am from Atlanta, so I know a quite a bit about the university.</p>
<p>People have told me that Georgia Tech is MIT hard without the MIT capable students. Many people who are admitted simply can't handle it. On the other hand, if you are MIT qualified in terms of numbers, but don't get in there, this seems like the intense education you've always wanted. It gets very high marks in industry.</p>
<p>^^ could be, MIT's freshman retention rate is 98% (although they do not give out grades freshman year) while georgia tech's is 92%, although that's still better than VTech (89%) but worse than rensselaer (94%)</p>
<p>source: <a href="http://www.princetonreview.com%5B/url%5D">www.princetonreview.com</a></p>
<p>Georgia Tech is narrowly focused to the extreme. Its mission is technology, so that's what it offers. Want to major in History? You get to study the history of technology. Liberal arts departments are focused on instructional and communicative media. The Music program - no major, just a minor - is in the School of Architecture. Their approach to music is acoustics I suppose? What Tech des well, it does very, very well, but it's definitely not for everyone.</p>
<p>Gatech is a very good value school. You're saving so much and still getting an education that is comparable to MIT, Stanford or Caltech. Its a public school while others are private.</p>
<p>Hawkette, according to the USNWR undergraduate rankings, which you used to come up with your rankings in Post #8, Michigan is ranked among the top 10 in ten of the twelve fields with an average ranking of 5.0. Using your ranking, Michigan should be ranked #3, between #2 Stanford and #4 Cal. UIUC drops out of the top 5.</p>
<h1>3 in Aerospace, Environmental and Industrial Engineering.</h1>
<h1>4 in Materials and Mechancial Engineering</h1>
<h1>5 in Electrical Engineering</h1>
<h1>6 in Computer Engineering and Engineering Physics</h1>
<h1>8 in Biomedical and Civil Engineering</h1>
<p>Given your love for Michigan, I am sure your omission was totally accidental! Hehe!</p>
<p>Alexandre,
While we may disagree often on the national prominence of U Michigan, I am not going to make up data. Here is how I got the score that I did and it was the same process for all schools.</p>
<p>First, calculate the number of engineering categories that a school is ranked in. For U Michigan, they have rankings in 11 of the 12 areas for which ranks are provided.</p>
<p>Second, add up all of the ranks. For U Michigan, that totaled to 62.</p>
<p>Third, divide the total of the ranks by the number of areas in which a program is ranked. (I didn’t penalize a school for not having a rank because I did not know if that meant that they aren’t good or they don’t offer it). For U Michigan, the result was 5.64.</p>
<p>A similar process was done for the other five schools and their scores are what I posted in #10 which I reproduce again here:</p>
<ol>
<li> MIT-10 programs, average rank of 2.90</li>
<li>Stanford-11 programs, average rank of 4.73</li>
<li>UC Berkeley-11 programs, average rank of 5.09</li>
<li>Georgia Tech-9 programs, average rank of 5.33</li>
<li>U Illinois-12 programs, average rank of 5.58</li>
</ol>
<p>Given our sometimes contentious interactions, I can understand your concern. I hope that my explanation satisfies you.</p>
<p>Re the process that I used, I think it was pretty simplistic and certainly there are other ways that one could look at the data, but I think it is pretty clear that these five schools (and U Michigan and several others just out of my top five) have excellent engineering and program breadth and depth. Georgia Tech is a premier school in this area and that was my message to the OP.</p>