In Your Opinion: Best Engineering/Science Schools

[NutBucket]

Originally posted by: Carbonyl

Originally posted by: NutBucket
I had no idea EE was the easiest to get into. Whatever, I like it

EDIT: Gonna go change that post to make it clear.

Good for you. It really is considered hardest by me at least

I didn't say it was easy to do. Quite the opposite. I just like it a lot. I think it also depends on the staff. At CPP, mechanical and aerospace engineering have much higher failing rates then electrical. Then again, there are a lot more electricals as well.

 

[KenGr]

No, the trouble I have with Berkeley as a top Engineering School is that what they excel at is Physics, Computer Science, etc. That's not Engineering. I've been an Engineer for 30 years and I seldom see real world Engineering advancements coming from there. I see the "science research" which is not the same thing. Disclaimer: I did go to University of Illinois. The acceptance number you gave I think is the University as a whole, not the Engineering school. Public universities are a whole different thing. An interesting thing about public schools - they are self selective. The year I entered, almost no in-state student was turned down who applied to the Engineering School. Yet the median student in my freshman class was in the top 6% of his high school class. Today (35 years later) it is probably higher. And it's more than just high IQ that makes an engineer. I know a few guys who struggled in school and ended up owning companies that accomplished tremendous things.

I base my judgements not on what some mass circulation magazine states but on what the members of ASME, ASCE, IEEE etc. have to say. From these sources I'll think you'll find MIT, Stanford, Illinois, Michigan and a few others are up near the top in every Engineering discipline while Berkely gets mentioned only in a few areas.

I'm not trying to cut your school, it's just that in the full scope where we build bridges and factories and heavy equipment, Berkeley turns out to be too focused to be top ranked.

 

[RabidMongoose]

Where did you guys get the specific EECS acceptance rates?

 

[Jfur]

Originally posted by: ed21x

Originally posted by: lukatmyshu
Engineering .... what EXACTLY are we talking about.
If it's something like EE/CS then it has to be

CalTech
MIT
Berkeley/Stanford

I have no idea what it is for Civil Engineering, or Bio-Engineering or Chemical-Engineering.
I do know that the CS program at UC Berkeley was just rated #2 in the nation (not bad for a public university)

I still have no idea how the heck Caltech became first on your list. The Official rankings go: MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Caltech from USnews. Among other things, most major developments and stuff you hear from the media are from MIT and Berkeley. The fact that Caltech had such a tiny student population and pretty sad living environment/location really put off alot of the students that got accepted there, but chose not to go in the end- or at least for me and one of my friends.

<- Berkeley EECS

you believe those ratings? CalTech was #1 -- btw -- but only during the year they took out the part of the formula that made the alma maters of the survey creators rise to the top

 

[JonTheBaller]

Originally posted by: StormRider
University of Maryland at College Park is one of the best! Probably underrated by most people but I think we can go toe to toe with anyone.

 

[ed21x]

Originally posted by: KenGr
No, the trouble I have with Berkeley as a top Engineering School is that what they excel at is Physics, Computer Science, etc. That's not Engineering. I've been an Engineer for 30 years and I seldom see real world Engineering advancements coming from there. I see the "science research" which is not the same thing. Disclaimer: I did go to University of Illinois. The acceptance number you gave I think is the University as a whole, not the Engineering school. Public universities are a whole different thing. An interesting thing about public schools - they are self selective. The year I entered, almost no in-state student was turned down who applied to the Engineering School. Yet the median student in my freshman class was in the top 6% of his high school class. Today (35 years later) it is probably higher. And it's more than just high IQ that makes an engineer. I know a few guys who struggled in school and ended up owning companies that accomplished tremendous things.

I base my judgements not on what some mass circulation magazine states but on what the members of ASME, ASCE, IEEE etc. have to say. From these sources I'll think you'll find MIT, Stanford, Illinois, Michigan and a few others are up near the top in every Engineering discipline while Berkely gets mentioned only in a few areas.

I'm not trying to cut your school, it's just that in the full scope where we build bridges and factories and heavy equipment, Berkeley turns out to be too focused to be top ranked.

Since I havn't been out in the real world, I don't really know about those applications
It surprises me that no one here has mentioned UT: Austin yet

 

[miniMUNCH]

First of all...for the purposes of this discussion it is essential to specify graduate or undergraduate programs...

In many cases, engineering/science schools which have excellent grad programs have less than spectacular undergrad program because the profs focus on the grad students.

