As part of its annual “America’s Best Graduate Schools” rankings the U.S. News and World Reports had N.C. State’s College of Engineering at No. 34 in graduate-level engineering studies.
Since 2001 the engineering graduate program has had a slow but steady decline from 28 to 34 – averaging about one spot a year. The undergraduate program has fluctuated between 31 and 35.
The magazine uses a points system to grade the universities according to expert opinions about program quality and 10 statistical indicators that measure faculty, research and students, according to its Web site. For the 2007 rankings of engineering graduate programs, surveys were sent to 199 engineering schools with doctoral degrees and 191 responded.
State’s six-place fall in the past six years doesn’t mean much to Gianluca Lazzi, professor of electrical engineering.
“Statistically [the top schools] are very correlated,” Lazzi said. “The top 30 or 40 of the institutions are really comparable.”
Lazzi pointed out that, from a professor’s perspective, a higher ranking impacts the way that they work. For example, at a lower-ranked school, a professor would most likely have to teach more classes.
“Rankings aside, what is most important is that the program fits a student’s interests because engineering programs are vast and vary greatly,” Lazzi said.
“It depends on what a student wants to study, what is the strongest in that field,” he said. “If you can’t work aside people interested in what you are, then it will not be the most beneficial.”
Greg Mulholland, a senior in electrical engineering and computer engineering, is going to graduate school at Cambridge for his master’s in physics and material science starting in the fall. He agrees with Lazzi that students should look at the program they are interested in rather than the ranking.
“I looked at materials and electrical engineering programs; I want to do electronic materials,” Mulholland said.
He said he looked at top schools such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford in addition to NCSU and Cambridge.
“It’s not that N.C. State isn’t as good as Stanford, it’s an attitude about them,” he said. “I did think about going to State – that was one of the very real choices, considered most highly.”
Another aspect, in addition to school ranking and programs, is the very real price tag. Research assistants and teaching assistants can have their graduate school paid for through their programs. But for everyone else, the additional years of school added onto their student loans can make it an unattractive option.
“Tutition is my main concern,” Matthew Reese, a junior in computer engineering, said about graduate school. “The program here is so hard; it’s difficult with all the hours – it would be hard to teach and do the work. Some people do it, but I don’t think I could.”
Tripp Worrell, a master’s student in computer engineering, pointed out that there is not a whole lot of difference between the number-one school and the number-40 school “except for the price tag.”
Worrell also went to undergrad at NCSU and stayed because of the in-state tuition and the contacts he had already made in school. He also opted out of being a RA or a TA because he said his part-time internship at IBM paid more and added more depth to his resume.
“Also, in [computer engineering], if you go from undergrad to grad you don’t have to take the GRE, which is nice,” Worrell said. “If you want to teach though, they like to see diversity in your portfolio, like State for undergrad, Berkley for your master’s, etc. But for me staying at State was easy.”
