ranking undergraduate engineering schools

mercymom
Thu, 05 Apr 2007 12:43:52 +0000

hiker -

you have two excellent choices and imo the difference between #2 and #19 probably is negligible. i personally am not familiar at all with these two schools. and i am only just now getting more familiar with engrg issues, belatedly as my engrg D is finishing her freshman year!

what i have learned so far is that to a certain extent the field is regional. reps vary close to home from the natl ranks. find out if you can what the locals think about these two. talk to people working in the field and see who they’d rather hire; see what they know about the inner workings details. i live near houston and let me tell you at that NASA facility, which is HUGE, pretty much all the cars in all the lots have Texas A & M stuff on them. how many people on CC are agonizing about going to Texas A&M? (and it ranks surprisingly high, much higher than Rice, which is quite popular on CC). so see what the locals say.

then definitely visit both schools if you can, in depth if possible. engrg is the hardest major at any school it is available at. your kid is going to have to WORK to stay afloat. that is soooo much easier if they’re happy. plus an in depth visit will go a long way to telling you what you’d give up if you say no to Berkeley.

i completely agree with evoke about the imptance of the visit.