dilksy

"To the OP, the quality of the undergraduate engineering education and the job prospects you will get from both Duke Engineering and Michigan Engineering are roughly similar."

Michigan's undergraduate engineering program is ranked 7th. Duke's is tied for 22nd. If it weren't for an expressed interest specifically in BME, it wouldn't even be close.

So in consecutive posts you go from saying students would choose Harvard engineering over Cornell because Harvard has a stronger reputation in other areas in case they decide to switch, but it would be stupid to consider the fact that Michigan's engineering department as a whole is much better than Duke's? Brilliant.

keefer

i would also advise you against majoring in BME, consider ChemE, MechE, or EE instead. BME hiring at the undergraduate level is still very small. Even at some of the best programs, it's hard to get jobs in the industry.

You can still get BME jobs as a ChemE or MechE, but not the other way around. Everybody wants to major in BME these days, but the curriculums for BME are all over the place, you don't develop a strong indepth knowledge in anything. I know JHU kind of force their students to have a second major, i don't know if Duke does the same.

Alexandre

I agree with Keefer. BME, Aerospace and Materials are very popular these days because they sound cool. In truth, they are glorified applications of Chemical, Electrical and Mechanical Engineering. A friend of mine got his PhD in Mechanical Engineering at MIT and he is now working for GE Medical. His PhD thesis was on the flow of Blood through veins. Don't ask me how that qualifies as Mechanical and not Biomedical, but there you have it. And now, he is representing major projects and products that deal with cardiology.

Predator

dilksy is correct. Evil asian dictator, I love you man but you're not making any sense. You say that many students pick harvard over Cornell because it is overall better in terms of name recognition, but shouldn't pick UMich over Duke although its engineering as a whole is better?

evil_asian_dictator

How did what I say not make any sense? Cross admits choose Harvard over Cornell Engineering because of brand name and similarily should choose Duke over Michigan Engineering because of the same reason. Duke and Harvard have better name recognition OVERALL even though Cornell and Michigan are better in engineering.

Alexandre

EAD, remember that you are now a guest on the Michigan forum. Expect the posters here to be supporters of the University of Michigan and you should respect that. You won't see us going to the Duke forum and direspect your university.

This said, I do not see how you can say that Duke provides better job placement than Michigan. Do you have proof of that? Can you prove that certain recruiters who recruit at Duke do not recruit at Michigan? Can you prove that companies that recruit on both campuses give preferential treatment to Duke students? Do you have evidence that a student at Duke will be chosen over a student at Michigan, all other things being equal, just because of the name of the university?

Furthermore, how can you say Duke is "clearly better" than Michigan in BME or that, when it comes to BME, "there is no comparison at all between Duke and Michigan." Duke is ranked #2 and Michigan is ranked #9. Granted, Duke is better than Michigan in BME, but it is not night and day.

Finally, can you please show me evidence that Duke has better overall name recognition than Cornell or Michigan? The peer assessment score begs to differ and I have not seen any rating conducted on real-world sentiment, but I would assume it would resember academe's point of view.

evil_asian_dictator

1. QS Top Universities: Top 100 universities in the THE - QS World University Rankings 2007 (Duke=13, Cornell=20 and UMich=38)

2. USNews.com: America's Best Colleges 2008: National Universities: Top Schools (Duke=8, Cornell=12 and UMich=25

3. http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/p...ege_092503.pdf (Duke=6, Cornell=25 and UMich=30)

4. Career Center :: Employer Home :: Recruit at Duke :: 2007
Career Center :: Employer Home :: Recruit at Duke :: 2006
Big Ten Conference Career Expo - Employers

Michigan is a fantastic school and if you want to work in the Midwest, the university's reputation and academic resources are tough to beat. However, it does not have the national and international appeal that a school like Duke has, especially in major urban areas like New York City. Goldman Sachs was THE TOP EMPLOYER of Duke University students who graduated this year. As far as engineering recruiting goes, Duke obviously excels seeing how IBM, Microsoft, Accenture and Cisco are often among the top 20 employers. I'm sure recruitment of Michigan Engineering students are just as good so people who on this board who have claimed that Michigan Engineering is overall "much better" than Duke Engineering are totally wrong. I stand by my claim that there is a sizeable difference between BME at Michigan and Duke not becuase of disparity in educational resources between the two universities in this area of study, but rather because of Duke's location in The Research Triangle. Duke BME students are right in the presence of a plethora of companies who specialize in biomedical technology and scientits who are performing cutting-edge biomedical research, which makes getting high-quality internships and research opportunities for Duke students SPECIFICALLY IN BME extremely easy. I concede that Michigan Engineering has more depth and breadth than Duke Engineering.

This will be my last post on this thread. I feel no need and don't want to be seen as denigrating UMich, a university I have always respected and hold in extremely high regard.

keefer

I have always agreed that on a per capita basis, Duke wins in recruiting for Consulting firms. As in... Bain might hire slightly more people from Michigan in a given year total, but percentage wise, Duke gets hired more, simply because Michigan is a larger school.

If you have a 3.3 GPA from Duke, you can probably kiss that Bain analyst job good bye, just as you would if you had a 3.3 from Michigan.

