How come its so easy to get into some top ranking engg. colleges??

[thierryhenry]

<p>the acceptance rates at engineering schools are higher because less people apply. tons of people apply to columbia, but it’s engineering school, which is equally amazing, admits like 25-30 percent. thats because nobody who doesnt think they can handle it applies. engineering is intimidating, kids dont like math.</p>

[Mr_Payne]

<p>

Boeing seems to be quite popular.

Boeing is significantly higher paying that GE? Seriously? GE also seems quite popular - so what’s the point again?</p>

<p>

NASA for the hard-core astro guys.

Sure. </p>

<p>

But of course, the biggest catches are obviously consulting and banking. Like I said, plenty of MIT engineers, including ME and Aero’s, will head off to consulting and banking.

Doesn’t answer the question. We are talking engineering jobs.</p>

<p>

And that’s precisely what I disagree with. Again, I have shown how there are quite a few large engineering schools that are nonetheless relatively low ranked, and in particular, are ranked lower than Yale.

That’s a non sequitur. Is Texas Tech a stronger school because it’s large? I’ll say yes to that any day. A smaller school, with the same student demographics and same department demographics is simply not gonna have the same pull. That’s what I’m saying. And that’s why Yale performs poorly (and other Ivies perform pretty poorly in Engineering relative to the caliber of their student bodies).</p>

<p>

Again, I don’t think so. After all, why would the employers care? All they care about is that they are getting an 85th percentile employee, which is still far better than the average.

Are you kidding me? This is as clear as day. Employers care very much about the quality of the employees they get. You think Nasa/Boeing/GE/Lockheed/Northrup is merely shooting for the 51st percentile? Please.</p>

<p>

Besides, what do you expect to happen anyway? There are very few schools that have consistent quality in every field that they teach. MIT, Caltech’s, Georgia Tech’s and Purdue’s humanities programs are not as good as their engineering programs. The vast vast majority of schools are going to have some programs that are better than others. That’s how it is.

You’re right. There’s always going to be someone better, so lets not try to make our program better. That sounds like winning logic.</p>

<p>

Let me put it to you this way. Would anybody be better off if Yale just didn’t teach engineering at all? After all, plenty of schools don’t offer engineering. So what if Yale’s engineering is not as good as some of Yale’s other programs? At least Yale has an engineering program (and a relatively good one, compared to most other programs).

It probably wouldn’t matter. Yale Engineering is a virtual non-entity anyway. Just most anything not related to Engineering at Purdue is a non-entity.</p>

<p>

And what about Yalie “competence”? Again, at least he was competent enough to get elected President twice. Most other people can’t even do that.

Whatever. This tangent is dumb.</p>

<p>

Your knowledge is contradicted by the rankings. Seems to me you just have anti-Yale fever.

You say this in post #100:</p>

<p>

Let’s be honest. There are a LOT of employers out there who just don’t know the rankings. Many of them are relatively small companies. Many of the people in these companies are themselves not highly educated. They don’t really “know” who the best schools are.

You’re getting all confused now.</p>

[Mr_Payne]

<p>

Really? So then wouldn’t that actually be a factor in favor of Yale? After all, what school REALLY has a strong old boys network? Maybe you shouldn’t have brought up this point.

Good thing that Yale doesn’t really have that many engineers to practice the “old boys network”, then it might actually mean something.</p>

<p>

And plenty of other mediocre research schools ALSO have great sports teams. Again, Texas Tech, LSU, Oregon State, Boise State, etc.

So it’s non-correlated to engineering strength?</p>

<p>

Again, take Stanford as an example. I know PLENTY of people who just think of Stanford as just a sports school and nothing else. It’s hard to convince them that it’s actually a very good research school - on par with the Ivies and MIT, because the first thing they think of is sports whenever they hear Stanford.

Some gets an engineering degree from Stanford versus an engineering degree from Yale - I just have a feeling that one of these people is gonna get a lot more action on the job front.</p>

<p>

Case in point - I have met MANY people who have never heard of Stanford or Cal. Or if they have, it’s only because of the sports teams. These aren’t powerless people here - they are managers with hiring power. But they just don’t spend their time thinking about colleges. But they HAVE heard of Harvard and Yale (who hasn’t?).

Hard to refute anecdotal evidence, but you’re saying that managers of technical employees didn’t know of the presence of Stanford/Cal in the engineering world? Is this bizarro land? Was this in Hartford? Damn, where do you find these people!</p>

<p>

Sure it does - because the presence of those athletes detracts from the academic reputation of your school. People see Greg Oden and Kevin Durant and conclude that you don’t have to be that smart to get into Ohio State or Texas, all you have to do is play ball well.

Disagree.</p>

[GatorEng23]

<p>Sometimes sakky can be a little confusing. ‘According to the rankings, Yale is better than the vast majority of schools out there. But employers don’t know about the rankings, so it doesn’t matter.’</p>

[Mr_Payne]

<p>

Frankly, MOST engineering schools are fairly unknown. Be honest - how many people have actually heard of Purdue (other than the sports teams)? How many have ever really heard of Carnegie-Mellon?

