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The midwest has some of the greatest engineering schools in the nation. I have been beating this drum hoarse for a few years now - but it's true. Specifically,
by N1H1L 5y ago
The midwest has some of the greatest engineering schools in the nation. I have been beating this drum hoarse for a few years now - but it's true. Specifically, members of the Big 10 conference are probably the best engineering schools conference in the world. Within 300 miles from Columbus (where you have Ohio State - Big10), you have Penn State, Michigan, Michigan State, UIUC, Indiana, Purdue from the Big 10 along with Carnegie Mellon, Case Western and Pitt. Even the state of California doesn't have so many so good tech schools.
- moralestapia 5y agoMy two c, I have been left with a very good impression of people from Penn State and Michigan State, very talented and diligent at work.
- rxhernandez 5y agoI'm sure there's more great ones in California but I can count 14 off the top of my head; I think all of them are nearly within 300 miles of LA too. 1. Caltech 2. Stanford 3. Cal 4. UCLA 5. Harvey Mudd 6. USC 7. UCSD 8. UCD 9. UCSB 10. CPSLO 11. UCI 12. CPP 13. UCSC 14. UCR
- N1H1L 5y agoI will take Stanford and the UCs. Every other school in that list comes below the Midwestern powerhouses
- ericmay 5y agoIdk what we consider the “Midwest to be” but here are some schools generally in the area that are good. Happy to delete any you don’t like. No particular order. ;) 1. Northwestern 2. Notre Dame 3. Wisconsin Madison 4. Ohio State 5. Minnesota Twin Cities 6. Carnegie Mellon 7. University of Chicago 8. Purdue 9. Penn St 10. Washington University St. Louis 11. UIUC 12. Case Western 13. Michigan So there are plenty of world class educational institutions in the Midwest. Frankly I’d take this list over your list and that’s not including other brand name universities like Indiana, Pitt, Michigan State, Nebraska, or Iowa, some of which do “non-sexy” research in agricultural science and other fields. Ohio State has the only undergraduate wedding engineering program in North America even. It really is an absolute powerhouse of a region with far more national brand name recognition and reputation and monster enrollment numbers.
- empthought 5y agoCornell (ever heard of it?) is just as close to Columbus as UW-Madison is. California has all that stuff because it’s literally further from SF to LA than it is from Columbus to DC.
- ericmay 5y ago> Cornell (ever heard of it?) is just as close to Columbus as UW-Madison is. I was just going off of the “Midwest” versus distance. > California has all that stuff because it’s literally further from SF to LA than it is from Columbus to DC. Yea it’s a big state. I’d love to go off of distance though so we can include lots of other fantastic universities just to further drive home my point.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> I think all of them are nearly within 300 miles of LA too. No, Davis, Berkeley, and Stanford are all 350+ miles from LA.
- jasonlotito 5y agoI mean, if you are going to count campuses, Penn State has like 20+ alone.
- kragen 5y agoIt sounds like maybe you think UCLA and Berkeley are as closely related as the different campuses of Penn State, but that is far from the truth.
- Bayart 5y agoI know what one of those acronyms means.
- mikestew 5y agoIf you substitute "University of California" for "UC", you'll be able to decipher a lot more of them if you know your California cities. For example, "UCSD" translates to "UC San Diego". "CP" gets you "California Polytechnical", but good luck sussing "SLO" unless you've been anywhere near San Luis Obispo.
- Bayart 5y ago> you'll be able to decipher a lot more of them if you know your California cities Oh I know plenty of Californian cities, such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and Google.
- adamcstephens 5y agoThe other difference, which parent didn’t mention, is the Ohio has plenty of water.
- vanattab 5y agoAnd it doesn't even catch on fire anymore! https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Cuyahoga_River_Fire https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Cuyahoga_River_Fire
- axiolite 5y ago> Ohio has plenty of water California has 840 miles of coast line. Absolutely no shortage of water. Desalination and PV technology keep improving, too.
- adamcstephens 5y agoDesalination is awesome, and I love to see it improve. No matter how good it is, it won’t be cheaper than water that is available in rivers and aquifers.