I actually work for IBM's Consulting practice and in our office there's a fairly large number of Duke recent grads, and from our conversations, they didn't believe Duke was very good in recruiting, and many of the folks with 3.7+ GPA in Econ didn't even get an interview with Bain/BCG/Mckinsey. Now, that's purely anecdotal, but the point I'm trying to make is that, these jobs are so hard to come by, and they recruit so little from undergrads, that this statistic is not representative of the entire pool of graduates, going to one school over another is not really going to help you land these jobs, unless it's Harvard/Wharton/Princeton/Stanford.

It's funny that you posted Big Ten Conference Career Expo.... I didn't even know there is one. LOL.

Alexandre

EAD, none of this proves that Duke has a better reputation either in academe or in the real world. You have built a very weak argument.

1) If you are going to mention the Times, you should also mention the Shanghai Jiao Tong University rankings and the Newsweek Global Universities ranking. All three of those measure international prestige and none of them is that reliable.

SJTU Rankings:
Cornell #12 (#10 in the US)
Michigan #21 (#18 in the US)
Duke #32 (#25 in the US)

http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2007/ARWU2007_Top100.htm

NEWSWEEK GLOBAL UNIVERISITIES:
Michigan #11 (#9 in the US)
Duke #14 (#12 in the US)
Cornell #19 (#14 in the US)

chris uggen's weblog: newsweek top 100 global universities

Clearly, the Times, SJTU and Newsweek all think very highly of the three schools and rank them roughly equally. But their rankings are all VERY flawed.

If you ask me, the best gauge for academic reputation and prestige in the "Academic community" in the US is the Peer Assessment score of the USNWR.

Cornell: 4.6/5.0 (tied with Chicago, Columbia and JHU at #8 in the US)
Michigan: 4.5/5.0 (tied with Penn at #12 in the US)
Duke: 4.4/5.0 (tied with Brown at #14 in the US)

All in all, those three schools belong to the same peer group, no matter how you slice it.

2) The WSJ placement rating is not surprising really. Duke has one of the most pre-professional student bodies among elite universities and its student body is, on average, admitedly stronger. Furthermore, Duke students are more likely to want to attend East Coast graduate schools than Michigan, and the WSJ feeder rating has a heavu East Coast bias. That does not mean that Duke students are favored over Michigan students of the same calibre.

3) I am not sure why you compared the Duke Career Fair to the Big 10 Career Fair. That is not a fair or accurate reflection of what the corporate world thinks. There is no reliable rating of academic institutions by industry. From my experience at 2 of the top 5 IBanks, 2 of the top 5 MCs and at 2 of the top manufacturing companies, Cornell, Duke and Michigan are on equal footing. However, if you want to see who recruits at Michigan (not the Big 10):

College of Engineering (refer to pages 10-14):
Most major companies I can think of recruits at the CoE.

http://career.engin.umich.edu/annual...Report0607.pdf

Ross (refer to pages 7-19)
Page 7 lists the most active recruiters and pages 13-19 lists all the companies that recruit on campus, detailing whether they recruit BBAs or MBAs or both.

http://www.bus.umich.edu/pdf/EmploymentProfile2007.pdf

LSA:
Although LSA does not have a detailed recruitment activity log, LSA recuitment activity is as great as those at the CoE and Ross.

Even though there isn't a corporate rating of universities, I doubt Duke has an upper hand when it comes to on-campus recruitment or overall reputation.

Like I said, most of the evidence seems to suggest that the academic and corporate worlds think of Duke and Michigan and peers. If you have a concrete rating, like the Peer Assessment score, that clearly rates Duke FAR ABOVE Michigan, please, share it with us. Otherwise, let us just agree to disagree.

goblue10nis

EAD I got your back.

Pizzagirl

EAD, stop it already. The fact that Goldman Sachs is the top employer of Duke students this past year means nothing other than a lot of Duke students wished to work in that field. But it doesn't mean that Duke is "better" than anyplace else. Frankly, it's depressing to think that all some people care about is working for GS and similar places. In the real world, Duke and Michigan are both incredibly well respected, and the decision comes down to personal fit and preference and little more. I think you're going to be very surprised when you get out there and people don't bow down to your Duke-ness like you think they will. The first day of your first job ... where you went to school won't even matter anymore.

evil_asian_dictator

Pizzagirl, I think you're absolutely right as long as you feel the same way about Harvard as you do about Duke and Michigan and "the decision comes don to personal fit and preference and little more". If you differentiate between Duke and Harvard, then we must differentiate between Duke and Michigan. Othwerwise, I do agree with the notion that all top-tier schools(Michigan and Duke included) provide students with a fantastic education and the success of an individual at this point is more dependent on his or her personal characteristics.

Pizzagirl

Well, I wouldn't really differentiate between Duke and Harvard. All else being equal, if I had a student who got into both of them, I'd say (in the absence of a specific program offered by one and not the other) choose whichever of the two you personally feel more comfortable at and fits you better. I certainly wouldn't automatically say Harvard.

I read something once about how it's not that the Mona Lisa is necessarily the best painting in the world, but SOMETHING has to have the name of the best painting in the world, so it might as well be the Mona Lisa. I think the same could be said to some extent about Harvard. Which is not to denigrate Harvard one bit! But I just don't think it's the Golden Thing That Outshines Everything Else.

evil_asian_dictator

Pizzagirl, it makes me really happy inside to know that people like you exist.

imaparasite

Michigan sociology and as well as some other programs top Duke's.