And yet, engineers still manage to get jobs. Could it be that hiring managers know about what schools produce engineers?</p>

<p>

You’ve argued that size matters quite a bit. I am simply pointing out some large schools that aren’t that good. Hence, size doesn’t seem to matter very much.

I’ve argued that size matters from a reputation standpoint. Which is true.</p>

<p>

And what about the reputations? What exactly is the reputation of Oklahoma State? Or WPI? Or Texas Tech?

Average, Good, Good.</p>

<p>

Completely 100% relevant, because you’re the one who keeps bringing up the issue of size. So if you want to keep doing that, then I am perfectly free to keep bringing up certain big schools. Like Oklahoma State.

And if one doesn’t equate Yale with strong engineering? For the record, “strong engineering” isn’t what people think of initially when Yale is mentioned. Same with OSU. Ok. Back to square one.</p>

[sakky]

<p>

Boeing is significantly higher paying that GE? Seriously? GE also seems quite popular - so what’s the point again?

</p>

<p>Oh darn right. You didn’t know? Really? GE is actually rather notorious for being rather low-paying, unless you get into higher management. Notorious. Go check it out. </p>

<p>Again, what GE can offer * some * of its employees is a undoubtedly powerful leadership development and rotation program. This is indeed a huge perk for those who can get it. But the vast majority of employees at GE are not selected for the program. </p>

<p>

Doesn’t answer the question. We are talking engineering jobs.

</p>

<p>Actually, I am talking about jobs that engineering students take, whether they are actual engineering jobs or not. </p>

<p>

That’s a non sequitur. Is Texas Tech a stronger school because it’s large? I’ll say yes to that any day. A smaller school, with the same student demographics and same department demographics is simply not gonna have the same pull. That’s what I’m saying. And that’s why Yale performs poorly (and other Ivies perform pretty poorly in Engineering relative to the caliber of their student bodies).

</p>

<p>First off, again, it doesn’t matter that Yale performs relatively poorly compared to the caliber of the student bodies. Employers don’t care about that. All they care about is the final outcome. If Yale engineering grads are better than the vast majority of engineering grads out there, that’s all the employers will see and care about. Sure, the Yale engineering grads could be still better. But so what? Do you really think an employer is not going to hire you just because you could have been even better than you are currently? </p>

<p>Secondly, you just gave away the store right there with your talk about Texas Tech with the ‘same demographics’. We’re not really talking about that. We’re talking about a situation where, say, Texas Tech shrunk by getting rid of its tail end of mediocre engineering students. Would Texas Tech become a better school by doing so? I would think so. </p>

<p>See, you keep conflating size with quality. That’s wrong. It’s not having lots of students itself that matters. It’s * having lots of high quality students * that matters. Having lots of mediocre students doesn’t help you. In fact, it actually hurts you. It hurts your reputation on the market. That’s why Texas Tech is ranked lower than Yale by both engineering peers and engineering recruiters - because Texas Tech produces a lot of graduates who are of subpar quality, and the recruiters and peers know it. </p>

<p>Put another way. What if Yale engineering, tomorrow, just got 10 times bigger by just admitting a whole slew of mediocre students? Would Yale engineering become a more highly regarded program? I think it’s quite certain that they’d become * worse *. </p>

<p>

Are you kidding me? This is as clear as day. Employers care very much about the quality of the employees they get. You think Nasa/Boeing/GE/Lockheed/Northrup is merely shooting for the 51st percentile? Please.

</p>

<p>Exactly, you just proved my very point. They care about the QUALITY of the employees they get. They don’t care about the potential quality that the employees COULD BE. They care about the ACTUAL QUALITY of the students.</p>

<p>As a case in point. Consider a Yale engineer who is at that 85th percentile. Now consider some other engineering grad from the average school who is, by definition, at the 50th percentile. Do you think an employer is going to say “hey, this Yale grad is at the 85th percentile, but really, maybe he should be at the 95th percentile, so we are going to reject him and instead offer the job to the other guy who is at the 50th percentile”. I think not. They’re going to offer it to the better guy. It doesn’t matter if that better guy could have been still better if he had gone to another school. All that matters is that he is the better guy in the tournament. Nothing more, nothing less. </p>

<p>So at the end of the day, you have now conceded and are now in complete agreement with me - that Yale engineering students are better than the vast majority of other engineering students out there. Thank you. </p>

<p>

You’re right. There’s always going to be someone better, so lets not try to make our program better. That sounds like winning logic.

</p>

<p>I didn’t say it was “winning logic”. It’s just a truism in life. You seem to love Purdue - yet Purdue is not strong in all categories either. So what’s your point? I don’t see you criticizing Purdue about it.</p>

<p>

It probably wouldn’t matter. Yale Engineering is a virtual non-entity anyway. Just most anything not related to Engineering at Purdue is a non-entity.

</p>

<p>But you admitted it above - Yale engineering is better than most other engineering programs out there. So if Yale engineering is a virtual non-entity, what does that say about all those other programs out there? Yet I don’t see you bagging on any of them. Why not? </p>

<p>

Whatever. This tangent is dumb.

