Top University Rankings for 2004 Released

jemecki writes "US News and World Report has posted their annual rankings for the top colleges and universities in America. Of particular interest to Slashdotters are the top Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering universities and the top overall engineering schools. For those that don't want to RTFA, Harvard and Princeton are the best in the country, and MIT, Stanford and Berkeley are the best in Engineering."

Comments

Re:applicability to the real world

[Timmmm]

How can you all afford to go to university?!?

In the UK, tuition is ~ 1k/year, wherever you go.

$30 / year ?!?!?!?!?!

Re:Not exactly true

[humblecoder]

I feel compelled to respond to your post, mainly because you mentioned my alma mater (Princeton) in a disparaging way.

On the topic of financial aid, what you say was largely true at one time. However, the situation has gotten A LOT better. The financial aid rules have been reformed over the past 10 or so years so the inequities that you mention have been reduced.

When I was going through college (class of 93), the financial aid formula assumed that something like 80% of assets in a student's name would be used towards tuition, while only something like 20% of assets in the parent's name would be used (I don't remember the exact figured, but you get the idea). If the family had saved money in the names of somebody else, like a sibling or a grandparent, those assets wouldn't be used in the financial aid calculation AT ALL. This ended up penalizing students like myself whose parents had saved money in my name. On the plus side, after the first year when all the assets in my name had been exhausted, my financial aid got A LOT better. Anyway, this rule has been reformed so that assets in the student's name aren't penalized as much.

There have been other reforms to the financial aid system. For instance, home equity isn't included as heavily in your parent's assets. Your friend whose parent's house appreciated in value wouldn't have hurt them as much today. Also, I know that Princeton recently announced that they would eliminate loans from their financial aid packages and replace them with grants.

All these things taken together show me that college administrators are listening to people's complaints about aid.

One area in which Princeton falls short is in their switch from Early Action to Early Decision. Under Early Decision, if you apply early and are offered admission, you are obligated to go. This does hurt students because if you are concerned about financial aid, you are discouraged from applying early because you don't know what your bill is going to look like. It's sort of like agreeing to buy a car without knowing what the sticker price is. If a car dealer did it, Ralph Nader would be all over this issue. However, since Nader is Princeton Alum, I guess he thinks it's okay!

Also, you mention how Princeton is not very diverse. If anything the elite school bend over backwards to show how diverse they are, even if they have to lower their standards. Of course, that is a debate for another day....