10 Most Underrrated Engineering Colleges....

ken285
Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:08:12 +0000

Really? I know they’re flatter than law salary curve (which is a very steep binomial distribution), but I’d still bet that there’s some variation between schools.



[Best Engineering Colleges By Salary Potential](Best Engineering Schools | Payscale)

4 on that list is the Polytechnic University of Brooklyn. While it is a well respected school in the local area, I don’t believe it is better than Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, and Carnegie Mellon. Poly students tend to be from the NYC area and tend to stay in the area after graduation. The cost of living is high and thus skews the numbers making it appear to perform better than others. If you must include a salary factor in your “value added” analysis (which I still oppose), there must be some sort of cost of living adjustment factored in. Practically, salaries are not easily obtained. Test scores on the other hand, are already in one central database, and there’s no need to go to each student to survey them.



Fair enough, but they do tell you how strong the student body is, and that’s part of the overall quality of school. Surely, most people would prefer to go to a school full of Einstein’s, even if the school only had average teaching quality.



The reason people would rather go to a school full of Einsteins is the assumption that the people around you will contribute to your learning. That should be reflected elsewhere in the value added analysis if it is indeed true (which I believe it is).