</p>

<p>Then don’t participate in the tangent. Nobody has a gun to your head. </p>

<p>

You’re getting all confused now.

</p>

<p>Am I? I think you’re the one who is confused. After all, you seem to think that employers will care that Yale engineers are not as good as they perhaps could be, so they would rather prefer somebody who came from a lower-ranked school like Texas Tech. You claim to have data to show that schools like Texas Tech and WPI are higher regarded than Yale, but yet you refuse to present the data. Who’s the one who’s confused again? </p>

<p>

Good thing that Yale doesn’t really have that many engineers to practice the “old boys network”, then it might actually mean something.

</p>

<p>They don’t need such an engineering network, because they have a * management and finance * network. Like it or not, at many (probably most) engineering companies, the shots are called by the businessmen and the financiers. Be honest with yourself - you know it’s true. </p>

<p>You seem to love GE, so let’s talk about GE. What’s the background of the CEO of GE? Is he an engineer? Oh, right, Jeff Immelt’s not an engineer. Hmmm. How about that. </p>

<p>

So it’s non-correlated to engineering strength?

</p>

<p>You tell me. How strong is MIT’s football team? Or Caltech’s? Or, heck, Stanford’s (didn’t they win just 1 game last season)? </p>

<p>

Some gets an engineering degree from Stanford versus an engineering degree from Yale - I just have a feeling that one of these people is gonna get a lot more action on the job front.

</p>

<p>Uh, once again, trying to confuse the issue. Nobody here has ever argued that Yale engineering is better than Stanford engineering. Everybody agrees on that point. </p>

<p>The question is, whether Yale engineering is better than, say, WPI engineering. Or Texas Tech engineering. Or Oklahoma State engineering. </p>

<p>

Hard to refute anecdotal evidence, but you’re saying that managers of technical employees didn’t know of the presence of Stanford/Cal in the engineering world? Is this bizarro land? Was this in Hartford? Damn, where do you find these people!

</p>

<p>Oh yes. I have seen it numerous times. Believe me, there are a LOT of nondescript firms out there with managers who just don’t care about colleges. </p>

<p>Look, not every firm out there is a large, well-established company with a highly professional HR staff and large hiring programs with well-established standards for recruiting. The fact is, the vast majority of companies out there are small-to-medium sized businesses, often times family-owned, where the people don’t know the college rankings, and frankly, don’t care. </p>

<p>I’ll give you a case in point. Just a few days ago, I was visiting a guy I know who works at a software startup company (~50 employees). The CEO doesn’t know anything about college rankings, and he doesn’t care. Heck, I don’t even think the CEO even went to college at all, and if he did, it was just at a local no-name school. He’s never heard of Stanford or Cal. {Granted, he’s not from California, so I’m sure that’s part of it}. But the fact remains that there are plenty of other firms out there that are just like that. </p>

<p>Let me tell you something. Only 27% of all Americans age 25 and up even have a bachelor’s degree. And obviously most of those that do have degrees just went to no-name schools. Plenty of them will eventually become managers at no-name companies (as most companies are no-name companies). Do you honestly think these guys really know the college rankings, or even care? </p>

<p>

Disagree.

</p>

<p>Oh, so you think that somebody like Dexter Manley actually enhanced the academic brand name of Oklahoma State? I’m sure that OSU was so proud of the fact that he managed to stay eligible for 4 years without even knowing how to read. </p>

<p>

And yet, engineers still manage to get jobs. Could it be that hiring managers know about what schools produce engineers?

</p>

<p>Not really. Fresno State engineers get jobs too. Heck, most engineering students from all the schools (most of which are no-name) will eventually get jobs. I don’t see that as evidence that hiring managers really know which schools produce engineers. Rather, it’s just a simple fact that there are lots of available jobs, and many companies, especially the no-name ones, can’t afford to be picky. </p>

<p>

I’ve argued that size matters from a reputation standpoint. Which is true.

</p>

<p>No, what you are ACTUALLY arguing is that the CORRECT size is important from a reputational standpoint, and specifically that graduating lots of GOOD students is a good thing (which is clearly indisputable). Like I said, Yale engineering could get much bigger by simply admitting lots of mediocre students, and then graduating them. Heck, that’s what Fresno State does. Do you really think Yale would be better off? </p>

<p>Hence, size is a weak indicator, as I’ve always been saying. The REAL key is quality. To take another example, Caltech is also a quite small engineering school. But it is a small * high quality * school. That’s why Caltech is clearly better than far larger schools such as Oklahoma State or Fresno State. I doubt that you would dispute this point. </p>

<p>

And what about the reputations? What exactly is the reputation of Oklahoma State? Or WPI? Or Texas Tech? </p>

<p>Average, Good, Good.

</p>

<p>Uh huh, and then what is the reputation of Yale engineering. Well if WPI and Texas Tech are ‘good’, then Yale must be ‘very good’. That is what the rankings say - the recruiters and peers both agree that Yale engineering is better than WPI or Yale. </p>

<p>

And if one doesn’t equate Yale with strong engineering? For the record, “strong engineering” isn’t what people think of initially when Yale is mentioned. Same with OSU. Ok. Back to square one.

