morfinx

Swarthmore is ranked #12 for BS/MS only engineering, tied with Kettering, Lafayette, and San Jose State.

monydad

Suggest looking at the courses actually being offered in the Swarthmore engineering department, by its engineering faculty, this semester. The Registrar's office should have the current offerings. Look at the number of courses actually being given, not whatever appears in the catalog; the latter may include numerous courses that are only given every other year, or were given five years ago when they had one guy who knew that topic, etc. Then look at the number of engineering professors, and the specialty areas offered.

Compare that to the number of available course offerings, specialty areas offered, and dedicated faculty at, say, Carnegie Mellon.

This should give you some inkling about whether a particular school may "hurt you". In terms of insuffcient offerings limiting what kind of engineer you can become and what sub-fields you can pursue at the undergraduate level. Compared to other engineering programs you can apply to.

dstark

Monydad, which schools do you recommend for engineering for B+ students. Are there any schools where you can combine business and engineering?

monydad

My kids have not been interested in engineering, or business, so I have no current information this.

If one of them came to me with these parameters I might suggest they see if the following schools meet their needs. But I don't really know if they do. In particular I don't know if B+ works for them, or how closely integrated the business & engineering programs can be.

U Illinois
UT Austin
RPI
Texas A&M
Lehigh
Bucknell

sakky

Well, if this is the road you want to go to, then I would also suggest carefully looking at all of the schools with which you can cross-reg to as a Swarthmore student. I know that Swarthmore has a cross-reg relationship with UPenn. Through cross-reg, you get access to what is effectively a larger course catalog. {It's the same way that Harvard engineering students can get a top-line engineering education by just cross-regging at MIT. Obviously it's not as good as just being an MIT student, but it's still a lot better than the engineering education you could get at a lot of other schools.}

I would also, if you are worried about a school 'hurting you', inquire into attrition rates, especially the engineering attrition rates. I hear that CMU engineering has rather high attrition. It doesn't really matter if a school has a wide selection of engineering courses if you can't even survive the program.

morfinx

Any decent engineering programs have high attrition rate. This is to be expected. It's up to the student to have the will and desire to make it through.

monydad

Re: cross-registration with other schools: If you intend to rely on the courses at a different school to make the engineering curriculum at your chosen school adequate, then suggest determine how easy this is to do in practice. And what limitations there are in courses taken at the other school. For example: if you fall in love with civil engineering, and your school doesn't even have it at all, but the other school does- how many courses in it will you be able to take at the other school? Can you actually major in it, when your own school doesn't offer it? Etc.

If these things check out to your satisfaction, then I agree this can be a valuable adjunct to the program at your own school. Though not a substitute for it. Due to nuisance and time involved in going back & forth between schools, if nothing else. Depending on the particular situation at hand.

dstark

Monydad, OK thanks.

sakky

The point is, some engineering programs have higher attrition rates than others. I would be very surprised to discover that the engineering attrition rate at, say, Stanford, was as high as it is at MIT or Caltech. I think im_blue would back me up on this one. Yet nobody disputes that Stanford is at least a decent (heck, far more than just decent) engineering school.

In fact, I would go further and surmise that somebody who flunked out of, say, Georgia Tech engineering or UIUC engineering might have actually made it at Stanford. True, he probably would have gotten only mediocre grades. But he still might have cleared the minimum bar to graduate, even if just barely. That's because Stanford is far less willing to flunk people out than other engineering schools are.

The point is, while all engineering programs have attrition, some are more aggressive about it than others. A spectrum exists. On one end sits schools like Stanford. On the other are schools like Georgia Tech or Caltech.

sakky

Well, if you want to get into the nuisance factor, I would also check out the nuisance factor of dealing with simply travelling around your own school. For example, I know one MIT student who actually calculated that it actually takes him MORE time to get to some of his MIT classes than it does to get to Harvard's Widener Library. That's because the 2 schools are literally only 2 subway stops away from each other, and it often times takes less time to ride the subway to the other school than it does to actually walk around campus. The subway (the "T") really does give Harvard and MIT a cheek-to-jowl relationship.

I have always agreed that if you want to be an engineer, then a better option than going to Harvard and cross-regging at MIT is obviously to just go to MIT in the first place. But that firstly presumes that you actually have that option, which you may not. I know Harvard students who didn't get into MIT. Secondly, there are clearly many things that Harvard has that MIT doesn't. I'm sure the same thing is true of Swarthmore vis-a-vis Penn (or CMU). Hence, I can see reasons for people wanting to get their engineering education via cross-reg. I don't think it's that bad.

monydad

If it's walking across the street, like Barnard and Columbia, then indeed it may not be that bad, at least from a time management perspective. It still might be bad in practice for other reasons. Like limitations on courses taken at the other school, lower priority in enrollment, class scheduling issues, different semester schedules, etc.

(Actually I'm not sure Barnard students can take Columbia SEAS engineering courses, but you get the idea; I'm sure they can take courses at Columbia College).

Many colleges that have cross-enrollment arrangements are not that close to each other though. If it means a half hour train or bus trip each way, then a 10 minute walk between the train station in, say, Philly to/from the actual class, then waiting for the bus up to a half hour at each end, then it can take a good chunk of your time to take a single course at the other school. This, IMO, becomes a lot less appealing to undertake on a steady basis. Engineering students at demanding schools are pretty busy. Then there are still the potential other issues from the first paragraph (scheduling, etc).

So how "that bad" it is really depends on all particulars. It might be just peachy, but it might not be. People who need to understand this should investigate each situation thoroughly. I'm sure there are substantial differences in how beneficial the various cross-enrollment situations are in practice.

Ultimately though, if you are relying on another school for your engineering education, and you are actually majoring in engineering, then in many cases you might consider just enrolling at the other school, if that is an option.

BTW, I agree generally people should check out the nuisance factor of getting around a large school. For example, my daughter was checking out NYU, and reportedly getting from courses in the Dance Department to some liberal arts courses can be a challenge, since the dance department is located many blocks away from the main campus.

redbeard

Sakky raises an interesting point. Some engineering schools treat freshman year as a "boot camp" situation. That means they create strict, sometimes arbitrary rules for courses that you must pass to move on. Sometimes it involves using the right color pen, or drawing perfectly straight lines. The objectve, I guess, it to convince students of the need for attention to detail, to create a sense of community among the (surviving) engineers, and (of course) to whittle the class down to a manageable size.

Not all schools have a "right of passage" freshman year. I would steer clear of those that do.

brunelicsb0018

i would like to see the aerospace engineering rankings please

bruno123

Superwizard, my experience having been a PhD student at CMU (ECE) is that the decisive factor in grad school admissions (especially for doctoral programs) is evidence of research potential/accomplishments, as shown for example by publications in peer-reviewed journals/conference proceedings, undergraduate or master's research projects, and good letters of recommendation from professors that are well-known in their fields. Of course, it helps if you have graduated from a top ranked school with a high GPA, but that is only one among multiple factors that will be considered in your application.

superwizard

Thanks bruno, actually I was wondering about Masters (Phd is a long way off for me). I was wondering what is important in applying for a Masters degree. I'm also considering applying to a co-terminal bahelor masters degree at stanford would my chances be lower there due to the fact that I wouldn't have finished my bachelor or would I have an advantage because the admission people would know the persons who are going to right my recs?

PS:I'm planning to be heavily involved in research and I will start as soon as possible hopefully next year (my freshman year)