Reply to Which colleges are considered top elite in the US?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It amazes me why so many ivies and elite schools are bad at STEM or Engineering.

Duke, Brown, Dartmouth, Yale, Harvard, Chicago collectively suck at engineering or some/all aspects of STEM.[/quote]

Harvard and Chicago are top 5 (top 10) for physics. Is there anything more STEM than physics?

I agree engineering is a glaring weakness for many top schools. Probably because engineering is more a "doing stuff" and less a "thinking about stuff" field [/quote]

A good family friend is the head of an Engineering department at Yale. They paid him to move the entire engineering lab from texas(don’t remember if it was Austin or A&M). Over 10yrs ago. He hd other ivies trying to woo him too. When ours was interested in Engineering he explained why he moved and what the top privates(ivies and otherwise) have done in the last 2 decades—expansion of engineering by buying talent from other universities and partnerships with private tech too. He went into detail about the differences in undergrad education of even a top state school vs the yale and other ivies. Said Yale was not yet top in ivies of course but is on a mission to get there, and Harvard is chasing the same thing. Said Princeton Penn and Columbia are ones who are now on the leading edge of teaching in the field, cornell was considered top engineering 10 yrs ago but is structured more like a public and has not kept up with interdisciplinary innovation like the other top private engineering schools. He said MIT is still the king—they have focused on the thinking part forever. With AI and top programmers to write the code to “do the work” of engineering, the field at the top is all about thinkers and innovation now. Specifically mentioned Duke has dominated in that in BME,  better than anywhere in the country. Did similar comparisons of the latest technology emerging in nanotech(usually under mechE /materials science). He noted he can teach much more complicated coursework early in undergrad at yale compared to Texas, sophomores take what seniors took there, plus they have tons of funding to get undergraduates real research and published, whereas that was reserved for top students usually seniors, with most undergrad research more cleaning equipment or doing grad student grunt work not running their own experiments and getting new data. It was one of the most eye opening conversation we had, and helped us compare undergrad curricula too. We picked an ivy for engineering because of it, and we have been amazed at the promotion of innovation and tech industry partnerships [/quote]

None of the ivies are that great at engineering. I think state schools are the best for that. Yale has been trying to get STEM talent for a while but nothing has really come out of Yale STEM because no serious STEM kid has it as their top choice. My friend's son is at Berkeley EECS and is doing some pretty cutting edge research. The proximity to Silicon Valley does help. [/quote]
There's a significant difference in terms of support, which I think does matter. No reason spending 70k on berkeley when the engineering department is going to spend the first year trying to wash him out and the rest of the time trying to decimate his gpa. [/quote]

Well the kid is doing very well with an Nvidia internship and Penn engineering is not better than Berkeley just because it has fewer students. Engineering is tough everywhere, kids get washed out at ivies as well. Our friends daughter at Cornell could not cut it after the first year and got put on probation and transfered to an easier major. Another friend's kid at Stanford struggled for a year but stuck it out and graduated. Most engineering students have low GPAs, it is a very tough major and people go on to do well in life after that. The CEO of the best tech company right now is from University of Washington. The difference between a state school and a private is in state school one has to seek the opportunities, but the choices are pretty amazing whereas at a private you might get it more easily.[/quote]

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