</p>

<p>Nope, because you have admitted that WPI engineering is ‘good’. But then Yale is ranked higher than WPI. So then Yale must at least be ‘good’. So you have admitted to me that Yale engineering is at least ‘good’, and probably ‘very good’. QED.</p>

[Mr_Payne]

<p>

Oh darn right. You didn’t know? Really? GE is actually rather notorious for being rather low-paying, unless you get into higher management. Notorious. Go check it out.

No, you implied that Boeing was high paying. I’m skeptical of that. If anything, GE is average paying and Boeing slightly above average. Not a huge delta though, maybe 5K/year in starting salary.</p>

<p>

Actually, I am talking about jobs that engineering students take, whether they are actual engineering jobs or not.

Ok, you can talk about that .5% of jobs than engineering students take. I’ll talk about the other 99.5% of the jobs that engineering students take.</p>

<p>

First off, again, it doesn’t matter that Yale performs relatively poorly compared to the caliber of the student bodies. Employers don’t care about that. All they care about is the final outcome. If Yale engineering grads are better than the vast majority of engineering grads out there, that’s all the employers will see and care about. Sure, the Yale engineering grads could be still better. But so what? Do you really think an employer is not going to hire you just because you could have been even better than you are currently?

Yes, obviously. Why do some companies only recruit at top tier (ie: MIT/Stanford/Cal)? It’s because they can find (many) 98th percentile engineers.</p>

<p>

Secondly, you just gave away the store right there with your talk about Texas Tech with the ‘same demographics’. We’re not really talking about that. We’re talking about a situation where, say, Texas Tech shrunk by getting rid of its tail end of mediocre engineering students. Would Texas Tech become a better school by doing so? I would think so.

Why? Class rank (ie: grades) works just fine in delineating talent.</p>

<p>

See, you keep conflating size with quality. That’s wrong. It’s not having lots of students itself that matters. It’s having lots of high quality students that matters. Having lots of mediocre students doesn’t help you. In fact, it actually hurts you. It hurts your reputation on the market. That’s why Texas Tech is ranked lower than Yale by both engineering peers and engineering recruiters - because Texas Tech produces a lot of graduates who are of subpar quality, and the recruiters and peers know it.

Umm, shrinking Texas Tech will not increase the amount of high quality students. It will likely decrease that amount (due to otherwise good engineers who had bad high school experiences and would have been cut in the stricter admissions standards). What you mean to be saying is the average engineer. And honestly, I don’t see why grades can’t be a good predictor of that.</p>

<p>

Put another way. What if Yale engineering, tomorrow, just got 10 times bigger by just admitting a whole slew of mediocre students? Would Yale engineering become a more highly regarded program? I think it’s quite certain that they’d become worse.

And when you say mediocre you’re actually saying “slightly less excellent than what they have currently”. I have no doubt in my mind they’d become better. Their ranking would absolutely surge after 10 years.</p>

<p>

I didn’t say it was “winning logic”. It’s just a truism in life. You seem to love Purdue - yet Purdue is not strong in all categories either. So what’s your point? I don’t see you criticizing Purdue about it.

A) I don’t love Purdue, I’ve hardly even spoken about it!
B) You implied that Yale shouldn’t try to improve its engineering program because others will always be ahead of it. That’s the reason to try and improve your program.</p>

<p>

But you admitted it above - Yale engineering is better than most other engineering programs out there. So if Yale engineering is a virtual non-entity, what does that say about all those other programs out there? Yet I don’t see you bagging on any of them. Why not?

It’s a non-entity because it’s ridiculously small. I’m not “bagging” on anyone. I’m just stating my opinion. Many other colleges have engineering programs that are non-entities. It’s no big deal.</p>

<p>

Then don’t participate in the tangent. Nobody has a gun to your head.

Well, ok.</p>

<p>

Am I? I think you’re the one who is confused. After all, you seem to think that employers will care that Yale engineers are not as good as they perhaps could be, so they would rather prefer somebody who came from a lower-ranked school like Texas Tech. You claim to have data to show that schools like Texas Tech and WPI are higher regarded than Yale, but yet you refuse to present the data. Who’s the one who’s confused again?

A) Where did I say they would prefer someone from TT over Yale?
B)You say TT & WPI aren’t higher regarded than Yale according to the rankings - but then say employers don’t know about the rankings! Obviously something doesn’t check out.</p>

<p>

They don’t need such an engineering network, because they have a management and finance network. Like it or not, at many (probably most) engineering companies, the shots are called by the businessmen and the financiers. Be honest with yourself - you know it’s true.

So wait…are you saying Yale can’t get graduating engineers good engineering jobs because they don’t have a good network? Hmm.</p>

<p>

You seem to love GE, so let’s talk about GE. What’s the background of the CEO of GE? Is he an engineer? Oh, right, Jeff Immelt’s not an engineer. Hmmm. How about that.

