Chemical Engineering Northwestern or Wash U

Parents Forum
21

<p>I cannot begin to tell you how helpful it is to get some unbiased (as it can be) views on this all. She also got into MIT (doesn’t want to go because they don’t have a competitive cheerleading squad and she is a competive chearleader – so much for stereotyping!), University of Illinois, and University of Rochester. I think she is leaning towards Northwestern - Big 10 and all and an excellent program. Thanks again.</p>

22

<p>Cool. Go NU except when they play Wisconsin. Evanston is a great town. I used to spend many weekends at the NU beach on Lake Michigan.</p>

23

<p>Graduate ChemE ranking:</p>

<p>California Institute of Technology Pasadena, CA 4.8
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA 4.8
University of California–Berkeley Berkeley, CA 4.8
4 University of Minnesota–Twin Cities Minneapolis, MN 4.7
5 Stanford University Stanford, CA 4.5
University of Wisconsin–Madison Madison, WI 4.5
7 Princeton University Princeton, NJ 4.4
8 University of Texas–Austin (Cockrell) Austin, TX 4.3
9 University of California–Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 4.2
10 University of Delaware Newark, DE 4.1
University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign Urbana, IL 4.1
12 University of Michigan–Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI 4.0
13 Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 3.9
Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, GA 3.9
15 Cornell University Ithaca, NY 3.8
Northwestern University (McCormick) Evanston, IL 3.8
Purdue University–West Lafayette West Lafayette, IN 3.8
18 University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 3.7
19 University of Colorado–Boulder Boulder, CO 3.5
20 North Carolina State University Raleigh, NC 3.4
Pennsylvania State University–University Park University Park, PA 3.4
University of California–Davis Davis, CA 3.4
University of Florida Gainesville, FL 3.4
University of Washington Seattle, WA 3.4
25 Rice University (Brown) Houston, TX 3.3</p>

24

<p>What makes the ChE undergraduate engineering education suposedly that much better at those highly ranked large state universities like Minnesota–Twin Cities, Univ. of Wisconsin–Madison, U. of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign, University of Texas–Austin, University of Delaware, University of Michigan vs. moving down the ratings to Northwestern or other smaller institutions like Rice or even Vanderbilt?</p>

<p>I know the overall experience is going to be different on a large state university campus but what is going to make the undergrad ChE education any better ? Isn’t it really just splitting hairs (which is what I tend to believe?) or is there somethings that can be identified to really say here is why these large state universities are “better” ? What are they doing that is not available or being offered at Northwestern, Rice etc.</p>

25

<p>^ IMO bigger departments, more money for research, bigger faculty with more varied interests, faculty more prominent in the field of engineering (national academy membership, etc), larger variety of classes…engineering is a big field. Smaller departments may not cover it as well. That being said, I think Rice and Northwestern are fantastic for engineering.</p>