<p>I think back in the old days, engineering wasn’t really seen as an ‘important’ thing to study. Back in those days, all the prestige was in pure science, and engineers were basically seen as a bunch of glorified handymen. It took WW2 and the Cold War defense buildup to change people’s perspectives about how important engineering really is. </p>
<p>As far as my previous statement in which I said that MIT’s engineering, particularly at the graduate level, seems to be, on the aggregate, better than Caltech’s, I would appeal to the NRC study of 1995 as well as pop-rankings like the USNews graduate-school listing, Gourman Report. Especially the NRC Study. Forget about the engineering disciplines in which Caltech does not compete, let’s just talk about the ones that it does compete, and you will notice that while Caltech’s engineering departments always rank highly, MIT’s rank even more highly. In particular, of the ‘4 horsemen’ of well-established engineering disciplines - electrical, chemical, mechanical, and civil - MIT beats Caltech every time. Caltech does well in all 4, but MIT does better. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.grad.berkeley.edu/publications/pdf/nrc_rankings_1995.pdf[/url]”>http://www.grad.berkeley.edu/publications/pdf/nrc_rankings_1995.pdf</a> </p>
<p>Now this is nothing for Caltech to be ashamed of. MIT is, after all, has chosen engineering as its major core competency, just like Caltech has chosen things like astrophysics and geology as its core competency. I don’t think anybody at MIT would seriously claim to have a better geology department than Caltech does. We just have to recognize that MIT is better at certain things, whereas Caltech is better at other things. I see nothing wrong with that. However, as a whole, it does seem to be true that MIT does have a better brand-name which cannot be explained away by simply saying that they are the older and better-established school.</p>