Wait a sec, who gave that Immelt guy his job? Welch…what was his background again?</p>

<p>

You tell me. How strong is MIT’s football team? Or Caltech’s? Or, heck, Stanford’s (didn’t they win just 1 game last season)?

Stanford is a D1 football team in a major conference. If you put them in the Ivy league they’d wreck shop. Cal, Michigan, GT, Purdue, UIUC, UCLA, UT-Austin, USC, UF. Man, these strong sports schools have pretty weak engineering programs, I will admit!</p>

<p>

Uh, once again, trying to confuse the issue. Nobody here has ever argued that Yale engineering is better than Stanford engineering. Everybody agrees on that point.

You used Stanford in your example!</p>

<p>

The question is, whether Yale engineering is better than, say, WPI engineering. Or Texas Tech engineering. Or Oklahoma State engineering.

No, the question is whether a bigger Yale engineering program would be better than a smaller Yale engineering program. I’ll take the former any day of the week.</p>

<p>

Oh yes. I have seen it numerous times. Believe me, there are a LOT of nondescript firms out there with managers who just don’t care about colleges.

In which case Yale might have sway (because it’s very well known) - but what about Dartmouth? Or Brown? Zero.</p>

<p>

Look, not every firm out there is a large, well-established company with a highly professional HR staff and large hiring programs with well-established standards for recruiting. The fact is, the vast majority of companies out there are small-to-medium sized businesses, often times family-owned, where the people don’t know the college rankings, and frankly, don’t care.

And this doesn’t help smaller programs.</p>

<p>

I’ll give you a case in point. Just a few days ago, I was visiting a guy I know who works at a software startup company (~50 employees). The CEO doesn’t know anything about college rankings, and he doesn’t care. Heck, I don’t even think the CEO even went to college at all, and if he did, it was just at a local no-name school. He’s never heard of Stanford or Cal. {Granted, he’s not from California, so I’m sure that’s part of it}. But the fact remains that there are plenty of other firms out there that are just like that.

Again, this absolutely doesn’t help smaller programs. At this point you might want the hiring managers just to have heard of your school. Bigger schools have way more name recognition.</p>

<p>

Let me tell you something. Only 27% of all Americans age 25 and up even have a bachelor’s degree. And obviously most of those that do have degrees just went to no-name schools. Plenty of them will eventually become managers at no-name companies (as most companies are no-name companies). Do you honestly think these guys really know the college rankings, or even care?

Ok, I fail to see how this helps your argument!</p>

<p>

Oh, so you think that somebody like Dexter Manley actually enhanced the academic brand name of Oklahoma State? I’m sure that OSU was so proud of the fact that he managed to stay eligible for 4 years without even knowing how to read.

Everyone knows schools bend the rules for football players. Especially top tier D1 programs!</p>

<p>Besides, very few football players go through engineering programs, especially if they are looking to go pro.</p>

<p>

Not really. Fresno State engineers get jobs too. Heck, most engineering students from all the schools (most of which are no-name) will eventually get jobs. I don’t see that as evidence that hiring managers really know which schools produce engineers. Rather, it’s just a simple fact that there are lots of available jobs, and many companies, especially the no-name ones, can’t afford to be picky.

Fair enough. Engineering graduates is in low, decreasing supply. And engineering jobs are static or increasing.</p>

<p>

No, what you are ACTUALLY arguing is that the CORRECT size is important from a reputational standpoint, and specifically that graduating lots of GOOD students is a good thing (which is clearly indisputable). Like I said, Yale engineering could get much bigger by simply admitting lots of mediocre students, and then graduating them. Heck, that’s what Fresno State does. Do you really think Yale would be better off?

Sure. Yale could likely get many more engineers (triple or quadruple the size of their program) with very small drops in numerical standards.</p>

<p>

Hence, size is a weak indicator, as I’ve always been saying. The REAL key is quality. To take another example, Caltech is also a quite small engineering school. But it is a small high quality school. That’s why Caltech is clearly better than far larger schools such as Oklahoma State or Fresno State. I doubt that you would dispute this point.

I’ve never said quality isn’t a huge issue.</p>

<p>

Uh huh, and then what is the reputation of Yale engineering. Well if WPI and Texas Tech are ‘good’, then Yale must be ‘very good’. That is what the rankings say - the recruiters and peers both agree that Yale engineering is better than WPI or Yale.

A) I’ve never said Yale wasn’t better, just that it doesn’t have much of a reputation (especially for how good it’s students are).
B) You’ve said that many recruiters don’t look at rankings.
C) Being better and having a reputation for being better are two different things. I’m not sure Yale has the latter.</p>

<p>

Nope, because you have admitted that WPI engineering is ‘good’. But then Yale is ranked higher than WPI. So then Yale must at least be ‘good’. So you have admitted to me that Yale engineering is at least ‘good’, and probably ‘very good’. QED.

No, I’ve admitted that I think Yale engineering is better than WPI. I’m not sure it’s what the general public thinks.</p>

[live]

<p>

No, I’ve admitted that I think Yale engineering is better than WPI. I’m not sure it’s what the general public thinks.

