Which Top 50 colleges are weak when it comes to Engineering? And besides the obvious (MiT, Stanford, Cal), strong?
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Anonymous
It is simply saying the graduates may have majored in another area other than the ones they are working in. They are reporting on graduates of that institution that are working in that field. This is very evident in Finance, for instance. A number of the top schools do not have Business/Finance undergraduate majors (e.g. Harvard, Princeton), but they are near the top in finance salaries. Likewise, many Engineering/Math MIT graduates may be the ones working in finance, where MIT is listed at the top for salaries. They may be working in quant positions. |
Anonymous
Wow! Nice to see Santa Clara so high. |
Anonymous
Of course, California is about 35% more expensive from a cost of living perspective and San Jose (Silicon Valley) is 50% higher than the national average. I imagine this plays a significant role. |
Anonymous
+1 a lot of SV companies hire from local schools like SC and even SJSU (cheap CSU school). They get paid SV salaries, but the col there is super high. I used to live there, and even took some CS classes at SJSU. The same thing would apply to all those graduates ^ in that list. It really depends on where you live. Let's say you make $100K. That is a lot in the midwest and south; not so much in the Bay Area, or DC. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/100k-salary-city-affordability/
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Anonymous
| Princeton |
Anonymous
| If my kid were from MD and wanted to do engineering, they would 10000% being going to UMD, period. It is fantastic engineering school, and they're getting in state price. |
Anonymous
This doesn't mean anything. That's because a lot of grads from those kinds of universities end up going into garbage career fields like investing, consulting, or some other highly paid useless field. |
Anonymous
UNC doesn't have an engineering school, maybe bc as a state school they are themselves as part of a larger system and at least from my NC high school, the students who became engineers all went to NC State. These were good students -- AP Calc BC, Science Olympiad placements, etc. Agree UNC is a better school and my fellow UNC alums mostly left the state and moved to bigger markets. The NC State grads tended to stay in NC. |
Anonymous
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All this talk about weak engineering programs is mostly preposterous. According to the geniuses here, UVA is weak and University of Illinois is not. Imagine meeting with some electrical engineering seniors from each school and quiz this group of students. Do you honestly think you could discern a difference between the UVA students and Illinois students? I don’t.
You can get a very good to great engineering education at any R1 land grant university. You can get a very good to great engineering education at any state flagship offering engineering (even if that flagship is not land grant). But that’s not the end of the story because there are so many other great options. To take an unusual example, Elizabethtown is a small private college in PA that offers engineering (self contained program … not 3 + 2). It has an engineering program and then options for concentrating in electrical, mechanical, civil, industrial, environmental, biomedical, etc.). It’s very small and only offers B.S. degrees. Here are some of the universities where the engineering faculty completed their PhD’s: Berkeley, Stanford, Michigan, Notre Dame (2), Johns Hopkins, and Penn State. It’s as impressive a faculty in this regard as I have seen. I’m sure one could get a pretty darn good education there also. I don’t think most people here grok the concept of ordinal numbers, of subjectivity, of made up tiers, and of the predictive value of innate intelligence when looking at outcomes. |
Anonymous
I don't quite know what you are asking...but I bet the UIUC kids came in with a level of knowledge of CS, electronics, etc. that was likely higher than the UVA kid. So, perhaps if you are literally just giving them an electrical engineering test, they may score the same...but if you then put a twist on it and asked them to attack some "outside-the-box" problems that maybe require an understanding of different disciplines...I bet you may see differences. This is not to malign UVA's engineering, but the kid going to MIT for engineering is a very different kid from the start than a kid that attends Elizabethtown (as an example). |
Anonymous
| Typically, the students who get into MIT have much higher stats than those who got into engineering at Elizabethtown. I think test results would show a difference. |
Anonymous
The Wash. U. engineering program has a meh rating, but the students in the program are collaborative and very bright, the biomedical engineering program has a top ranking, and the program is great for students who want to take engineering classes along with business classes and arts and sciences classes. So, it’s not the best program for students who are certain they want to build bridges, but it’s a great program for students who want to double major in engineering and anthropology. |
Anonymous
Right. Picking MIT for examples is maybe a little unfair. But let’s focus on an earlier assertion that UVA is weak. Pick a few MIT freshman students and send them to UVA instead. Then take them as finished products of UVA and compare them to the finished products of the “strong” schools. I’m pretty sure they will be among the best, coming out of UVA. How is that possible if UVA is weak? It’s not. |
Anonymous
I think this is better described as a new program that is getting up to speed. That's different from existing longtime programs that are weak. You may still choose to opt out of both - but a new program could become quite good soon if investments are right. |
Anonymous
Are you an engineer? How many companies recruit engineers from UVA? It is pretty well known that UVA engineering prepares students to manage engineers and strong engineering schools teach students to be engineers. The Level of complexity and application of material is stronger at universities that have developed engineering curriculum over time. That is why they are ranked higher. |