Ok, they are both top 100 for engineering and top 50 for business programs.
I think you are confusing "great" with "top" or "prestigious". They are great universities.
And college rankings aren't everything. Those universities put out a high volume entrepreneurs, more than most of the top 50 engineering schools. For example, I don't see most of the top engineering schools on this list: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DHB_9l_UAAE8Fzn.jpg
You missed a massive category: the schools ranks 20-100. I would describe a school ranked #40 or #60 in a major as really good. Not top 20 good, but really good. There is a bigger difference between the #50 school and the #200 school than there is between the #1 school and the #50.
This jives with engineering industries, where USC is a consistent producer of aerospace/mechanical and tech talent. USC is considered a top school in many other research fields as well.
I think it's more likely that you actually know very little about academics at these institutions.
Disclaimer: I work at UPenn (doing research!) and went to USC.
US News ranks it #23 of domestic schools. It has top-10 graduate programs in Compute, Mechanical, Electrical, and Environmental engineering with an overall engineering school ranking of #5. It has a top-10 fine arts program (#6). It is weaker (not in the top 25) for pure sciences and applied math, although it's #11 for discrete math and combinatorics likely due to the CS program. It's business school ranks #7 for undergrad and has top-10 graduate programs for information systems, operations, and logistics.
So, by and large, it's actually a fantastic university if you want to be an engineer, a computer scientist, an artist, or a business person. It certainly isn't "VEEERY poor" in all other fields.
There is only one ivy, Cornell, in the top 10 (though Princeton does clock in at 11). Like I said, I'm not a huge fan of these rakings, and using them to the digit (4th place vs 6th place) is genuinely absurd. But overall, you'll see here that large public research universities, none of which crack the top 20 for US News undergraduate college rankings, are much more prominent where it comes to engineering.
There are reasons in the methodology for this as well - I think that the algorithm used to create the general rankings isn't similar to this one, which (like the ranking for grad programs) is more academic and research focused (not considering average SAT, admission rates, funding, and so forth).
But overall, the Ivies actually aren't highly notable where it comes to computer science and engineering. Large public research universities, as well as elite non-ivy privates, tend to predominate here.
This does make a certain amount of sense. If a STEM major is an "equalizer", where smart people who went to less prestigious schools can compete on (more) equal footing, it would make sense that students at highly selective undergraduate programs might eschew engineering or CS in favor of fields where their undergrad school might provide a stronger differentiator. And, conversely, if a super smart undergrad at San Jose state will have trouble overcoming the pedigree disadvantage in international relations, but can get a more equal crack through engineering, it would make more sense to study STEM.
I'm definitely guilty of some "just-so" reasoning here, but it does fit.
What measure are you using for top universities? Looking at US News' top engineering schools, Cornell, UCLA, Berkeley, CMU and Georgia Tech are all in the top 15.
> Since 2015, Tsinghua University has overtaken the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to top the list of Best Global Universities for Engineering published by the U.S. News & World Report.
I can probably find rankings that put Harvard at wildly different rankings in all of those categories too. The fact of the matter is, outside of Law and Business (okay okay, Math too), Harvard does not exactly float to the top of anybody's personal list as a source of any kind of great engineering. That's okay, that's not what the school focuses on.
We actually had this exact discussion recently at a client site and brainstormed top schools we could look to recruit from for C.S. and Mechanical Engineering types and Harvard was not on anybody's list for either of those. Not top-10 and not in the discussion at all.
Most people are wildly surprised to find out that folks like Bill Gates and Zuckerberg studied at Harvard, almost verbatim the response is "Harvard has a C.S. department?" Most people assume Stanford or MIT.
Well, MIT, sure. But is Harvard really a remarkable CS, engineering, or applied science research institution comparable to Berkeley or Stanford?
It's interesting what happens when you look at rankings of engineering programs, especially at the grad level. You start to see more large state institutions, as well as more technical institutions, with a heavier concentration in the mid west or west coast.
The ivies are hardly missing in action, especially Cornell (should probably also say Columbia) but Texas, Washington, many UC campuses, certainly Michigan... I'd probably put all these, certainly at the graduate engineering level, at or above the ivies. And the ivy that really seems to be a heavy hitter here, Cornell, again shows how much things have shuffled up once you go to engineering.
Princeton gets on some top 10 lists as well. But the point isn't that there's anything wrong with Harvard or the Ivies in general (you'll surely get a fine CS education at Harvard, Cornell, Princeton, Brown, Columbia, Penn, maybe even Yale), the point is that the center of gravity in the tech startup world is right now at the schools with top-tier CS and Engineering departments, and it's not because they have some special "incubator" sauce that other universities don't, it's just that they attract a large body of entrepreneurially-focused students.
But the other rankings are modest side projects for entities whose main business is elsewhere -- eg the Times Higher Education Supplement which probably has the best ranking. It also has the nice point of covering the world instead of just one country.
And how good can rankings get, anyway? There's always a huge error bar, so being the 20th best vs the 40th best institution is meaningless. All the rankings tell us that Harvard and MIT and Stanford are very good and some place you've never heard of us rubbish.
This is analogous to why Princeton is so high up there as well. The school has a tremendous focus on theory even in the engineering disciplines.
(I studied electrical engineering there and as much as I hate to admit, because I wasn't motivated enough to seek out attainment of more industry-ready skills, it actually set me back significantly as an engineer)
I can think of dozens of engineering schools. I listed the only one in the east that is comparable to Stanford or CalTech, not a comprehensive list of all the schools that are not as good. I hope now you understand the purpose of my previous post. Thanks.
I think you are confusing "great" with "top" or "prestigious". They are great universities.
And college rankings aren't everything. Those universities put out a high volume entrepreneurs, more than most of the top 50 engineering schools. For example, I don't see most of the top engineering schools on this list: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DHB_9l_UAAE8Fzn.jpg
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