The general public has never even heard of WPI. And equates Yale with intelligence, success, etc. You can’t seriously think there is any chance in this world the general public thinks more highly of WPI than of Yale (in any department, including engineering).</p>

[Mr_Payne]

<p>Yale might be the extreme outlier.</p>

<p>What about Dartmouth engineering or WPI? Very few people have heard of Dartmouth. The argument of size is the bigger issue.</p>

<p>edit: I think this forum is much different than the real world. I tend to think most people wouldn’t even know much about Yale, or most colleges. The only school that has real, 100% name recognition is Harvard. I think MIT is also quite high. Yale and Princeton get the scraps…</p>

[live]

<p>You are completely naive if you think more people have heard of Worcester Polytechnic Institute than Dartmouth. And it has nothing to do with size (seeing that WPI only has 2800 undergrads) in this case. Texas Tech sure, but that has to do PURELY with sports.</p>

<p>Or in the more general case. It has to do with regional draw. You could have 50,000 kids but if 49,000 of them are from places within 100 miles of your school it doesn’t matter. Dartmouth has applicants and students from every state and a ****load of foreign countries. </p>

<p><a href=“http://www.eng.yale.edu/images/genericPDF/YALEENGINEERING-FAQ.pdf[/url]”>http://www.eng.yale.edu/images/genericPDF/YALEENGINEERING-FAQ.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>I don’t htink that was posted. It shows the breakdown of where Yale engineers end up. Only about 20% of their class goes into engineering industry, but the companies they list certainly seem like the “desirable” engineering jobs.</p>

[sakky]

<p>

No, you implied that Boeing was high paying. I’m skeptical of that. If anything, GE is average paying and Boeing slightly above average. Not a huge delta though, maybe 5K/year in starting salary.

</p>

<p>Which therefore just proves my point - Boeing pays more than GE does. </p>

<p>Moreover, the perks at Boeing tend to be far more broadly based. Like I said, GE is a great company if you can get into their leadership development program. But few can - most cannot. On the other hand, Boeing has a philosophy of trying to develop * everybody * who wants career development. </p>

<p>

Ok, you can talk about that .5% of jobs than engineering students take. I’ll talk about the other 99.5% of the jobs that engineering students take.

</p>

<p>Yeah, beacuse they have to, because they can’t get anything better. Like I said, even a lot of MIT and Stanford engineering students don’t really want to be engineers, but instead become consultants and bankers. This leads me to believe that plenty of other engineering students, especially at the no-name schools, would like to do the same but are never given the chance. Hence, they take engineering jobs because they have nothing better. </p>

<p>

Yes, obviously. Why do some companies only recruit at top tier (ie: MIT/Stanford/Cal)? It’s because they can find (many) 98th percentile engineers.

</p>

<p>And again, nobody is disputing that MIT/Stanford/Cal offers better engineering than Yale. The question is, whether Yale is better than places like WPI or Texas Tech or Oklahoma State. You yourself admitted that you thought employers would rate WPI and Texas TEch as ‘good’. If that’s true, then they must rank Yale as ‘very good’. After all, Yale has a higher engineering ranking and peer/recruiting rating than either WPI or Texas Tech. </p>

<p>

Why? Class rank (ie: grades) works just fine in delineating talent.

</p>

<p>And what would say when you compared a guy with a 4.0 from Yale engineering vs. a guy with a 4.0 from WPI engineering? </p>

<p>

Umm, shrinking Texas Tech will not increase the amount of high quality students. It will likely decrease that amount (due to otherwise good engineers who had bad high school experiences and would have been cut in the stricter admissions standards). What you mean to be saying is the average engineer. And honestly, I don’t see why grades can’t be a good predictor of that.

</p>

<p>How’s that? Texas Tech can clearly improve its engineering student quality by simply raising its admissions standards, hence simply no longer admitting the bottom X% of students that it currently admits. By doing so, the student body would be both smaller and higher quality. </p>

<p>Let’s be honest. While there is not a perfect correlation between high school performance and college performance (including, yes, college engineering peformance), there is a correlation. Those who do well in high school tend to do well in college, and those who do pooly in high school tend to do poorly in college. Otherwise, why even bother having an admissions process at all? Why not just place all the names in a hat and draw randomly? </p>

<p>

And when you say mediocre you’re actually saying “slightly less excellent than what they have currently”. I have no doubt in my mind they’d become better. Their ranking would absolutely surge after 10 years.

</p>

<p>No, I truly mean MEDIOCRE, as in a bunch of guys who barely graduated from high school. What if Yale engineering admitted a whole bunch of these folks, and also graduated them? I think we both know that Yale engineering would not benefit in the least. But hey, at least it would be a BIGGER program, right? </p>

<p>

You implied that Yale shouldn’t try to improve its engineering program because others will always be ahead of it. That’s the reason to try and improve your program.

