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Hence, I disagree with the premise of the original question, for it presumes that people actually know that they want to work as engineers.
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And yep, flexibility was one of the things I'd mentioned. Still, there are plenty of excellent schools out there that have the best of both worlds... Stanford, Cornell (true, an ivy), Rice, UT, Berkeley, Michigan, Northwestern... I guess I'm just not certain of why a person would choose a school that's distinctly weak in the field that they intend to major in with the intention of covering their rears in case they wanted to change their major someday, when there are so many options that would offer them strong programs in engineering *and* other things. Barring some specific cases where an ivy league school would provide a certain advantage for a student, it just seems a little bit like they'll have chosen the school for the name alone... Which I suppose is okay, if they're honest with themselves that they're choosing a school based upon generally-recognizable prestige, but I think they'd be better off choosing a place where they're happy and where they can get a quality education in whatever field or fields they determine they might be interested in.
Also, having been someone who spent half her senior year in high school on another campus to take courses that weren't offered at her own school, shuttling back and forth may be convenient in some cases (Harvard/MIT cross-registration, for example), but for some folks, it can give them a bit of an identity crisis. If you're taking all your classes somewhere else, what school are you really going to? Doesn't bother a lot of people, but I know it bothers a few. It bothered me a little bit. At the very least, it's something to consider.