<p>Can engineering grads from these schools go to grad schools like Princeton, Stanford, Caltech or MIT?</p>
<p>Northwestern
Duke
Johns Hopkins
Brown
Cornell
UPenn
Columbia</p>
<p>From what I’ve heard, it’s easier to go to a top grad school by attending a top ranked engineering public university e.g. GTech, Cal, UIUC, etc. because the curriculum there is more rigorous than the universities I mentioned above.</p>
<p>How if I put it this way, suppose there are two equally competent engineering grad applicant, one from Brown and one from UIUC. Which one will the admission officers likely to accept?</p>
<p>I think if they are both equally competent, the admissions officer will probably take both of them. All of those schools are high quality schools with good (or better) reputations. Grad school shouldn’t be an issue, even though they may not be the top 10 level engineering schools. Rankings are subjective anyway. I am curious as to how you could possibly put Princeton in the same breat as MIT, Stanford and CalTech, though. The schools you mentioned like GTech, UIUC and Cal are all better than Princeton. Heck, putting Cal up there with MIT and Stanford and Princeton in there with UPenn and Columbia would be more accurate.</p>
<p>As long as you have the grades, GRE score , recommendations and research experience, a graduate from any school and specifically your list of schools can attend a top graduate program. I liken graduate school admissions to college admissions–sure you might attend a different high school and perhaps not Exeter or another prep school, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get in.</p>
<p>It should be stated that NU and Cornell are both top 15 engineering schools and so I don’t really understand what you consider to be top tier. From my department at NU, we regularly have people move onto positions at Yale, MIT, Berkeley etc. To go from one top school to another is by no means rare – good students are going to get good grades no matter where they are.</p>