<p>why cant cornell get a similar student body? Cornell has over 13,000 undergrdaduate students. They get thousands more applications than Harvard does, but they also admit significantly more due to class size. Too many people like to rank colleges based on selectivity, it’s stupid. I’m certain that Cornell’s acceptance rate would be similar to the rest in the ivy league if it wasn’t such a large school. Granted, Cornell still rejects almost three quarters of the people that apply. But, Cornell’s size is one thing that makes it a wonderful school. It offers over 4500 courses and 700 student organizations. Not a disadvantage, IMO. </p>
<p>Also, as far as Harvard engineers. I dont doubt that they’re ‘talented.’ But i’d totally have to agree with monydad, and my parents would agree. They both recruit for fortune 500 companies, and the only ivy league schools they will take engineers from are Cornell and Princeton. They also recruit heavy from MIT, RPI, URochester, etc. </p>
<p>And for Cornell: the middle 50% SAT range for enrolled students in engineering is 1380-1550. In case you need help with the math, this also means that 25% of the students in engineering scored above a 1550 on the SAT. Hardly a need to improve student talent level.</p>
<p>I’m sorry, I don’t buy it. Size is not an excuse. You can have both a large size AND selectivity. </p>
<p>Let me give you an example. You say that Cornell has 13,000 undergrads, whereas Harvard has about 6500, and that accounts for Cornell’s lower selectivity. However, if you look at graduate students, the numbers are exactly reversed. This time, it is Cornell that has about 6500 graduate students, whereas Harvard has about 13,000 graduate students. So, following your logic, it must mean that Cornell’s graduate schools are more selective than Harvard’s, right? Are you sure you want to take that position?</p>
<p>To continue the example, which fulltime business school has the largest enrollment in the country? Some scrub unselective school? No, it’s Harvard Business School. HBS is literally more than triple the size of the Johnson School of Business at Cornell. So, following your logic, it must mean that HBS is less selective than Johnson, right? What is the largest fulltime law school in the country by far? Some scrub unselective school? No, it’s Harvard Law School, which is more than 2.5 times as large as Cornell Law School. So, following your logic, Cornell Law is more selective than Harvard Law, right? </p>
<p>Or forget about Harvard for a moment. MIT has more than twice the number of graduate engineering students than Cornell does. So I guess that means that Cornell’s graduate engineering program is more selectivity, right? </p>
<p>I don’t think so. What it shows is that there is no necessary connection between size and selectivity. You can have both large size AND maintain the highest levels of selectivity. To blame a lack of selectivity on size is a cop-out of epic proportions. Sadly, it’s a cop-out that I hear again and again from university administrators who claim that there is “nothing they can do” to boost the selectivity of the school. </p>
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<p>Now this is just odd in the extreme. If you had just stayed with Cornell, Princeton and MIT, I might have come onboard. But come on, the University of Rochester? Are you serious? Isn’t their undergrad engineering ranking somewhere in the 70’s? Compare that with Harvard’s and Penn’s ranking in the 30’s, and Yale’s and Dartmouth’s in the 40’s. </p>
<p>I also strongly recall the words of an executive from Ford, when I asked him why Ford would rarely choose to hire engineers from MIT, not just because MIT students tended to ask for too much money (although that was part of it), but more because those they did hire in the past tended to dislike the work and would then quit. He even then went on to say how they generally preferred to hire local students, not just from UM and Northwestern, but also from regional schools like Wayne State. </p>
<p>Moreover, I know that at MIT, Stanford, Caltech, and the other elite schools, not all Fortune 500 companies come to recruit heavily. In fact, only a small fraction of them do so. Some of it is driven by geography. For example, lots of Silicon Valley companies recruit at Stanford. Lots of Highway 128 tech companies recruit at MIT. Most of it is driven by desirability. Let’s face it. There aren’t exactly a lot of MIT, Stanford and Caltech students with the burning desire to work at Ford even though it is in indisputably within the Fortune500. </p>
<p>Hence the fact that a Fortune 500 company chooses to recruit or not recruit at a particular school is not necessarily indicative of the quality of the school. I would say that all of MIT’s graduating engineering seniors, only a handful will end up taking jobs with the Big 3, and those cases are usually because they were raised in the Midwest and want to go back home, not because they’re “enthralled” with working for an American car company. The root cause is not because the Big3 never wanted MIT engineers. It’s really because MIT engineers don’t want them, which therefore makes the Big3 not want them in return. </p>
<p>Taking it back to the example of Harvard engineers, let’s face it. Most Harvard engineers are probably not going to work as engineers. That should not be surprising because most Harvard History students usually don’t end up working as historians, most Harvard Sociology students don’t end up working as sociologists, and most Harvard Philosophy students don’t end up working as philosophers. The truth is, most Harvard students, regardless of what they studied, usually end up either in professional school (law, medicine, etc), or they take jobs in banking or consulting, or they take a standard corporate-track business job. This should not be surprising because even at the very best engineering schools, a significant number of engineering students do not take engineering jobs. I would say that at least 1/3 of MIT engineering students will end up taking jobs in consulting or banking, or going to non-engineering graduate school (i.e. law, medicine, etc.) upon graduation. I’m sure at Cornell, there are also plenty of engineering students who will take non-engineering jobs.</p>
<p>So that means that the notion of Harvard engineering students not getting engineering jobs is largely invalidated. Plenty of Harvard engineering students don’t ever intend to get an engineering job anyway (just like plenty of Harvard history students don’t ever intend to work as historians). They just want to study it because it’s interesting to them.</p>
<p>I would also leave you with the following tidbit. Until a few weeks ago, I had never heard of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (New Mexico Tech) before. Have you? Yet, their BS graduates are making almost 55k to start. Whatever you might say about Harvard engineering, I think we can all agree that it’s better than New Mexico Tech. If the New Mexico Tech’ers can make 55k, I wouldn’t be too worried about the Harvard engineers. </p>