</p>

<p>When have I ever said that Yale shouldn’t try to improve its engineering program? Please point to the quote where I specifically said that. </p>

<p>I am simply saying that we have to respect the fact that Yale already has a highly regarded engineering program - higher ranked than the vast majority of other programs out there (of which there are hundreds and hundreds). In particular, they are ranked higher than WPI and Texas Tech, something which you still seem to not be able to accept. What can I say? Sometimes the truth hurts. </p>

<p>

It’s a non-entity because it’s ridiculously small. I’m not “bagging” on anyone. I’m just stating my opinion. Many other colleges have engineering programs that are non-entities. It’s no big deal.

</p>

<p>So are WPI and Texas Tech engineering also non-entities? I thought you said they were ‘good’. But they are ranked lower than Yale engineering. How do you square that circle? </p>

<p>

A) Where did I say they would prefer someone from TT over Yale?

</p>

<p>You said that TT had an advantage over Yale because of its size. </p>

<p>

B)You say TT & WPI aren’t higher regarded than Yale according to the rankings - but then say employers don’t know about the rankings! Obviously something doesn’t check out.

</p>

<p>Sure, it checks out complete. Some employers know the rankings - and they will see that Yale beats TT. Some employers won’t know the rankings and will just know the Yale brand name. So once again Yale beats TT. Either way, Yale beats TT. QED. Same analysis holds for WPI. </p>

<p>

So wait…are you saying Yale can’t get graduating engineers good engineering jobs because they don’t have a good network? Hmm.

</p>

<p>I’m sure that the network is just fine - just as good if not better than the network from, say, TT or WPI. Are you arguing otherwise? </p>

<p>

Wait a sec, who gave that Immelt guy his job? Welch…what was his background again?

</p>

<p>Yes let’s talk about that - who did give him the job? You’re saying it’s Welch? I don’t think so - it was * the GE Board of Directors * who gave him the job. What Welch did is * recommend * that Immelt have the job. But ultimately, the job was not his to grant. It was THE BOARD who had the final power to grant (or not) the job. </p>

<p>

In which case Yale might have sway (because it’s very well known) - but what about Dartmouth? Or Brown? Zero.

</p>

<p>And what about WPI or TT? * Negative *. </p>

<p>

Ok, I fail to see how this helps your argument!

</p>

<p>It shows that most Americans know little about colleges, and particularly about college rankings. In particular, again, I would hardly doubt that most Americans have ever heard of WPI. Are you arguing that they do? </p>

<p>

Everyone knows schools bend the rules for football players. Especially top tier D1 programs!</p>

<p>Besides, very few football players go through engineering programs, especially if they are looking to go pro.

</p>

<p>Yet the fact remains that if somebody comes up to you who says he came from Oklahoma State, the first thing that comes to your mind is, if you know the Dexter Manley story, is that the classes may not be particularly hard if somebody like Manley can stay eligible in that school for 4 years. </p>

<p>

Sure. Yale could likely get many more engineers (triple or quadruple the size of their program) with very small drops in numerical standards.

</p>

<p>Why would it necessarily be just “small drops”? What if we simply expanded Yale engineering by admitting a whole bunch of people who could barely even get into a 4th tier program? Yale would certainly be bigger. But better? </p>

<p>

A) I’ve never said Yale wasn’t better, just that it doesn’t have much of a reputation (especially for how good it’s students are).
B) You’ve said that many recruiters don’t look at rankings.
C) Being better and having a reputation for being better are two different things. I’m not sure Yale has the latter

</p>

<p>And yet I think you would have to agree that WPI and TT are neither better nor have a better reputation.</p>

[sakky]

<p>

Look, not every firm out there is a large, well-established company with a highly professional HR staff and large hiring programs with well-established standards for recruiting. The fact is, the vast majority of companies out there are small-to-medium sized businesses, often times family-owned, where the people don’t know the college rankings, and frankly, don’t care. </p>

<p>And this doesn’t help smaller programs.

</p>

<p>And it doesn’t necessarily help big ones either. It’s better for an employer to have never heard of you at all, than to have heard of you, but for bad things. I’d rather be unknown than notorious.</p>

<p>As a case in point, back home, there is a large state university that shall remain unnamed. But it’s a * low quality * state university - in one of the lowest tiers in the USNews regional (not even national) rankings. * Everybody * back home knows about this school because it is rather big. All the employers know about it. But that doesn’t mean that they really want to hire graduates from that school, even though they do know about the school. That’s because many employers have had bad experiences from hiring those graduates. Sure, some of these companies will hire those grads anyway simply because they can’t find any other college graduate to do it. But that doesn’t mean that they really want to hire these people, as they would prefer to hire some other college grad. </p>

<p>Simply put, size can give you a reputation - but not necessarily a good one. It’s better to have no reputation at all than to have a bad reputation</p>

[sakky]

<p>

Yale might be the extreme outlier. </p>

<p>What about Dartmouth engineering or WPI? Very few people have heard of Dartmouth. The argument of size is the bigger issue.