For grad schools it is vital to look at a few factors: peer and recruiter reputations, industry relationships and research budget. Usually, if the school has money to burn and a great reputation, then they've got bitchin' profs to spend it. Also, don't forget Quality of Life...you'll be there for 4-6 years for a PhD so make sure you'll enjoy living there...my profs made a huge deal about this!!! For instance, Santa Barbara / San Deigo are beautiful locals with plenty of life....Houston is an armpit...Pasadena is cool and close to Hollywood (so you can get in a fight with famous people)...Havard's dorms might be mistaken for a dungeon (or so I'm told)...

Engineering/Science: MIT, UC Berkeley, Stanford, Cal Tech are always in the top five or ten at the very worst in pretty much every category and all have tons of money to spend. This also means they pay well too! For particular areas like maths, chemistry, or computer science other great schools like Princeton, Carnegie-Mellon, or Univ. of Chicago have top notch programs.

For undergrad, I suggest you look at the ratio of grad students to profs and, even better, look for schools were the profs are not required to publish or conduct research. That means the profs will have more time to spend with undergrad students. Many state college systems don't support much of any graduate programs in order to keep undergrad education "unpolluted".

The key to remember about undergrad...once your in industry for a year or so, nobody cares where you got your degree or, to a large extent, what your GPA was. When applying to grad school's, often times coming from a smaller school plays the diversity card for you not mention the fact that US grad schools are tired of filling spots with so many foreign students (in some cases). Once you get your MS or PhD, no one cares where you went to undergrad.

I'm actually applying to Chemical Engineering graduate schools for Fall 2003: I chose to apply to MIT, Cal Tech, University of Wisconsin (Madison), UC Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara, Carnegie-Mellon, and Stanford.

Edit: to what the gentleman before me said, industry feedback is often very different from peer evaluation from other professors...based on industry feedback, Carnegie-Mellon is off the charts in some engineering disciplines (like EE, ME and ChE) and computer science. UC Santa Barbara get rave feedback from indsutry for Chemical Engineering, especially in the area of process control.

Also, Any school in SoCal or the Bay Area that has a biotech/bioengineering program that is at least 5 years old will be bitchin', but UCSD has the best on the west coast...the biotech companies are so thick in those areas that California's naming cities after them...well, almost.

<-- worked in biotech/pharma industry for last 3.5 years.

 

[Razorwyre]

I can't believe no one has mentioned UW-Madison, and UM-Twin Cities, both have very good Engineering Progams! I am a ME major at University of Wisconsin Madison, and let me tell you, for the price I doubt you can get a better education anywhere else! Even if price weren't a factor, I most highly reccomend the school. Join a vehicle project team too if you are an ME, we got a decent Formula SAE team here....

 

[miniMUNCH]

Razoewyre,

Look at the post right above you...I applied to UW, Madison for ChemE for Fall 2003. UW is sweet! How do you like the town/surroundings and campus life??

 

[LS20]

Originally posted by: ed21x


A school is best judged by the quality of their student body:
Berkeley EECS acceptance rate: 10%
Stanford: ~10%
University of Illinois Urbana Champaign: 60%
Cal Poly- SLO: ~20%

i dont think its a fair comparison because the students applying to stanford and the ones applying to calpoly are surely of different caliber

Originally posted by: ed21x
It surprises me that no one here has mentioned UT: Austin yet

highly revered... dirt cheap tuition... cant go wrong :-D

 

[calbear2000]

Originally posted by: KenGr
No, the trouble I have with Berkeley as a top Engineering School is that what they excel at is Physics, Computer Science, etc. That's not Engineering. I've been an Engineer for 30 years and I seldom see real world Engineering advancements coming from there. I see the "science research" which is not the same thing. Disclaimer: I did go to University of Illinois. The acceptance number you gave I think is the University as a whole, not the Engineering school. Public universities are a whole different thing. An interesting thing about public schools - they are self selective. The year I entered, almost no in-state student was turned down who applied to the Engineering School. Yet the median student in my freshman class was in the top 6% of his high school class. Today (35 years later) it is probably higher. And it's more than just high IQ that makes an engineer. I know a few guys who struggled in school and ended up owning companies that accomplished tremendous things.

I base my judgements not on what some mass circulation magazine states but on what the members of ASME, ASCE, IEEE etc. have to say. From these sources I'll think you'll find MIT, Stanford, Illinois, Michigan and a few others are up near the top in every Engineering discipline while Berkely gets mentioned only in a few areas.

I'm not trying to cut your school, it's just that in the full scope where we build bridges and factories and heavy equipment, Berkeley turns out to be too focused to be top ranked.

