Engineering: Georgia Tech vs Duke vs Cornell

bluedog
Wed, 21 Mar 2012 15:40:33 +0000

^I second that the national average is not a good benchmark for top students. The GT data are much more applicable:
http://www.irp.gatech.edu/sites/www....2001-18-12.pdf



Yes, that’s definitely true. That report doesn’t refer to *internal *transfer rates though…It simply looks to see if a student that originally enrolled in the engineering school was retained by GT as a whole, not the specific school. “This report tracks retention through year seven and graduation through year six for each cohort in total, by gender, by ethnicity, and by college of entry.” This sentence makes it clear: “Students entering the Ivan Allen College most frequently graduated at higher rates, while entrants to the College of Engineering most frequently graduated at lower rates”

Looks like about 84% of GT students who *enter *as engineers stay at GT through the end and graduate, but that doesn’t mean they stay in engineering. Also, the report tracks retention out to the 7th year! haha, what?

Actually, looking at Table 4, only 31% (!) of GT students that entered in 2005 graduated in four years. That’s shockingly low to me. I bet Cornell is significantly higher. 72% graduate in 5 years and 79% graduate after 6. Looks like GT is likely at least a 5-year program to get a bachelors and that includes all the schools, not just engineering.

Duke’s engineering to arts & sciences transfer rate appears to be 21% for the class of 2009. A decade ago, it was 39% percent. Duke arts & sciences students transfer into engineering at a 10% rate so the net attrition rate for engineering at Duke appears to be 10-15%. Nationwide, the national average attrition rate is ~50%. Can’t find these numbers for GT anywhere…I’m sure Cornell has them somewhere too. Truth and fiction about the intercollege transfer rate - The Chronicle;

Getting back to GT, Table 10 has the graduation rates by college and only 27% of students that begin in an engineering program graduate in 4 years. 79% graduate within 6 years. Sorry for getting off track…GT is a great engineering school, but I had no idea how few people actually get a degree within four years there. So, if you’re comparing costs, I would take into account the extra year of tuition and lost income in your calculations.

Edit: Just to verify this, U.S. News lists the four-year graduation rate as 33%, so that closely matches the above.
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/georgia-tech-1569/academics

Sam Lee’s list above looks pretty good to me…I would just add the likely extra year or two in school as a con for GT.