- outside1234 5y agoCaltech, Stanford, Cal, and Harvey Mudd are on the same tier with Purdue, Michigan, Illinois, CM. The other ones are good schools, but in a distinctly second tier to that group.
- rxhernandez 5y agoYou think UCLA, USC, and UCSD are second tier? Last I checked, UCSD is #9 for engineering in the nation, which is above UIUC at #10. USC is #12 and UCLA is #16 relative to Columbia at #15, John Hopkins at #17, Harvard at #21, Princeton at #22, and UW at #22. What on earth do you mean by second tier?
- N1H1L 5y agoStanford and Berkeley are amazing, Caltech is definitely tier 2, while Harvey Mudd is not even an R2 school
- today20201014 5y agoHarvey Mudd is an undergraduate-only college. All the others are R1 institutions.
- jerrybender 5y agoThe two Cal Polys are not R1 institutions, they do not offer PhDs.
- ensan 5y agoThat’s such an ignorant statement. For example, when it comes to hardware & electrical engineering, UCSD alone is as productive as say Purdue & Illinois combined. And it’s a young university too.
- N1H1L 5y agoAnd when it comes to materials science, Penn State will run circles around all of them.
- wolverine876 5y ago
- ensan 5y agoYou forgot Berkeley.
- rxhernandez 5y agoCal == Berkeley
- kragen 5y agoCMU, CWRU, UMich, UIUC, and Indiana U are wonderful schools, but none of them are in Ohio [correction: I'm an idiot, CWRU is]. OSU doesn't belong in that list.
- justin66 5y agoI can assure you that CWRU is still in Cleveland, Ohio.
- kragen 5y agoUgh, how embarrassing. Of course it is. And it's still a great school. Unlike U of Indiana, I haven't been to CWRU. Thank you for the correction.
- justin66 5y agoNo need for embarrassment but I do wonder where you momentarily thought it was. :) One night while struggling with a problem for work I took a walk and wandered by where I calculated the IBM 650 must have been located back in the day, hoping for some kind of inspiration, or something. It was a good distraction but it did not work at all.
- GeorgeTirebiter 5y agoDo you know where Don Knuth did his undergrad? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth for the answer. Then, he wised up and came out here... ;-)
- kragen 5y agoYup! That's where the much-honored Type 650 was.
- graycat 5y ago"U of Indiana"? Used to be called Indiana University (IU)?
- TheCondor 5y agoWith a potential $100b investment, it's not about what they have now, it's about what will be in 20 years. Ohio is a great place for this kind of corporate gentrification. As a CMU grad, I know there was a collective desire to get students to stick around, but there was better lifestyle, more money, etc.. leaving after school and a fairly large number of us weren't from the area to begin with. Something like this can be a game changer for the region, plus, there will be dozens of additional companies that set up camp and start up there for support. If it really works and the region supports it and leans in, all of the schools anywhere near by will step up their engineering programs.
- NationalPark 5y agoDo chip plants employ many engineers? Seems like they would mainly need IT and facilities staff.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoThey keep the process parameters within the optimal zone. That is considerably more complicated than it sounds. They also work on incremental improvements.
- quocanh 5y agoFrom what I understand, a chip plant's workers have PhDs because when problems arise on the line, they require a lot of knowledge to fix.
- smaddox 5y agoThe R&D fab(s) definitely have a high number of PhDs. I don't know about the production fabs. PhDs will definitely visit when starting up a new fab or process or when issues need to be addressed.
- s1artibartfast 5y agoIf it is anything like BioTech, they will. I was shocked when I joined a large firm and realized that the person spending most of their day breaking down boxes and checking log books has a masters from Berkeley. Most of the techs running equipment have masters/Phds. As I have come to realize, when a mistake or delay costs $XX million, it often makes sense to hire with high educational background. I have also come to realize that your bog standard MS or Phd isn't as talented as you might think.
- danielvaughn 5y agoNot sure if Colorado counts as midwest but there's also the School of Mines outside Denver. Very good engineering school.
- brewdad 5y agoSchool of Mines is 1,300 miles from this location. It's not really relevant compared to the others on the the list.