Exactly what field are you in? You've got to be kidding me to "seldom see real world Engineering advancements coming from Berkeley"

If you follow research (academic or in industry) in practically any field within Electrical Engineering, you'll know the top research comes out of Berkeley. (and I'm talking about the UC not Lawrence Berkeley Labs, let alone Livermore as you erroneously pointed out) I work at Intel and I know first hand how Berkeley research directly affects and drives the industry. I take it you must not be an electrical engineer, or you'd be familiar with the research by the following UC Berkeley Professors:

Chenming Hu - leads the best device physics research in the world - constantly breaks the records on the world's smallest manufactured transistor before Intel or Amd.
Jan Rabaey - academia and industry's authority on advanced circuit design. His circuit design textbook is the bible of IC designers here at Intel
Randy Katz / John Patterson - Probably the biggest names in the computer architecture field. Any EE or CS engineer has probably used the famous Patterson-Hennessey book

The list goes on and on...

Also, sorry but your validity just went out the door when you claim computer science is not engineering. I find it very hard to believe that an engineer with 30 years experience would willingly write with such biased naivity

So either you're not an electrical engineer (I call BS if you claim to be) or you ARE trying to cut the school. I am also a member of IEEE and Berkeley research gets published there all the time.

 

[kherman]

For engineering: not much debate:
#1 is CalTech
#2 is MIT

The rest fall in second place. I'll put my Alma, Clarkson University in 3rd.

 

[LittleNicky]

Props to UIUC for being the quiet guy doing a lot of the work yet going unnoticed.
It's ridiculous the amount of achievements they have undergone in the field of CE
and yet are shadowed by schools like MIT and Berkley. In some cases, a lot of
work was started at UIUC and eventually moved to the previously listed schools.
So all I'm saying, if you want a school with fame and fortune go to MIT or Berkley..but
if ya want to go to the school that's getting it done, go to UIUC!

<My opinion is bias however >

But aside from all that, the teachers at UIUC in the CE and the ones
I know from the CS departments are just awesome. They actually
care about the students and not just their research, it's amazing.

 

[jonmullen]

CalTec

 

[calbear2000]

Originally posted by: LittleNicky
Props to UIUC for being the quiet guy doing a lot of the work yet going unnoticed.
It's ridiculous the amount of achievements they have undergone in the field of CE
and yet are shadowed by schools like MIT and Berkley. In some cases, a lot of
work was started at UIUC and eventually moved to the previously listed schools.
So all I'm saying, if you want a school with fame and fortune go to MIT or Berkley..but
if ya want to go to the school that's getting it done, go to UIUC!

<My opinion is bias however >

But aside from all that, the teachers at UIUC in the CE and the ones
I know from the CS departments are just awesome. They actually
care about the students and not just their research, it's amazing.

UIUC is well-recognized among the academic engineering community. It just doesn't have a lot of name recognition because its not a historic big-name school like Stanfurd or MIT. ie. among the ignorant masses, its not as well-known - some of the ignorant masses (including here on ATOT) don't even know Berkeley's academic reputation and are blinded by its liberal headlines.

But rest-assured, the academic community knows how good Urbana's program is

 

[KenGr]

I'm a Mechanical and Nuclear Engineer. I've spent years managing multidiscipline systems engineers. There is a field called Computer Engineering which is a branch of Electrical Engineering. However Computer Science (from whence come the fabled "Software Engineers") is not Engineering. Yes, they are Professionals and essential and talented people, but they are no more Engineer than Mathematicians or Physicists. Am I pig headed and opinionated on the? Yes, and damned proud of it. I'm not saying Berkeley doesn't have a world class Electrical Engineering department. I'm just saying I don't see the overall school as excellent as the other schools mentioned.

 

[Bignate603]

Each school is exactly what you make of it. You can go to a school with a mediocre reputation and come out with a top notch education if you put the effort into it. Then again you can go to a top notch school and get a mediocre education if you don't work at it.

I'm currently studying MECH-E at Tulane, which is pretty respectable for engineering.

 

[Scarpozzi]

DEVRY ALL THE WAY BABY!!!!!

 

[calbear2000]

Originally posted by: KenGr
I'm a Mechanical and Nuclear Engineer. I've spent years managing multidiscipline systems engineers. There is a field called Computer Engineering which is a branch of Electrical Engineering. However Computer Science (from whence come the fabled "Software Engineers") is not Engineering. Yes, they are Professionals and essential and talented people, but they are no more Engineer than Mathematicians or Physicists. Am I pig headed and opinionated on the? Yes, and damned proud of it. I'm not saying Berkeley doesn't have a world class Electrical Engineering department. I'm just saying I don't see the overall school as excellent as the other schools mentioned.

Since your background is Mech and Nuke, I don't think you're qualified to be dismissing computer scientists as non-engineers. Whats your definition of an engineer? Your average programmer may not fit into that defintion, but a true computer scientist will.

