Ivy league engineering

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I went to Harvard and my uncle is a professor at MIT.

MIT is the Harvard of engineering. If you can get in to MIT, you go there. Your Ivy choices are sub par. Caltech, Carnegie Mellon, etc. are better choices than the Ivies for engineering, if he can't get into MIT. It is foolish to insist on an Ivy for the sake of an Ivy, for engineering.

The only problem is, how does an HS kid know what he wants to major in? What if he can't hack it after enrolling? And are HS kids not allowed to change his mind about his future and the rest of his life after the cutoff point of enrolling in college? I can't imagine going to MIT and then having to change to sociology because engineering is too hard. No wonder kids kill themselves at a higher rate there than at ivies. Not worth it.

[Anonymous]

Do we even know if this kid has the stats to get into a top school? If he does, I suspect that the family would have better sources about college admission chances than DCUM.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went to Harvard and my uncle is a professor at MIT.

MIT is the Harvard of engineering. If you can get in to MIT, you go there. Your Ivy choices are sub par. Caltech, Carnegie Mellon, etc. are better choices than the Ivies for engineering, if he can't get into MIT. It is foolish to insist on an Ivy for the sake of an Ivy, for engineering.

The only problem is, how does an HS kid know what he wants to major in? What if he can't hack it after enrolling? And are HS kids not allowed to change his mind about his future and the rest of his life after the cutoff point of enrolling in college? I can't imagine going to MIT and then having to change to sociology because engineering is too hard. No wonder kids kill themselves at a higher rate there than at ivies. Not worth it.

You really need to make up your mind that you're doing engineering before you arrive. It is a professional degree jammed into a short amount of time. Yes, you can decide to drop it if you don't like it, but you should be reasonably sure you are starting on that path. Even for Princeton, Columbia and Cornell you will start in those schools and apply to them. BTW, nobody has mentioned this, but having looked into engineering at Dartmouth, they tell you to plan on a fifth year. It's not very cost-effective if that's the route you are going.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DS is dead-set on attending an Ivy league school, but is also only interested in engineering. Based on my research, the strength of the engineering program follows roughly this order:

Cornell
Columbia/Princeton
Harvard
Yale
Dartmouth
Brown

Realistically we think he can only get into Cornell or Dartmouth. While Cornell may have the strongest program, in his situation he would likely lean toward Dartmouth because Dartmouth would still like a real ivy to him and he wouldn't feel insecure about attending Cornell which many think is not a "real" ivy. Would be be shooting himself in the foot by going to Dartmouth over Cornell for engineering?

What is wrong with MIT, Cal Tech, or Stanford. They have good Engineering school too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went to Harvard and my uncle is a professor at MIT.

MIT is the Harvard of engineering. If you can get in to MIT, you go there. Your Ivy choices are sub par. Caltech, Carnegie Mellon, etc. are better choices than the Ivies for engineering, if he can't get into MIT. It is foolish to insist on an Ivy for the sake of an Ivy, for engineering.

The only problem is, how does an HS kid know what he wants to major in? What if he can't hack it after enrolling? And are HS kids not allowed to change his mind about his future and the rest of his life after the cutoff point of enrolling in college? I can't imagine going to MIT and then having to change to sociology because engineering is too hard. No wonder kids kill themselves at a higher rate there than at ivies. Not worth it.

This is exactly why as a high school senior I went to an Ivy and not MIT (was accepted to both). I wanted options of engineering wasn’t for me, but nowadays you can have a pretty good idea about what it will be like since all high schools are STEM. My high school didn’t even have programming

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DS is dead-set on attending an Ivy league school, but is also only interested in engineering. Based on my research, the strength of the engineering program follows roughly this order:

Cornell
Columbia/Princeton
Harvard
Yale
Dartmouth
Brown

Realistically we think he can only get into Cornell or Dartmouth. While Cornell may have the strongest program, in his situation he would likely lean toward Dartmouth because Dartmouth would still like a real ivy to him and he wouldn't feel insecure about attending Cornell which many think is not a "real" ivy. Would be be shooting himself in the foot by going to Dartmouth over Cornell for engineering?

What is wrong with MIT, Cal Tech, or Stanford. They have good Engineering school too.

Unless you were a Westinghouse Scholar (or whatever the new name is) if those are your choices you pick Stanford.

CalTech also has huge girl-boy imbalance which is not great for a variety of reasons.

[Anonymous]

" Do we even know if this kid has the 'stats' to get into a top school? "

Have you been living under a rock?

[Anonymous]

A school has to be a good fit for you aside from the ratings. I think OP child could use some college counseling so he can look beyond name recognition and ratings. Mom, the most important thing to me is the school be part of a very old football league is not a good way to start. Right now he might think that Cornell is a worst case scenario but, as a parent who has been through the process several times, he needs to be prepared to be at VTech.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:" Do we even know if this kid has the 'stats' to get into a top school? "

Have you been living under a rock?

I'm sorry. Remind me of the kid's stats.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went to Harvard and my uncle is a professor at MIT.

MIT is the Harvard of engineering. If you can get in to MIT, you go there. Your Ivy choices are sub par. Caltech, Carnegie Mellon, etc. are better choices than the Ivies for engineering, if he can't get into MIT. It is foolish to insist on an Ivy for the sake of an Ivy, for engineering.

The only problem is, how does an HS kid know what he wants to major in? What if he can't hack it after enrolling? And are HS kids not allowed to change his mind about his future and the rest of his life after the cutoff point of enrolling in college? I can't imagine going to MIT and then having to change to sociology because engineering is too hard. No wonder kids kill themselves at a higher rate there than at ivies. Not worth it.

You really need to make up your mind that you're doing engineering before you arrive. It is a professional degree jammed into a short amount of time. Yes, you can decide to drop it if you don't like it, but you should be reasonably sure you are starting on that path. Even for Princeton, Columbia and Cornell you will start in those schools and apply to them. BTW, nobody has mentioned this, but having looked into engineering at Dartmouth, they tell you to plan on a fifth year. It's not very cost-effective if that's the route you are going.

This is true. You have to start Calculus I from Day 1 - or you are behind. That said, if you want to factor in the possibility of changing your major, any of the ivies would be better than schools like Caltech. At ivies, you have the options. At Caltech, it's do or die, as a sociology major might not be an option there. It's a one-track school.