Is cornell engineering practical or research based?

monydad
Fri, 15 Jul 2005 12:41:19 +0000

I attended Cornell’s engineering school 100 years ago, and I didn’t study engineering anyplace else, and I’ve never even heard of Kettering, so take this for what it’s worth…

The class education for the first two years is mostly, but not entirely, theoretical.

When you start your major (mechanical, electrical, etc) there will be additional theoretical courses in the foundation subjects. for example, a Mech E major would take largely theoretical courses in Fluid Mechanics. but in the last two years there will be other electives you can take that can be either more theoretical or more practical (eg Applications of Thermodynamics). There are probably some courses that have projects as part of them. So you have some flexibility to direct your program of studies towards your goals.

When I attended,the M. Eng. degree was really intended to be the capstone of all of this theory. To get this degree you need to do a significant design project.

My guess is the program of engineering studies is quite similar across a large number of “good” engineering schools, particularly in the first two years. I doubt that the offerings at Cornell are much different from: U Illinois, Purdue, Carnegie Mellon, RPI, Berkely, Stanford, etc. There will be differences mostly in the amount of electives offered in the last two years, depending on the size of the school. The faculty at the various colleges will inevitably emphasize specific areas of research, and consequently available electives for various sub-specialties will vary by college. Bigger programs are likely to be less limiting in the last two years.

The most significant aspects of studying in the engineering college at Cornell, to me, is not so much the engineering program of studies itself (though this is quite strong and robust), but its place as part of Cornell University.

At Cornell you will be attending a world class university, with top students and courses in many areas of study outside of engineering. There may be more liberal arts electives required or available here than most other engineering schools.Your liberal arts electives may be more challenging than at some pure engineering schools, because. eg, your history class may be largely peopled by students with top verbal skills who are pre-law. This may be good or it may be bad, depending on you.

Cornell consists of a number of different colleges with particular missions, and you may find offerings in the other colleges that interest you that are not available at most other universities. I took courses in three different colleges during my undergraduate studies there.

If you decide your future rests elsewhere, there is a good chance you would not have to change universities to change your field of studies. Transfer between colleges is not automatic, but if you’ve done ok it is very feasible to transfer from the engineering college.

Engineering is frequently a male-dominated field. At Cornell, because of the large number of other colleges, the overall male-female ratio is pretty well balanced.

These type of features of one’s school environment,to me, are more different between top engineering schools than the course of studies are different.