</p>

<p>I don’t know that Yale is such an ‘extreme outlier’. Caltech is also a quite small, but verifiably strong engineering school. So do Princeton, Duke, and Rice. On the other hand, there are plenty of quite large, but also quite mediocre engineering programs out there - TT, Oklahoma State, Wayne State, Fresno State, San Diego State, Cal State Northridge, Idaho State University - the list just goes on and on. Hence, again, this shows that size is a weak indicator, which has been my point all along.</p>

[Kharatos]

<p>This creates an interesting question for me: if someone gets accepted into both Yale engineering and UC Davis engineering (not nearly as well known but regionally quite favorable by silicon valley companies), which one, according do the argument you guys are debating upon, should he choose to go to?</p>

<p>Of course, I do realize that if someone was good enough to be accepted into Yale he’d most likely have gotten into Berkeley and Stanford as well, therefore it’s an unfair comparison. But still, just for the heck of it, how does it factor into this argument?</p>

[racnna]

<p>yale engineering sucks horribly…</p>

[sakky]

<p>

yale engineering sucks horribly…

</p>

<p>See, there it is again - the anti-Yale sentiment. Why does Yale engineering “suck horribly”? It’s ranked in the 40’s. That’s pretty good, when you consider that there are hundreds and hundreds of engineering programs out there. Hence, Yale engineering is better than the vast majority of engineering programs out there. So if Yale engineering “sucks horribly”, then what does that say about all the other programs that are ranked even lower? </p>

<p>I think it’s a rather strange phenomenom about CC that any program that isn’t ranked in, say, the top 25, supposedly “sucks horribly” or similar such phraseology. </p>

<p>

This creates an interesting question for me: if someone gets accepted into both Yale engineering and UC Davis engineering (not nearly as well known but regionally quite favorable by silicon valley companies), which one, according do the argument you guys are debating upon, should he choose to go to?

</p>

<p>That’s easy - Yale in a landslide. </p>

<p>Let me put it to you this way. According to USNews graduate edition, Yale engineering is ranked #37, and UCDavis is #34. Come on, 3 ranking points is negligible. And obviously Yale has the far bigger brand name, and would give you the opportunity to shoot for the elite consulting/banking jobs that a lot of engineers apparently desire. (Again, look at how many MIT and Stanford engineering students head off to consulting and banking). </p>

<p>Couple that with the fact that a lot of prospective engineering students will end up switching to another major. I seem to recall reading a study that showed that only half of all incoming engineering students will actually finish the engineering major, with most of the rest having switched to another major. Hence, what if you go to Davis for engineering, and then find out that you don’t really want to major in engineering anymore? I am guessing that you’d probably like to take back your decision to turn down Yale. But you can’t go back in time. Once you’ve turned down Yale, what’s done is done.</p>

[live]

<p>If your choices are Davis and Yale and you choose Davis because you think it will be academically superior, you are completely out of your mind Kharatos. There’s not even a comparison there (now, if you chose Davis for “fit” then more power to you, but definitely not because you believe it’s academically superior). And I’m not saying Davis is a bad school (in the large scheme of things the entire top 100 are excellent, with excellent career prospects), either, just that Yale is in an entirely different league.</p>

[racnna]

<p>

See, there it is again - the anti-Yale sentiment. Why does Yale engineering “suck horribly”? It’s ranked in the 40’s. That’s pretty good, when you consider that there are hundreds and hundreds of engineering programs out there. Hence, Yale engineering is better than the vast majority of engineering programs out there. So if Yale engineering “sucks horribly”, then what does that say about all the other programs that are ranked even lower? </p>

<p>I think it’s a rather strange phenomenom about CC that any program that isn’t ranked in, say, the top 25, supposedly “sucks horribly” or similar such phraseology.

</p>

<p>The ‘sucks horribly’ comment is based solely on this:</p>

<p>CENG 120a Introduction to Environmental Engineering
CENG 210a Principles of Chemical Engineering and Process Modeling
CENG 300a Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics
CENG 301b Chemical Kinetics and Chemical Reactors
CENG 315b Transport Phenomena
CENG 351a Biomedical Engineering I: Quantitative Physiology
CENG 373a Air Pollution Control
CENG 377b Water Quality Control
CENG 411a Separation and Purification Processes
CENG 412b Chemical Engineering Laboratory
CENG 416b Chemical Engineering Process Design
CENG 454bG Biotechnology
CENG 471ab Independent Research
CENG 480a Chemical Engineering Process Control
CENG 490a Senior Research Project
MENG 361a Mechanical Engineering II: Fluid Mechanics </p>

<p>W*F? is that all they have to offer? air pollution control? water pollution control? It sucks so bad that they tagged on a mech E course as one of the ‘chem E’
courses they offer… They shouldn’t even be in the top 80 IMO. I want to know what these rankings are based on. They can’t possibly be the 40th best engineering school in the country.All they know how to do is research.</p>

[sang54]

<p>Why do so many people at CC love to bash each other? -_-</p>

[live]

<p>racnna, especially with people like this:<a href=“http://www.eng.yale.edu/content/HistoricFenn.asp[/url]”>http://www.eng.yale.edu/content/HistoricFenn.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>working in that deparment. Nobel Prize? ****ing pathetic. Only the first time a chemical engineering department has been awarded a Nobel Prize…</p>