- mmmBacon 5y agoThe problem is not the schools in the Midwest but that many don’t want to live in the Midwest. I am married into a family from Illinois but they have all left or are leaving because they are tired of the weather. I also went to grad school in Illinois and never considered staying after I finished. I did actually like it but wasn’t a place I wanted to stay forever. University of Illinois at Urbana Champagne was the pre-eminent school for Computer Science. It’s still a fantastic school but most don’t seem to want to live in a cornfield.
- QuercusMax 5y agoSadly Ohio's state government doesn't want to invest in higher education. My father was in the physics department at Kent State University (my alma mater) and I remember him complaining year after year about how the state was cutting funding. Really a shame. Between this, Ohio's shameful anti-LGBTQ laws, and the truly awful racism, it's really like the state is trying to drive people away. I moved to CA 7 years ago and couldn't imagine moving back after talking to friends who are still there.
- pm90 5y agoThe incredible University systems in the US are an amazing asset… failure to recognize their value by craven businessmen turned Republican politicians that only understand money is going to be one of the biggest tragedies to befall America.
- someguydave 5y agoRepublicans would probably be happy to support universities if they were no longer under the control of people who wish them ill.
- pm90 5y agoRepublicans shouldn’t support policies that the most educated members of society find bad enough to wish ill on them.
- wolverine876 5y ago> under the control of people who wish them ill A bunch of victimhood to excuse their bad actions (and change the subject). So they are sacrificing assets and essential services to the American people for political revenge? They won't provide public goods to Democrats?
- jollybean 5y agoRepublicans are pretty good are recognizing the value of good post-secondary education, their leadership still counts good schools as alma mater, even Trump. They lament some social issues on campus from a populist perspective but sometimes I think it's not always without merit, or at least a discussion. The political issue is at the elementary and high school level, and it's more about supporting families than it is the schools, where 'teacher quality' is a huge and ridiculous distraction. If every kid got a chance to attend school while living what most of us would call 'Normal Middle Class Circumstances' (i.e. decent parents, stable home, economic stability, no gangs or crime) there would be progress. This investment is such a hugely important announcement, the number of really high quality jobs ... and the secondary economic factors will be even bigger. The US Midwest has long been under utilized. If US leadership could do anything, it would be to convince some of the big SV operators to invest decisively and aggressively in 2cnd and 3rd tier places which are frankly very prepared for it. Ohio, Miami, Raleigh, Michigan, Chicago etc.. Concentration in specific areas has been going on too long and is at least a decade past it's benefit.
- octoberfranklin 5y ago> members of the Big 10 conference Am I the only one who thinks it's weird that football leagues are used to categorize engineering institutions?
- cleansingfire 5y agoWait until you learn what the Ivy League is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League?wprov=sfti1
- ensan 5y ago“members of the Big 10 conference are probably the best engineering schools conference in the world.” 1- Big 10 is not an “engineering school conference”. 2- In what world is Pitt a prominent engineering school? You have no idea what you’re talking about.
- V_Terranova_Jr 5y agoEven as a product of one of those schools, I think the comparison against CA might be going a bit far, but as long as we're talking perceptions/stereotypes... In Aerospace, within both U.S. government and industry, midwest engineering schools are widely seen as producing more undegrad-level engineers who actually want to be engineers than places like Stanford. Stanford, in particular, seems to attract proportionally way more engineering majors that want to use engineering credentials as a gateway out of engineering (high finance, startup executives, management, etc.). A colleague of mine in Big Aerospace says there's a pretty consistent pattern of not being able to hang on to many Stanford or MIT grads for very long. Granted Big Aerospace can be a miserable place to work in a number of ways, but if you want to hone your craft in a number of aerospace disciplines, you'll need some level of exposure to that kind of knowledge/experience-base. You're not going to get that at the next delivery drone or flying taxi startup.
- N1H1L 5y agoNot really. There is a whole wide world outside CS - mechanical, chemical, materials. And while Berkeley, Stanford, UCSB are amazing in them Caltech for example is not and is just over hyped.
- grapescheesee 5y agoMinnesota has several semi conductor fabs. Seagate and Polar are both right by the MSP airport. Not sure the NM sizes being made at these sites off hand.