Duke vs Cornell for Mechanical Engineering!!??

College Majors Engineering Majors
#1

<p>Hi, I'm trying to decide which of the two schools to ED to. i love both, so it's not a question of which i like better. Things that have me stuck:</p>

<p>Cornell has more notoriety and is a bigger program for engineering. It seems to better feed into industry. If anyone can find stats comparing cornell and duke employment..
Duke is a very small engineering program, without Cornell's awesome Co-Op, but with sweet flexibility and interdisciplinary programs, and 1/4 of the eng students travel abroad, while barely any cornell students do.</p>

<p>Even though cornell's ME isn't awesome, at Duke, 50% of funds go into BME, leaving the other majors a little under covered. However, Duke combines ME and Materials sci, which is very interesting as students better understand the limits and possibilities of designs and have a stronger foundation. it is also very common to double major or minor in trinity, and i'd like a business minor like marketing and management (cornell offers a managing minor though as well).</p>

<p>the consensus seems to be that duke people are preppy upperclassians who drool over basketball and sperrys. I come from a preppy town, but I don't think I want college to be like that. I'm looking for vibrant people and diversity and interesting people. I also like a pretty campus and a nice town, which I think both schools are lacking.</p>

<p>Cornell is obviously known for its deathy, uncurved workload, and scary competitive atmosphere.</p>

<p>lastly, 90/80% of duke eng graduates go to some grad school....which is SCARY. are their kids not getting hired after undergrad? I don't intend on going straight to grad school.....whereas cornell has a superior co-op program and i think good employment (good, comparative stats please)</p>

<p>cornell doesn't seem very flexible, while duke does. but cornell seems to be a ton stronger.</p>

#2

<p>My vote is Cornell, but both are good options.</p>

#3

<p>For engineering I may have to give the edge to Cornell. I would go with Duke for the overall college experience though.</p>

#4

<ol>
<li>"lastly, 90/80% of duke eng graduates go to some grad school....which is SCARY."</li>
</ol>

<p>Are you kidding me? Can you please do some basic research before you make such a blatantly false statement? Based on a survey of May 2007 graduates of Pratt, roughly 15% of grads go to engineering grad school, while 13% of graduates end up in medical or dental school. 8% of graduates go on to study in some non-engineering related discipline. That's a far cry from your 80/90%. (Source: Where</a> do Pratt undergraduates go after graduation? | Engineering at Duke University, Pratt School)
Many Duke engineers are just simply not interested in going to pursue a career in engineering; they simple study the subject because they genuinely enjoy it. A decent amount end up working in finance, or medicine, etc.</p>

<ol>
<li>"the consensus seems to be that duke people are preppy upperclassians who drool over basketball and sperrys"</li>
</ol>

<p>You shouldn't make such generalizations when you haven't even visited to campus, or actually met a decent amount of Duke students to constitute a sample survey.</p>

<ol>
<li>"I also like a pretty campus and a nice town, which I think both schools are lacking."</li>
</ol>

<p>IMO, both campuses are beautiful in comparison to the majority of college campuses in the United States, but its your opinion, anyways. </p>

<ol>
<li>"and 1/4 of the eng students travel abroad, while barely any cornell students do."</li>
</ol>

<p>To be clear, roughly 47% of students within Trinity College study abroad, while 31.4% of students within Pratt study abroad. I'm guessing a decent amount of Cornell students study abroad too, not barely like you say it is. (Source: Duke</a> Study Abroad : Statistics)</p>

<ol>
<li>"Cornell has more notoriety and is a bigger program for engineering. ... but cornell seems to be a ton stronger. "</li>
</ol>

<p>This is true, but are you sure you want to study mechanical engineering, or even engineering for that matter when you go off to college? What you want to study right now is not necessarily indicative of what you want to do in the future.</p>