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Stanford v MIT v Caltech. Which one is the best for a double degree in electrical engineering and physics? Any other colleges? By the way, I'm an int'l student, so I can't visit any of these colleges personally.

By Brownalum (Brownalum) on Tuesday, November 25, 2003 - 04:26 pm: Edit

Here are Sciencewatch's engineering rankings. Note that Sciencewatch is published by ISI, which is the oldest and most respected tracking organization of scientific research in the world.

1. Yale, SCORE 249

2. UCSB, SCORE 154

3. Stanford, SCORE 153

4. Caltech, SCORE 144

5 Harvard, SCORE 128

6 Cornell, SCORE 121

7 Princeton, SCORE 120

http://www.sciencewatch.com/nov-dec2002/sw_nov-dec2002_page2.htm#Engineering

By Drusba (Drusba) on Thursday, November 27, 2003 - 10:15 am: Edit

So now we have another list/ranking that means very little to choosing a college and proves little more than a school has more professors than another who write articles which then, more often than not, get cited by professors from the same college when they do another article.

Stanford, MIT and Caltech are all very good for electrical engineering or physics. Getting a combined degree will not be easy at any college. The problem: the required courses for electrical engineering at US schools (which will include getting a certain number of hours in humanities and other non-science oriented courses) make it very difficult to double degree. In fact, large numbers of students do not even graduate with a single engineering degree in 4 years but instead end up going 4 1/2 to 5 years to complete all the requirements. Thus, to double major usually means overloading on semester hours and going every summer (when you should instead be doing work internships). It is possible and a few do it but not highly recommended. One might think that since engineering requires a number of physics courses, it should be easy to do, but you will find that to have that extra degree in physics will require you to also take far more humanties courses than an engineering degree requires. In other words, you won't be able to add just physics courses to get that degree; you will also have to add about about 15 more hours humanities or other non-science courses.

There are a large number of excellent engineering schools in the US that are also good for physics. Some others to check out (and this is only a partial list) include Illinois, Michigan, Georgia Tech, UC Berkeley, Texas, Colorado, Purdue, Rose-Hulman, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, North Carolina State, Iowa State.

By Godavarian (Godavarian) on Thursday, November 27, 2003 - 01:27 pm: Edit

Hmmm. I had suspected the same thing. OK, let me rephrase the question: where can I take the maximum science/engineering courses and the minimum humanities courses? yeah, that's definitely a better way of putting it.

Sheesh. i must be pretty bad at choosing colleges.i haven't even considered any of the colleges you mentioned above (drusba), apart from cornell. but that's probably because most of them don't give financial aid to intl students, which is my first priority. i was more into the ivies (cornell, upenn, columnia fu,harvard, princeton), duke, lehigh, harvey mudd,lafayette etc.

By Drusba (Drusba) on Thursday, November 27, 2003 - 09:43 pm: Edit

Generally (but not exclusively), you will find the humanities and other non-science oriented courses required to be somewhat fewer at colleges dedicated to science and engineering rather than being all purpose universities, meaning the schools designated as Tech schools, like MIT, Caltech, Virginia Tech, Florida Tech, Georgia Tech, Carnegie Mellon, Rose-Hulman, Illinois Institute of Technology, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

By Aspirer42 (Aspirer42) on Friday, November 28, 2003 - 05:24 pm: Edit

A lot of the schools you mentioned you were first looking at will likely be more humanities-based, but Harvey Mudd would still be a good place to keep an eye on.

By Godavarian (Godavarian) on Saturday, November 29, 2003 - 08:27 pm: Edit

I graduated from school in November, so I thought maybe I could take a lot of AP courses or do some A level subjects to get some advanced placement in the humanitites and social sciences, and concentrate on math/science in college. Is that a good idea? I know, it'll probably not mean much in terms of the number of credits, but that's the best I can do now.