Since I'm telling you not to speak on areas outside of your own discipline, I will do the same. Beyond Berkeley's electrical engineering program, I won't claim to extensively know about the other engineering fields. We both agree Berkeley's EE and CS are top-class, but I honestly don't know much about Cal's other engineering departments aside from their rankings - which are all very high. Top 5 in practically every category I believe.

 

[Sukhoi]

Originally posted by: LittleNicky
Props to UIUC for being the quiet guy doing a lot of the work yet going unnoticed.
It's ridiculous the amount of achievements they have undergone in the field of CE
and yet are shadowed by schools like MIT and Berkley. In some cases, a lot of
work was started at UIUC and eventually moved to the previously listed schools.
So all I'm saying, if you want a school with fame and fortune go to MIT or Berkley..but
if ya want to go to the school that's getting it done, go to UIUC!

<My opinion is bias however >

But aside from all that, the teachers at UIUC in the CE and the ones
I know from the CS departments are just awesome. They actually
care about the students and not just their research, it's amazing.

You talking about Zych?

 

[Sukhoi]

Originally posted by: ed21x

Originally posted by: KenGr
A school is best judged by the quality of their student body:
Berkeley EECS acceptance rate: 10%
Stanford: ~10%
University of Illinois Urbana Champaign: 60%
Cal Poly- SLO: ~20%

You're comparing apples and oranges with those percentages. You give us Berkeley's EECS acceptance rate, and then the rate for all of the U of I. How about the rate for engineering or ECE at Illinois? I bet it's lower than 60%. :|

 

[LH]

I dont know. But how is Rice? I know someone that was an engineer for Intel on the original P4(Williamette). He had a full ride at Rice.

 

[Drakkon]

haven't scene one AZ school yet so I'll give mine props...
Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, AZ has a great mathematics program. For one of the cheapest universities in the country it has some of the funnest teachers and the greatest atmosphere. The physics dept is amazing since we have so many great astronomers up here. Math dept has some of the greatest untapped minds imho
As for engineering its OK....were behind a lot of places and some of the teachers act like they are only there for grants...but theres a couple that actually have some spectacular knowledge.

 

[hdeck]

...i think the guy said to list your favorite schools WITHOUT rankings from places like USNews...

anyway, I gotta go with CalTech over MIT...

 

[HokieESM]

Absolutely utterly pointless question. Period. Rating schools is always a nearly pointless task.... because how do you do it? Rating undergraduate schools is a complete joke--because if you look at the BS graduates, you're basically just going to be looking at how difficult the admission requirements are (intelligent students in = intelligent students out). And you can't look at the faculty (and I've been at SEVERAL different schools... I'm working on my PhD now)... because the really illustrious faculty wouldn't DARE teach a boring undergraduate class... and EVEN IF THEY DID... a good researcher doesn't necessarily make a good teacher (usually not at all... there is NOTHING you do at the undergraduate level that remotely approaches what they're "good" at). Basically it boils down to this: an intelligent, motivated student who wants to learn their craft (especially in engineering--which is what I'm in) will do so. A good, LARGE (read: many course options, lots of professors, etc) state-supported school is best. UT-Austin, Penn State, Virginia Tech, NC State, UC-Berkeley come to mind. And also keep in mind: the BEST BEST BEST teachers (if you're interested in say, learning the material) I've ever had/seen have been at "teaching" colleges where they aren't using up all of their time to do research (which is irrelevant to the undergraduate).

Also, doing "who's the best at engineering?" is quite pointless to begin with.... mainly because 1) there are usually SEVERAL (VT has 18) different engineering majors. And beneath that (especially if you're in grad school), there are subsections--for example, I'm studying computational solid mechanics, but there are fluid dynamicists, mathematicians, theoretical solid mechanics specialists as well (and many many others)... and we're not uniformly good at any of it (even within my department). Basically, when it comes down to it... at the GRADUATE level, you find a really illustrious professor in the area YOU want to study and you go study under HIM (no matter what school he's at). That's why you'll see students "follow" a really good researcher from school to school (think Tom Hughes leaving Stanford for UT-Austin). At the GRADUATE level, research is ALL that matters--so you find a professor/place that's REALLY good at what you want to do.... and you go there. For example--MIT has some of the GREATEST researchers in robotics/control systems, but they are terrible at computational solid mechanics (think UT-Austin, Va Tech, Northwestern, Stanford).

Anyhow... that's my 2 cents. If you REALLY want to be an engineer, go to the best engineering school in your state (or nearby state) for undergraduate school and work hard and learn what you can (extra good classes, undergraduate research) and save your money. Figure out what AREA (and no, this is NOT a major... for those of you in HS or not in academia) you want to work in... and find a good professor (at WHATEVER school) and go work for him for your masters.