<p>Why is Cornell Engineering ranked in the top 10 programs in the country? </p>
<p>What differentiates it from Princeton’s School of Engineering for instance?</p>
<p>I’m trying to understand how these statistics are computed and why Cornell has the best Engineering School in the Ivy League (or at least that’s what a lot of people think).</p>
<p>Also, the Computer Science major here is ranked 5th in the nation, and Cal Tech is on the 9th position. Why is that?</p>
<p>SIZE is a major factor in affecting the ranking. The bigger the school, the more professors you have, the more on going research, the more paper you publish. And most likely, the more money you have too.
Princeton, Penn, Columbia all have very good faculty and programs, but relatively small in size. On the other hand, there might be better interaction between students and professors there due to the intimate setting as compared to schools like Michigan, UIUC etc.
Don’t let the ranking influence your choice. Especially in engineering. Some could be very theoretical and some very application oriented. Look at the coursework to make sure it has the same emphasis in area that you are interested in.</p>
<p>Research, reputation
Also your question about Cornell’s CS department: according to its website (and wikipedia) cornell has one of the top five CS departments in the world.</p>
<p>This is definitely something I’ve noticed. Every CS class I’ve had so far has been enjoyable, and I’ve enjoyed working with all of the members of the CS faculty that I’ve met so far. Google / check rate my professors for Graeme Bailey, Joe Halpern, John Hopcroft - most of the reviews are pretty good. A few bad ones, but that’s probably the case with anybody.</p>
<p>All employers know about these schools. But most of all, employers are going to hire graduate that will fulfill their needs. For example, if they need to hire an application specialist, they will not give any preference to someone from a theoretically based program, even if you are from a higher ranked school. Or vise versa if they are looking for a research specialist.
On the other hand, IB or Wall Street is more likely favor engineers from schools like Penn since they are more likely to have taken more business courses as electives and the Wharton influenced atmosphere making them more business savvy. As a matter of fact, the majority of Penn engineering grad do end up in IB and consulting.</p>
<p>From an engineer standpoint, I agree with you.
But alternative view is: If you look at engineering as an educational experience, it gives you very good analytical skills and quantitative training, no difference than any other hard science education. One can use that education to launch any career one wants. After all, most of the college graduates end up in a career different than what their original major is.
Another crucial point is that there really is a glass ceiling as to an engineering career. If one wants to break that ceiling and advance in the company and pay, one eventually has to cross over to the management side.
Those from Penn who are truly devoted tom engineering do stay in the engineering career path. The ones that work in Wall Street just merely get a jump on the cross over early.
By the way, Penn’s engineering is very theoretical, so the career path is more research based if you pursue it. So is Princeton.</p>
<p>As do most Cornell engineers. But at least they were engineers first!</p>
<p>I realize I am a bit assertive on this issue, but I just see a massive waste of resource allocation if students getting their engineering educations end up not going on into the field. There are certainly enough students who actually want to go into an engineering field that would benefit from a Penn education.</p>
<p>It’s similar to the students who study in Cornell’s ILR or PAM programs but have absolutely no interest in industrial relations or public policy. It’s a massive waste of resources, and the school could be educating students who actually want to work in those fields.</p>
<p>No argument there.
I especially feel that when I see so many female medical students ended up to be stay at home mom or part time practitioners. It takes even more massive resources to train an M.D. And there are many well qualified male students who want and are ready to have a devoted full time career in medicine that got rejected and lost their places to these female students. Sadly mostly because of the gender fairness policy of the schools.
Don’t want to sound sexist. But how do you reconcile that?
WASTE is a built in necessary evil in a democratic society. The worst offender to me is our high school system. In the name of “no child left behind”, we are forced to dance around the “self esteem” of the less accomplished students and cater our curriculum to fit them. “Equality breeds Mediocrity”. That’s why we are falling behind the rest of the world in the “level of educatedness” of the people. It is a big concern for the future.</p>
<p>^and don’t forget about the women who want to devote a full time career to medicine who also lose seats to these other women.</p>
<p>I do agree with your points about equality breeding mediocrity. This is why I have some concerns regarding affirmative action…but for fear of spurring a string of discussion not related to the original topic, I will not elaborate.</p>