<p>Harvard engineering is probably under-appreciated. If you check on Reuter-Thompson ISI web site, the most comprehensive scientific paper data compilation in the world, you will find Harvard engineering departments are neck and neck with Stanford in paper quality. In fact, Harvard beats MIT and Stanford in terms of citations per article. U Penn is not too shabby either, albeit the size of its engineering school might be small. The followings are papers from all engineering departments of each institute for the last 5 years (2007-2012). </p>
<p>Institute, # articles , H-index, #Citations on top 3 papers, Total citations without self-citation, Citations/article (including self-citations),
MIT 7253 95 770, 606, 524 53276 11.88
Stanford 4669 74 699, 463, 451 29592 9.75
Harvard 2818 74 820, 432, 311 26392 13.67
Princeton 2748 59 504, 454, 327 17235 9.09
Penn 1497 57 290, 278, 258 13581 12.24</p>