Dartmouth or Notre Dame

Xanatos
Mon, 06 Apr 2009 20:46:53 +0000

I was bothered that it would take more than 4 years to get an engineering degree, so that is added cost.



For the 782nd time, you can get a perfectly good Engineering AB in four years. And if you’re going to insist on claiming that it’s somehow inferior, then the engineering website says that it’s possible to do a BE in four years, as well. These are all perfectly good degrees, there are some very successful Dartmouth engineers out there as far as I can tell.



you can easily switch around from engineering to business



Umm…okay…and at Dartmouth you…can’t? Now look, you spent a bunch of time knocking Dartmouth for being too liberal artsy, and now you’re saying that it’s too hard to switch majors. Last I checked, it is MUCH harder to switch majors at a school that has different divisions within it. I can’t say I know specifically about ND, but at a lot of schools with separate schools of engineering, business, nursing, etc. you have to APPLY to transfer from one school to another and they will only let you if they have space in the program. There are no such restrictions at Dartmouth and changing majors is as easy as filling out a new card. You can change your major every day from sophomore spring until commencement as long as you (obviously) can demonstrate that you can amass enough credits to fulfill all the major requirements.



I heard at one time that 40% of Dartmouth grads were going Wall Street, I am sure that isn’t happening now.



Yes, but that’s not because it’s Dartmouth but because NO ONE is getting jobs on Wall Street right now. I am sure the percentage of ND grads getting jobs on Wall Street is also significantly less. The fact that an Accounting major is providing you “real job” training is great, but I don’t see any particular reason to think that accountants aren’t also being laid off. I mean, you make some good points about how the economy is screwed up right now, but I don’t see how you are differentiating between Dartmouth and ND with those points. And the whole point of getting a “liberal artsy” econ major is that it provides you more flexibility by teaching you theoretical underpinnings that you can apply to a wide variety of fields, whereas something like an accounting major locks you into just one field and if the job market in that field sucks when you are graduating, you are screwed.

I’m sure there’s some other stuff you said that I disagree with but I’ve wasted enough time as it is.